OpenAI, the company behind ChatGPT, has completed its reorganization as a for-profit business in a move that could open the door to billions in new funding. The company said Tuesday that it has turned itself into a public benefit corporation, a for-profit structure that pledges to balance profit with social good, the New York Times reports. Rivals such as Anthropic and Elon Musk's xAI use the same structure. The change removes a constraint on raising capital that was part of a 2019 OpenAI deal with Microsoft, and it may lessen tensions between the two companies, reports Reuters.
Under the new setup, a nonprofit called the OpenAI Foundation will oversee the for-profit OpenAI Group PBC, although details about how this control will work remain unclear. The nonprofit holds a 26% stake in the new company, while Microsoft, OpenAI's biggest backer, owns 27%, the company said in a blog post Tuesday. The remaining 47% is split among employees and other investors. The restructuring deal values OpenAI at around $500 billion, NBC News reports. Both the OpenAI Foundation and Microsoft have stakes valued at about $130 billion each. The restructuring required discussions with attorneys general in both Delaware, where OpenAI was founded, and California, its current home base.
OpenAI said its mission remains the same: "to ensure that artificial general intelligence benefits all of humanity." Reuters notes that while the deal gives OpenAI CEO Sam Altman more power to "expand his empire," it doesn't give him a stake in the restructured company. A company spokesperson said his compensation isn't changing from $76,000 a year. (Earlier this year, OpenAI rejected a takeover bid from co-founder Elon Musk.)
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