International media reported that the restructuring was aimed at attracting more investors. The non-profit arm would still exist, but would only hold a small portion of shares instead of having a decisive voice as it does now.

"We remain committed to building AI that benefits everyone. The nonprofit remains core to our mission and will continue to exist," said an OpenAI representative.

skynews sam altman openai grap 5918 9640 1727319336.png
Sam Altman becomes one of two founders still associated with OpenAI. Photo: SkyNews

OpenAI was founded in 2015 with the goal of developing AI that is safe and beneficial to all of humanity. Initially, the company operated as a non-profit organization, committed to creating open and non-commercial technologies with a priority on developing AI for social good.

However, in 2019, OpenAI established a for-profit arm with the goal of attracting investment to meet the growing financial demands of developing advanced AI models, which require huge financial resources for research, data, and technology infrastructure.

The move is intended to make it easier for OpenAI to raise capital, especially as the company is planning to raise $6.5 billion at an expected valuation of up to $150 billion.

As part of the restructuring, founder Sam Altman will receive his first equity stake in OpenAI. Altman had previously declined to take equity in order to maintain transparency and avoid any conflicts of interest in running the company.

Earlier, on September 25, OpenAI chief technology officer Mira Murati announced her resignation. On the same day, CEO Sam Altman said that director of research Bob McGrew and vice president of research Barret Zoph also left their jobs.

Murati took over as interim CEO in 2023 when Sam Altman was temporarily removed from the board, a major shakeup that shook the company internally. Murati's departure is seen as a major loss for OpenAI as she was one of the people who helped turn the company's AI ideas into reality.

Not only Murati, OpenAI also witnessed a series of important changes in its leadership team. Ilya Sutskever, co-founder and former CSO, also left OpenAI in May 2024 to form a new organization called Safe Superintelligence. Previously, in August 2024, OpenAI co-founder Greg Brockman also announced that he would be taking a leave of absence until the end of 2024. These major changes at OpenAI have raised concerns in the community about the stability of the leadership team in the future.

(Synthetic)

OpenAI's New Reasoning AI Model Gets PhD Level in Mathematics OpenAI has just introduced a new large language model - “Strawberry” in two versions o1-preview and o1-mini, with excellent capabilities in mathematics, encryption and deep analysis.