Tools for Humanity, the crypto startup co-founded by OpenAI chief Sam Altman, reportedly delivered a stark message to staff: your job should come before everything else. According to a Business Insider report, CEO Alex Blania told employees during a all-hands meeting that those who cared about something other than the company’s mission “should just not be here.”
The company- best known for its shiny metal iris-scanning orbs used to verify human identity- allegedly told workers that its goal was so critical to humanity that they must be prepared to work weekends and remain constantly available. A recording captured Alex Blania saying, “We will neither fail, nor will we be an average outcome. That’s all I care about every day, and all you should care about every day and nothing else should matter.”
Alex Blania reportedly made it clear that dissent wasn’t welcome. Anyone who disagreed with the values or mission, he said, had “no place” at the company. He emphasised that Tools for Humanity existed solely to build a global digital identity system capable of distinguishing humans from AI-generated deepfakes- a mission he described as existentially important.
“We don’t care about politics, we don’t care about DEI, we don’t care about anything. We just care about how we can achieve the mission through merit, performance and excellence,” Alex Blania allegedly told staff.
As per the report, employees at the company’s former San Francisco office were shown blunt “team values” on a TV screen. These values promoted constant availability and prioritising the mission above all else. One message read: “We are very (very) hard working… We work weekends, we’re always on call… Success is important for humanity… We defy the odds and succeed on the mission.”
Other displayed values claimed the company had “no time for slowness and comfort,” discouraged attention to colleagues’ feelings and banned “talkers, ideology or politics.”
In statements to Fortune, a Tools for Humanity spokesperson said the company’s “transparency about its values and operating principles” had helped assemble a “passionate and focused” team aligned with its mission of ensuring every human benefits from the age of AI.
Chief product officer Tiago Sada later posted on X (formerly Twitter) that the reporting was “absolutely correct” and encouraged people to apply to the company’s open roles, signalling pride rather than regret over the internal culture.