OpenAI’s for-profit plan includes creating a public benefit corporation

the next Months of speculationOpenAI has finally shared how it plans to become a for-profit company. In a Blog post OpenAI, drafted by its board of directors, said Thursday that it plans to transform its for-profit arm into a public benefit corporation sometime in 2025. PBCs, or B Corps, are for-profit organizations that try to balance the interests of stakeholders with a positive impact on society.

“As we enter 2025, we are going to have to become more than just a lab and a startup — we have to become a permanent company,” OpenAI said, adding that many of its competitors are registered as PBC companies, including Anthropic And even Elon Musk xAI. “(This move) will enable us to raise the necessary capital on conventional terms like others in this space.”

As part of the shift, OpenAI’s non-profit division will retain a stake in the for-profit unit in the form of shares “at a fair valuation determined by independent financial advisors,” but will lose direct oversight of the company. “Our plan will create one of the best-resourced nonprofits in history,” says OpenAI.

Following the reorganization, the for-profit division will be responsible for overseeing OpenAI’s “operations and business,” while the nonprofit arm will operate separately with its own leadership team focusing on philanthropic efforts in the areas of healthcare, education, and science.

OpenAI did not say whether CEO Sam Altman would take an equity stake as part of the restructuring. Last year, the OpenAI Board of Directors Altman was fired briefly before being reinstated, sparking the institutional crisis that led to this week’s announcement. according to Some estimatesOpenAI’s for-profit arm could be worth $150 billion. In 2019, OpenAI estimated that it would need to raise at least $10 billion to build artificial general intelligence. In October, the company obtained insurance $6 billion in new financing.

“The hundreds of billions of dollars that major companies are now investing in AI development shows what it will really take for OpenAI to continue pursuing the mission,” OpenAI said. “We again need to raise more capital than we had imagined. Investors want to support us, but with this amount of capital, they need traditional equity and less structural granularity.

Despite this week’s announcement, OpenAI will likely face several hurdles in implementing its plan. In addition Ongoing legal dispute With Elon Musk, recently dead I sent a message to California’s attorney general urging him to block OpenAI from becoming a for-profit company, saying such a move would be “wrong” and “could lead to similar startups that are theoretically philanthropic proliferating into becoming profitable.”

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