Report: OpenAI Considers Making Corporate Structure More Attractive to Investors

OpenAI is reportedly considering changing its corporate structure to make that structure simpler and more attractive to financial backers.

The artificial intelligence (AI) company currently issues investors equity from its for-profit subsidiary, which is governed by its non-profit board whose “principal beneficiary is humanity, not OpenAI investors,” the Financial Times (FT) reported Friday (Aug. 30).

One change that OpenAI is considering is removing the present cap on profits that can be earned by investors, but the company has not made a final decision on whether or how to make any changes, the report said, citing unnamed sources.

Responding to these claims, OpenAI told the FT, per the report: “We remain focused on building AI that benefits everyone and as we’ve previously shared we’re working with our board to ensure that we’re best positioned to succeed in our mission. The non-profit is core to our mission and will continue to exist.”

This report comes at a time when OpenAI reportedly aims to raise “several billion dollars” in a funding round that would value it above $100 billion.

The company was most recently valued at $86 billion when employees sold shares in late 2023. Its ChatGPT chatbot currently has hundreds of millions of monthly users.

Its next funding round is reportedly being led by venture capital firm Thrive Capital, with participation by Apple, Nvidia and Microsoft. Microsoft has already invested $13 billion in OpenAI since 2019.

OpenAI is also facing a lawsuit from Elon Musk, who helped found the startup in 2015 and now accuses it and co-founders Sam Altman and Greg Brockman of violating the company’s founding principles by prioritizing profits over the larger common good.

Musk alleges that Altman and Brockman abandoned the company’s original mission of humanity-focused AI when they teamed up with Microsoft.

OpenAI has said in the past that it plans to move to have the suit dismissed, that it realized artificial general intelligence (AGI) will require “far more resources than we’d originally imagined,” that the company and Musk agreed in 2017 that a for-profit entity would be needed to acquire those resources, and that it advances its mission by building beneficial tools that are widely available.