08-05-2025
OpenAI Wants to Create a Public Benefit Corporation. What Does That Mean?
After months of public pressure over its effort to convert from a nonprofit into a more traditional moneymaking business, OpenAI decided to partly walk back its plan and strike a complicated balance. While the ChatGPT owner still intends to form a public benefit corporation that's meant to be more appealing to investors, the overall business would continue to be overseen by OpenAI's nonprofit entity.
The push to restructure reflects OpenAI's growing business ambitions and the significant capital required to build cutting-edge artificial intelligence systems. However, OpenAI has faced pushback from former employees, academics and rivals including Elon Musk who raised concerns about the company prioritizing profits over safe AI development.
