OpenAI is for-profit — and it’s giving Sam Altman equity

OpenAI is looking to attract investors by ditching its non-profit business model.

Reuters, citing sources familiar with the matter, reports that the maker of ChatGPT is reorganization of its central business in what is known as a benefit corporationa for-profit company with the aim of creating a positive impact on society. That also means it won’t be controlled by its non-profit board.

Chief Executive Sam Altman will also receive about $150 billion in equity in the new accompanying restructuring, according to Reuters. The non-profit organization OpenAI will live on, however, and will hold a minority stake in the company.

Apparently OpenAI is in discussions with several investors to raise billions of dollars in new funding, which would value the company at more than $100 billion. This latest round of funding would be its largest since receiving a $10 billion backing from Microsoft (MSFT) in January 2023 and it looks like it might as well include investments from tech and artificial intelligence giants Apple and Nvidia.

A deal that allows employees to sell stakes in the company that OpenAI has rated 86 billion dollars at the end of 2023, almost triple that at the beginning of the year.

News of the company’s restructuring came just hours after chief technology officer Mira Murati announced it would be leaving the companymarking the latest in a series of high-level executive departures at the AI ​​startup.

Murati, who spent six and a half years at the artificial intelligence startup, said Wednesday that he “made the difficult decision” to leave and that he wanted to “create the time and space to do my own exploration.” After the CEO of OpenAI was Sam Altman removed for a short time in November, Murati was interim leader of the company.

OpenAI co-founder and former chief scientist Ilya Sutskever and researcher Jan Leike, resigned from the company in May. The pair co-led the startup’s “superalignment” team, which focused on the existential dangers of artificial intelligence.

Critics, including former OpenAI employees, have warned that the company and its ambitions to create what is known as artificial general intelligence, pose “serious risks”. The company said the “super-alignment” team’s work will be absorbed by other research efforts in OpenAI.

— Britney Nguyen contributed to this article.