After months spent pursuing a plan to convert to a for -profit company, Openai reverse the course and declared on Monday that its non -profit organization would continue to control the company that manufactures Chatgpt and other artificial intelligence products.
“We made the decision of the non -profit organization to keep control after hearing civic leaders and had discussions with the offices of the California and Delaware general prosecutors,” CEO Sam Altman said in a letter to the employees.
Altman and the chairman of the OPENAI non -profit board of directors, Bret Taylor, said that the Council had made the decision of the non -profit decision to maintain OPENAI control. The non -profit organization already has a for -profit arm, but this arm will be converted into a public service company “which must take into account the interests of shareholders and the mission,” said Taylor.
However, Taylor refused to say on Monday how much the ownership of the ownership will have the ownership of the new public services company. He declared in a call to journalists that the non -profit organization would choose the members of the Board of Directors of the Public Benefit Corporation and, at the beginning, they will probably be the same people who now sit on the Board of Directors of Non -profit Openai.
Public services companies were created for the first time in Delaware in 2013 and other states have adopted even or similar laws which oblige companies to pursue not only a profit but social good. Public services companies, which include the amalgamated bank and the online education platform Racera, must define this social good, which can vary widely, when they behave.
Altman said that the conversion of a limited liability company into a public service company “just set up a more understandable structure for doing things that a company of our scope must do.”
Among the changes, there would be the withdrawal of a CAP Openai on the amount of profits it could make.
“There is so much more request to use AI tools than we thought there would be,” said Altman. Access to more capital will allow OPENAI to more easily continue mergers and acquisitions “and other normal things would do,” said Altman.
The co-founders of Openai, including Altman and the CEO of Tesla, Elon Musk, initially launched it as a non-profit research laboratory on a mission to build safely what is calledArtificial general intelligence, or actedfor the benefit of humanity. Almost a decade later, Openai declared its market value at $ 300 billion and has 400 million weekly Chatgpt users, its flagship product.
Openai first described the plans last year to convert its basic governance structure, but were faced with a number of challenges. One is amusk trialWho accuses the company and Altman of betraying the founding principles which led Musk to invest in the charity. A federal judge rejected last week some of Musk's allegations and authorized others to proceed to a trial for next year.
OPENAI was also exposed to the best agents for the application of the Delaware law, where the company is formed, and in California, where it operates from a head office in San Francisco. The California's prosecutor's office said in a statement that he was examining the plan and: “This remains a continuous affair – and we are in continuous conversations with the open AI.”
The Office of the Attorney General of Delaware did not immediately return a comment request.
A certain number of defenders, including former OpenAi employees and other charities, had asked for the California prosecutor of California Rob Bonta and the Attorney General of Delaware, Kathy Jennings, the two Democrats, to use their authority to protect the charity of Openai and block its expected restructuring.
Some were concerned about what is happening if the manufacturer of Chatgpt achieves his ambition to build the AI that surpasses humans, but is no longer responsible for his public mission to protect this technology for causing serious damages.
Several other artificial intelligence companies have chosen to integrate as public benefits companies, notably Anthropic and Xai, Musk's Company. However, Openai would remain unique in that his public service company is still controlled by the board of directors of the non -profit organization.
Altman said that it would be “perhaps easier” to collect funds if Openai was a “fully normal business”, but given its mission, “we do not want to be a fully normal business, and we think that it goes well with the bar of what we need to be able to collect funds.”
“We have had many investors who think that Openai is an excellent deal but who does not care or do not appreciate our mission,” said Altman, adding that he was “happy not to have their money”.
Altman said he is still expecting a significant investment by the Japanese technology giant Softbank Group, which announced in FebruarySet up a joint companyWith Openai to push the AI services.
The biggest investor in the company in recent years has been Microsoft, which has not immediately responded to a request for comments on Monday.
This story was initially presented on Fortune.com
