OpenAI said on Tuesday that it had adopted a new for-profit structure, a long-sought change that could allow the business to operate like a more traditional company while it raises the billions of dollars it needs to develop artificial intelligence.
The widely anticipated move was considered one of they keys to the future of OpenAI. It will allow the maker of the popular ChatGPT chatbot to eventually go public on the stock market and raise new funds like any other company.
It also firmly establishes OpenAI as one of the tech industry’s standard bearers in the A.I. boom, allowing the San Francisco company to compete on more solid footing with giants like Google, Amazon and Meta.
For more than 18 months, Sam Altman, the chief executive of OpenAI, and his colleagues have been trying to rework OpenAI’s unorthodox structure, which blends a nonprofit with a for-profit company. The announcement on Tuesday offers some clarity about how the influential A.I. company, which was founded 10 years ago, will operate.
OpenAI said in a blog post that it had become a public benefit corporation, or P.B.C., which is a for-profit corporation designed to create public and social good.
The nonprofit that has controlled OpenAI since it was founded in late 2015 received a roughly $130 billion stake in the new for-profit company, which is called OpenAI Group PBC.
OpenAI said the nonprofit, now called the OpenAI Foundation, would continue to control the for-profit company through its board. Microsoft, OpenAI’s largest investor, will also maintain a stake in the new company worth roughly $130 billion as well.
The nonprofit holds a 26% stake in the new company, Microsoft controls a roughly 27 percent stake and the remaining 47 percent is held by current and former employees and other investors.
