OpenAI has finally shared details about its plans to shake up its core business by shifting to a for-profit corporate structure.
On Thursday, OpenAI posted on its blog, confirming that in 2025, the existing for-profit arm will be transformed into a Delaware-based public benefit corporation (PBC). As a PBC, OpenAI would be required to balance its shareholders’ and stakeholders’ interests with the public benefit. To achieve that, OpenAI would offer “ordinary shares of stock” while using some profits to further its mission—”ensuring artificial general intelligence (AGI) benefits all of humanity”—to serve a social good.
To compensate for losing control over the for-profit, the nonprofit would have some shares in the PBC, but it’s currently unclear how many will be allotted. Independent financial advisors will help OpenAI reach a “fair valuation,” the blog said, while promising the new structure would “multiply” the donations that previously supported the nonprofit.
“Our plan would result in one of the best resourced nonprofits in history,” OpenAI said. (During its latest funding round, OpenAI was valued at $157 billion.)
OpenAI claimed the nonprofit’s mission would be more sustainable under the proposed changes, as the costs of AI innovation only continue to compound. The new structure would set the PBC up to control OpenAI’s operations and business while the nonprofit would “hire a leadership team and staff to pursue charitable initiatives in sectors such as health care, education, and science,” OpenAI said.
Some of OpenAI’s rivals, such as Anthropic and Elon Musk’s xAI, use a similar corporate structure, OpenAI noted.
Critics had previously pushed back on this plan, arguing that humanity may be better served if the nonprofit continues controlling the for-profit arm of OpenAI. But OpenAI argued that the old way made it hard for the Board “to directly consider the interests of those who would finance the mission and does not enable the non-profit to easily do more than control the for-profit.
