OpenAI facts for kids
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| Private | |
| Industry | Artificial intelligence |
| Founded | December 8, 2015 |
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| Headquarters | 1455 3rd Street, San Francisco, California, U.S. |
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Key people
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| Products | OpenAI Five
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| Revenue |  US$3.7 billion (2024 est.) |
 US$−5 billion (2024 est.) |
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Number of employees
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2,000+ (2024) |
OpenAI, Inc. is an American company that works on artificial intelligence (AI). It was started in December 2015 and is based in San Francisco, California. OpenAI's main goal is to create "safe and helpful" artificial general intelligence (AGI). AGI means computer systems that can do most jobs better than humans. OpenAI is a leader in the current AI boom. It is famous for its GPT family of large language models, like ChatGPT. It also created DALL-E, which makes images from text, and Sora, which makes videos from text. When ChatGPT was released in November 2022, it made many people interested in generative AI.
OpenAI has a special company setup. It is led by a non-profit part called OpenAI, Inc. This non-profit has several for-profit companies under it. Microsoft has invested a lot of money, about US$13 billion, into OpenAI. Microsoft also helps OpenAI by providing powerful computers through its cloud platform, Microsoft Azure.
In 2023 and 2024, OpenAI faced some lawsuits. These lawsuits were about using books and media from authors and companies to train OpenAI's AI products without permission. In November 2023, the board of OpenAI briefly removed Sam Altman as CEO. But he was brought back five days later after some changes to the board.
What is OpenAI?
How OpenAI Started
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OpenAI was founded in December 2015. The main founders included Sam Altman, Elon Musk, Ilya Sutskever, and Greg Brockman. Sam Altman and Elon Musk were the first co-chairs. Many people and companies promised to give money to OpenAI. The goal was to make AI that would help everyone. OpenAI said it would share its research and ideas with others. At first, OpenAI was run from Greg Brockman's living room. Later, its main office was in the Pioneer Building in San Francisco.
OpenAI's main mission is to make sure that artificial general intelligence (AGI) helps all of humanity. AGI means very smart computer systems that can do most valuable jobs better than humans.
Musk and Altman said they were worried about AI safety. They wanted to make sure AI would not cause problems for humanity. They believed that human-level AI could greatly help society. But they also knew it could cause harm if not built or used correctly. They wanted AI to be something that helps people make their own choices. They also wanted it to be available to as many people as possible.
Early Years and Growth
In its early years, OpenAI hired many top researchers. They paid good salaries, but not as high as big companies like Facebook or Google. Many researchers joined because they believed in OpenAI's mission. They wanted to help build AI safely.
In April 2016, OpenAI released "OpenAI Gym." This was a platform for researchers to test and train AI. In August 2016, Nvidia gave OpenAI a powerful computer called a DGX-1 supercomputer. This helped OpenAI train bigger and more complex AI models faster. In December 2016, OpenAI released "Universe." This was a software platform to train AI across many games and websites.
Training AI models needs a lot of computer power. In 2017, OpenAI spent a lot of money on cloud computing. In 2018, training OpenAI's Dota 2 game bots needed many thousands of computer processors for weeks.
In 2018, Elon Musk left OpenAI's board. He said it was because of a possible conflict with his work at Tesla. Tesla also develops AI for self-driving cars. Sam Altman said Musk wanted to take over OpenAI, but the board said no.
In February 2019, OpenAI announced GPT-2. This AI model was able to create text that sounded very human-like.
Becoming a "Capped" For-Profit Company
In 2019, OpenAI changed its structure. It went from being a non-profit to a "capped" for-profit company. This means it can make a profit, but there's a limit to how much. This change allowed OpenAI to get more investments. It also let them offer company shares to employees. This helps them attract top researchers.
After this change, Microsoft invested $1 billion in OpenAI. Since then, OpenAI's systems have used Microsoft's Azure supercomputing platform. OpenAI Global, LLC then started to offer its technologies for commercial use.
Some people were unsure about this change. They wondered if it fit with OpenAI's goal of making AI available to everyone. However, the non-profit part of OpenAI still controls the for-profit part. The non-profit board members cannot have financial stakes in the for-profit company.
Key Inventions and Partnerships
ChatGPT, DALL-E, and Microsoft
In 2020, OpenAI released GPT-3. This is a language model trained on huge amounts of internet data. GPT-3 can answer questions, translate languages, and write creative text. OpenAI also launched an API (Application Programming Interface) for it. This API became its first commercial product.
In 2021, OpenAI introduced DALL-E. This is an AI model that creates digital images from text descriptions. It uses a version of the GPT-3 technology.
In December 2022, OpenAI launched a free preview of ChatGPT. This is a new AI chatbot based on GPT-3.5. It quickly became very popular. Over a million people signed up in the first five days. By January 2023, ChatGPT had gained over 100 million users in just two months.
In January 2023, Microsoft announced a new US$10 billion investment in OpenAI. This investment was partly to use Microsoft's cloud-computing service, Azure. Microsoft also started adding OpenAI's AI technology into its products. These included Microsoft Bing, Edge, and Microsoft 365. Google also announced its own AI chatbot, Bard, after ChatGPT became popular.
In March 2023, OpenAI released GPT-4. This was an even more advanced AI model. It was available through an API and as a feature in ChatGPT Plus.
In May 2023, Sam Altman and other leaders shared ideas for managing "superintelligence." They thought superintelligence could arrive within 10 years. They suggested creating an international group, like the IAEA, to oversee very powerful AI systems. They also asked for more research into AI safety.
In July 2023, OpenAI started the "superalignment project." This project aims to find ways to make future superintelligences follow human values. They plan to use AI to help with this research.
In August 2023, OpenAI bought a company called Global Illumination. This company uses AI to create digital tools. In October 2023, OpenAI also partnered with an Emirati AI firm, G42.
In November 2023, OpenAI launched GPTs. This allows people to create their own custom versions of ChatGPT for specific uses.
Recent Developments (2024-2025)
In January 2024, OpenAI partnered with Arizona State University. This was its first educational partnership, giving the university full access to ChatGPT Enterprise.
In February 2024, OpenAI showed off its new text-to-video model, Sora (text-to-video model). This model can create videos from text descriptions.
In May 2024, some important leadership changes happened. Chief Scientist Ilya Sutskever left, and Jakub Pachocki took his place. Other key people also left due to concerns about safety and trust. That same month, OpenAI partnered with Reddit to use its content in OpenAI products. They also made deals with news companies like News Corp and Axios.
In June 2024, OpenAI teamed up with Apple Inc. to add ChatGPT features to Apple Intelligence and iPhone. They also added former NSA head Paul Nakasone to their board.
In July 2024, OpenAI was working on a project called 'Strawberry' to improve AI reasoning. This project was later released in September as the o1 model.
In August 2024, co-founder John Schulman left OpenAI. President Greg Brockman also took a break until November.
In September 2024, OpenAI's global affairs chief supported the UK's AI regulation plans. Also, CTO Mira Murati announced she was leaving.
In October 2024, OpenAI raised $6.6 billion in funding. This valued the company at $157 billion. Major investors included Microsoft and Nvidia. Greg Brockman also returned to OpenAI.
In December 2024, OpenAI launched the Sora model for ChatGPT Plus and Pro users. They also released the advanced OpenAI o1 reasoning model. ChatGPT Pro, a $200/month service, was introduced. It offers unlimited o1 access and better voice features.
In January 2025, a model called "DeepSeek-R1" was released by DeepSeek. It performed as well as OpenAI's o1 model but cost much less to train. This news caused a big drop in Nvidia's market value.
Also in January 2025, OpenAI, Oracle, SoftBank, and MGX announced "The Stargate Project." This is a joint effort to build a huge AI infrastructure system with the US government. It is estimated to cost $500 billion over four years.
On January 23, OpenAI released Operator. This is an AI agent and web tool that helps users access websites to complete tasks. It was first available to Pro users in the United States.
In February 2025, OpenAI made a deep research agent available. This agent achieved good accuracy on a difficult test called Humanity's Last Exam. It was available to users paying $200 a month. OpenAI also changed its brand with a new look. They started working with Broadcom to design a special AI chip. This chip aims to reduce OpenAI's need for expensive Nvidia GPUs.
On February 13, Sam Altman said that GPT-4.5, also known as "Orion," would be the last model without full chain-of-thought reasoning. He also hinted that GPT-5, expected soon, might combine the O-Series and GPT-Series models.
In March 2025, OpenAI signed an $11.9 billion deal with CoreWeave. This deal gives OpenAI access to many NVIDIA GPUs. OpenAI also suggested that the US government create federal laws for AI. This would help simplify many different state laws.
In April 2025, OpenAI raised $40 billion. This was the largest private technology deal ever, valuing the company at $300 billion. SoftBank led this funding round. OpenAI also sued Elon Musk, saying he tried to slow their progress and take their ideas.
In May 2025, OpenAI agreed to buy "Windsurf," an AI-assisted coding tool, for about $3 billion. The Financial Times also reported that OpenAI and Microsoft were changing their partnership terms. This would allow OpenAI to launch a future IPO (Initial Public Offering). On May 21, OpenAI announced it was buying io, an AI hardware startup, for $6.5 billion. This is OpenAI's largest purchase so far.
In June 2025, OpenAI started renting Google Cloud's Tensor Processing Units (TPUs). This was a move to use non-Nvidia AI chips. It helps OpenAI rely less on Microsoft Azure and Nvidia GPUs.
In July 2025, the United States Department of Defense announced that OpenAI received a $200 million contract for AI in the military. Other AI companies also received similar contracts.
How OpenAI is Managed
Key People at OpenAI
- CEO and co-founder: Sam Altman. He used to be the president of Y Combinator.
- President and co-founder: Greg Brockman. He was a top employee at Stripe.
- Chief Scientist Officer: Jakub Pachocki. He was a Director of Research at OpenAI.
- Chief Operating Officer: Brad Lightcap.
- Chief Financial Officer: Sarah Friar. She was the CEO of Nextdoor.
- Chief Product Officer: Kevin Weil. He used to work at Twitter, Inc. and Meta Platforms.
- Chief Research Officer: Mark Chen.
- Chief Compliance Officer: Scott Schools.
Board of Directors
The board of directors for the OpenAI non-profit includes:
- Bret Taylor (chairman). He was the chairman of Twitter's board.
- Sam Altman
- Lawrence Summers. He was a former U.S. Secretary of the Treasury.
- Adam D'Angelo. He is the co-founder and CEO of Quora.
- Sue Desmond-Hellmann. She was the CEO of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.
- Nicole Seligman. She is an attorney and former executive at Sony Corporation.
- Fidji Simo. She is the CEO of Instacart.
- Paul Nakasone. He was the Director of the National Security Agency.
- Zico Kolter. He is a computer scientist.
- Adebayo Ogunlesi. He is a managing partner at Global Infrastructure Partners.
Main Investors
Some of the main individual investors include:
- Reid Hoffman, co-founder of LinkedIn
- Peter Thiel, co-founder of PayPal
- Jessica Livingston, a founding partner of Y Combinator
- Elon Musk, co-founder
OpenAI's Approach
Making AI Safe and Accessible
In the early years, Elon Musk asked how they could make sure the future was good with AI. He believed that giving many people access to AI would be the best defense. If everyone has AI powers, then no single person or small group can have too much power.
This idea of giving everyone access to AI to reduce harm is a bit unusual. Some experts, like philosopher Nick Bostrom, disagreed. He said, "If you have a button that could do bad things to the world, you don't want to give it to everyone."
However, OpenAI also decided to hold back GPT-2 at first. They wanted to be careful because it could generate very human-like text. Some people criticized this, saying that sharing the research was important for safety. They believed it would help others create ways to counter any misuse.
More recently, in 2022, OpenAI shared its plan for the "alignment problem." This means making sure AI systems follow human values. They believe that making AGI align with human values will be very hard. They stated that "unaligned AGI could pose substantial risks to humanity." They plan to use human feedback to train AI and use AI to help with alignment research.
In March 2025, OpenAI suggested that the US government create federal laws for AI. This would help simplify the many different state laws about AI.
Stance on China
In February 2025, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman said the company wants to work with China. This is despite some rules from the U.S. government. This interest comes because Chinese AI companies like DeepSeek are growing fast. DeepSeek has released powerful open AI models.
The rise of DeepSeek has made Chinese tech companies use more open-source strategies. This increases competition with OpenAI. Altman said he wasn't sure if the U.S. government would approve AI cooperation with China. But he stressed how important it is for tech leaders in both countries to talk. OpenAI has also improved its security to protect against industrial spying.
Products and Applications
Some important products from OpenAI include:
- ChatGPT
- ChatGPT Deep Research
- DALL-E
- GPT-2
- GPT-3
- GPT-4
- OpenAI Codex
- OpenAI Five
- OpenAI o1
- OpenAI o3
- SearchGPT
- Sora (text-to-video model)
- Whisper (speech recognition system)
API
See also
In Spanish: OpenAI para niños
- Anthropic
- Center for AI Safety
- Future of Life Institute
- Google DeepMind
- Machine Intelligence Research Institute
- Model Context Protocol
- xAI (company)
