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OpenAI

Headquarters at 1515 Third Street in San Francisco
Type	Private
Industry	Generative AI
Founded	December 8, 2015 (10 years ago) (2015-12-08)
Founders	Elon Musk Sam Altman Ilya Sutskever Greg Brockman Trevor Blackwell (et al.)
Headquarters	1455 and 1515 Third Street, San Francisco, California, U.S.
Key people	Bret Taylor (chairman) Sam Altman (CEO) Greg Brockman (president) Sarah Friar (CFO)
Products	ChatGPT GPT-5.6 OpenAI Codex GPT Image Deep Research ChatGPT Atlas
Revenue	US$13.1 billion (2025)
Net income	US$−9 billion (2025 est.)
Owners	Employees and investors (47%) Microsoft (27%) OpenAI Foundation (26%)
Number of employees	4,500

OpenAI is an American technology organization based in San Francisco, California. It creates advanced computer programs called generative AI, which can write stories, solve math problems, and make pictures.

OpenAI is most famous for creating ChatGPT, an artificial intelligence chatbot launched in November 2022. Millions of people around the world use ChatGPT every day to learn, write, and explore new ideas. The organization also creates tools like GPT Image to generate pictures and Codex to help write computer software.

A group of technology leaders and scientists founded OpenAI in December 2015. Their original goal was to build safe artificial general intelligence (AGI)—computers that can think as smartly as humans across many topics—so that it helps everyone. Over the years, OpenAI grew from a small research lab into one of the most valuable tech companies in the world.

What Is OpenAI and How Did It Start?

The Early Vision and Founders

The Pioneer Building in San Francisco, where OpenAI had its early offices.

In December 2015, several technology leaders came together to start OpenAI. Among the founders were Sam Altman, Elon Musk, Ilya Sutskever, and Greg Brockman. They wanted to make sure that powerful computer intelligence would be built safely and shared fairly.

When OpenAI began, it was a nonprofit organization. This meant the team was not focused on making money. Instead, they wanted to share their computer research openly with scientists everywhere. Several wealthy tech leaders promised over $1 billion to fund this mission, though only a fraction arrived in the first few years.

The founders believed that super-smart computers could either help the world solve huge problems or cause harm if used carelessly. OpenAI set out to be a responsible guide in building advanced software.

Building the First Research Team

OpenAI started very small. In fact, some of the very first planning sessions took place in Greg Brockman's living room! Later in 2016, the organization moved into the Pioneer Building in San Francisco.

To build great computer models, OpenAI needed brilliant researchers. Brockman talked with Yoshua Bengio, a famous computer scientist known as one of the "godfathers" of deep learning. With Bengio's advice, OpenAI hired nine top scientists. Many of these researchers took smaller salaries than they could have earned at huge companies like Google or Facebook because they believed deeply in OpenAI's safety mission.

During its first year, OpenAI spent $7 million on its team of 52 employees. These scientists quickly began creating tools for teaching computers through practice and games.

Early AI Projects and Experiments

In April 2016, OpenAI released a free software tool called "OpenAI Gym". This platform let scientists teach computer programs through trial and error, a learning style known as reinforcement learning.

In August 2016, the chip company Nvidia gave OpenAI its very first DGX-1 supercomputer. This machine was packed with powerful chips that cut training time for AI models from six days down to just two hours.

Later that year, OpenAI released "Universe", a software system designed to test how well an AI program could play video games, browse websites, and solve digital puzzles. These experiments helped the team understand how computers learn new tasks.

How OpenAI Is Structured and Funded

Moving from a Nonprofit to a Business

A diagram showing how OpenAI organizes its business and nonprofit branches.

Training advanced AI models requires thousands of specialized computer chips and massive amounts of electricity. By 2019, OpenAI realized it needed billions of dollars to keep up with the computing power required for modern AI.

To solve this, OpenAI created a "capped-profit" company. Under this model, outside investors could earn a limited profit on their investment, but anything above that limit would belong to the nonprofit branch. This structure allowed OpenAI to bring in large investments while promising to keep safety at the center of its mission.

Some researchers worried that becoming a business might cause OpenAI to care more about profits than safety. However, OpenAI explained that the money was necessary to build the world's most capable AI systems.

Becoming a Public Benefit Corporation

In late 2024 and 2025, OpenAI changed its business setup again. It reorganized into a public benefit corporation (PBC) called OpenAI Group PBC. A public benefit corporation is a company that is legally allowed to balance making money with doing good things for society.

Under this setup:

The OpenAI Foundation (the nonprofit branch) keeps a 26% share.
Microsoft owns about 27%.
Employees and other investors own the remaining 47%.

This change allowed OpenAI to raise more funding to build massive data centers and hire top engineers. In mid-2026, OpenAI officially took steps toward an initial public offering (IPO) to allow members of the public to invest in the company.

Major Partnerships and Mega Investments

OpenAI works closely with several huge technology companies:

Microsoft: Beginning with a $1 billion investment in 2019, Microsoft became OpenAI's main partner. Microsoft uses OpenAI's software inside Windows and its Copilot helper.
Amazon: In early 2026, Amazon joined as a major investor to help bring AI tools to its digital assistant, Alexa.
Nvidia, AMD, and SoftBank: These firms provide funds and high-tech chips to train massive computer models.

By early 2026, investors valued OpenAI at more than $800 billion, making it one of the most valuable tech companies ever built.

Popular Products Created by OpenAI

The ChatGPT Revolution

ChatGPT became one of the fastest-growing software applications in history.

In November 2022, OpenAI released a free web program called ChatGPT. It took the world by storm. Within two months, more than 100 million people were using ChatGPT to write essays, explain science concepts, practice foreign languages, and code software.

ChatGPT works by predicting what words should come next based on patterns it learned from reading vast libraries of text across the internet. Over time, OpenAI released upgraded versions:

GPT-4: Launched in March 2023, offering smarter answers, better test-taking skills, and image recognition.
OpenAI o1 and Reasoning Models: Released in late 2024 to "think through" complex math and logic puzzles step-by-step before answering.
ChatGPT Atlas: A special web browser introduced in late 2025 that uses AI to help users browse the internet faster.
GPT-5.6: An even more advanced model capable of handling complicated research questions.

Deep Research and Coding Agents

OpenAI also designs tools for specialized tasks:

OpenAI Codex: An AI tool that reads human instructions and translates them into computer programming languages like Python and JavaScript.
Deep Research: An AI agent introduced in early 2025 that searches the web, reads dozens of articles, and writes complete research summaries on difficult subjects.
Operator: A tool that can perform tasks directly on the web, such as filling out forms or gathering information for users.

Image and Audio Creators

Beyond text, OpenAI developed models that understand images and sound:

DALL-E and GPT Image: Systems that turn written sentences into digital artwork, diagrams, and photos.
Whisper: A speech-recognition system that listens to audio and writes down accurate transcripts in many languages.

Important Milestones in OpenAI History

Timeline of Major Events

2015: OpenAI is founded in San Francisco as a nonprofit research lab.
2016: Releases OpenAI Gym and receives its first supercomputer from Nvidia.
2019: Sets up a capped-profit business and receives a $1 billion investment from Microsoft.
2020: Introduces GPT-3, showing that large language models can write surprisingly human-like text.
2022: Launches ChatGPT, starting a massive global interest in generative AI.
2023: Releases GPT-4 and custom GPTs for different topics.
2024: Unveils new reasoning models and expands safety testing.
2025: Reorganizes as a public benefit corporation and launches the ChatGPT Atlas browser.
2026: Files paperwork for an initial public offering (IPO) and expands custom AI chip projects.

Five Days of Leadership Drama (2023)

Sam Altman has served as the CEO of OpenAI since 2019.

In November 2023, OpenAI experienced five dramatic days that made headlines worldwide. The nonprofit board of directors suddenly fired CEO Sam Altman, stating that they had lost confidence in his leadership.

The decision surprised investors, governments, and OpenAI's own employees. Almost the entire staff—more than 700 people—signed a letter threatening to quit and move to Microsoft if the board did not bring Altman back.

After several days of intense discussions, the board agreed to step down. Altman returned as CEO, and a new group of directors, led by former Salesforce executive Bret Taylor, was chosen to oversee the company.

AI Safety and Future Challenges

The Challenge of AI Alignment

As computers get smarter, scientists want to make sure they always follow human values and behave safely. This field of research is called AI alignment.

OpenAI has faced important questions about how fast it should release new tools:

Openness vs. Security: When OpenAI started, it released all of its research for free. Today, it keeps the inner workings of its largest models private so that bad actors cannot misuse them.
Safety Teams: OpenAI employs researchers to test models for bugs, harmful responses, and security flaws before they launch.
Autonomous Actions: In 2026, researchers began paying close attention to "AI agents"—programs that can take actions online by themselves—to ensure they never make harmful mistakes.

Protecting People's Privacy and Work

Creating large AI models requires huge amounts of data. OpenAI has faced lawsuits from book authors, news organizations, and artists who argue that their copyrighted creative works were used without permission to train computer models.

OpenAI also works on privacy rules to protect user conversations. In 2025, the company quickly removed an experimental web-sharing feature after learning that users were accidentally posting personal details online.

Environmental and Computer Power Needs

Running massive AI systems requires an enormous amount of electric power. OpenAI works with cloud companies like Amazon Web Services, Google Cloud Platform, and Oracle Corporation to run giant computer centers.

To lower costs and save energy, OpenAI began designing its own custom computer chips with companies like Broadcom and AMD. These specialized chips help models think faster while using less electricity.