ChatGPT developer OpenAI is shifting its business model to become a for-profit company.
The move will allow it raise additional funding.
In a blog post, Bret Taylor, chair of the OpenAI board of directors, says OpenAI has completed its recapitalization and simplified its corporate structure.
The nonprofit remains in control of the for-profit, and now has a direct path to major resources before AGI arrives.
The nonprofit, now called the OpenAI Foundation, holds equity in the for-profit currently valued at approximately $130-billion, making it one of the best resourced philanthropic organizations ever. The recapitalisation also grants the Foundation additional ownership as OpenAI’s for-profit reaches a valuation milestone.
“The OpenAI mission – ensuring that AGI benefits all of humanity – will be advanced through both the business and the Foundation,” Taylor writes. “The more OpenAI succeeds as a company, the more the non-profit’s equity stake will be worth, which the non-profit will use to fund its philanthropic work.”
He says the OpenAI Foundation will initially focus on a $25-billion commitment across two areas:
- Health and curing diseases. The OpenAI Foundation will fund work to accelerate health breakthroughs so everyone can benefit from faster diagnostics, better treatments, and cures. This will start with activities like the creation of open-sourced and responsibly built frontier health datasets, and funding for scientists.
- Technical solutions to AI resilience. Just as the internet required a comprehensive cybersecurity ecosystem – protecting power grids, hospitals, banks, governments, companies, and individuals – we now need a parallel resilience layer for AI. The OpenAI Foundation will devote resources to support practical technical solutions for AI resilience, which is about maximizing AI’s benefits and minimizing its risks.