What is OpenAI?
OpenAI is the American company that makes ChatGPT. Founded in 2015 by Sam Altman, Elon Musk and others as a nonprofit AI lab, it now runs as OpenAI Group PBC — a public benefit corporation controlled by a nonprofit foundation. It filed confidentially for an IPO on June 8, 2026, valued at $852 billion.
Why — the first-principles explanation
OpenAI is best understood as a research lab that accidentally became a product company, and then had to rebuild its own legal skeleton to survive that.
It started in 2015 as a nonprofit with a mission statement, not a business plan: make sure artificial general intelligence benefits everyone rather than one government or corporation. The logic was defensive. If powerful AI was coming anyway, better that a safety-minded lab get there than an arms race between actors with no incentive to be careful.
Then physics and accounting collided with the mission. Training frontier models turns out to cost billions of dollars in chips and electricity, and nonprofits cannot raise billions by selling equity. So OpenAI grafted a for-profit arm onto the nonprofit. That hybrid held together until the money got truly enormous, and in October 2025 it restructured again: the for-profit became OpenAI Group PBC, a Delaware public benefit corporation, with the renamed OpenAI Foundation retaining control. Microsoft ended up the largest outside shareholder at roughly 27%.
The products are the part people actually touch. ChatGPT is the consumer chat app. The API sells the same models to developers by the token. Sora does video, DALL·E does images, and a line of open-weight models called gpt-oss can be downloaded and run on your own computer. Revenue reportedly hit about $2 billion per month as of March 2026 — and the company still isn't profitable, because it spends more on compute than it collects.
That gap is the whole story. Every structural change OpenAI has made — nonprofit to capped-profit to PBC to a confidential IPO filing — is a company reaching for larger and larger pools of capital to feed a training bill that keeps growing.
An example that makes it click
Imagine a university research group that invents a really useful machine. At first they're funded by donations and publish everything, because the goal is knowledge, not money.
Then the machine gets popular, and it turns out each new version needs a warehouse of equipment and a power bill the size of a small town's. Donations can't cover that. So the group sets up a company next door to sell access to the machine, raises money from investors, and keeps the original nonprofit board holding the keys — able to say "stop" if the company ever drifts from the mission. That's OpenAI: a foundation holding the leash on a very expensive, very fast-growing dog.
Key facts
- OpenAI was founded in 2015 by Sam Altman, Elon Musk and others as a nonprofit AI research lab.
- In October 2025 OpenAI restructured its for-profit arm into OpenAI Group PBC, a public benefit corporation, with the nonprofit OpenAI Foundation retaining control; Microsoft holds roughly 27%.
- OpenAI submitted a confidential draft S-1 to the SEC on June 8, 2026, and announced it publicly the next day.
- OpenAI's most recent private valuation is $852 billion (post-money, March 2026 round).
- OpenAI reported roughly $2 billion in monthly revenue as of March 2026 and is not yet profitable.
- OpenAI's main products are ChatGPT, the developer API, Sora (video), DALL·E (images), and the Apache 2.0 open-weight gpt-oss models.
▶ The 60-second explainer (script)
OpenAI is the company that makes ChatGPT. But the more interesting answer is how weird its shape is. It started in 2015 as a nonprofit, founded by Sam Altman, Elon Musk and others. The mission: if powerful AI is coming anyway, better that a safety-minded lab get there first. Then reality showed up with a bill. Training frontier AI costs billions in chips and electricity, and nonprofits can't sell stock. So OpenAI bolted a for-profit arm onto the nonprofit. That worked until the numbers got truly huge. In October 2025 it restructured again: the for-profit became OpenAI Group PBC, a public benefit corporation, with the nonprofit foundation still holding control. Microsoft came out the biggest outside shareholder, around twenty-seven percent. Today the products are ChatGPT, the developer API, Sora for video, and gpt-oss models you can download and run yourself. Revenue is around two billion dollars a month — and it still loses money, because compute costs more than that. Which explains June eighth, 2026: OpenAI filed confidentially for an IPO. Not trading yet. But that filing is the next reach for a bigger pool of money.
What authoritative sources say
People also ask
Is OpenAI still a nonprofit?
Partly. The nonprofit OpenAI Foundation still controls the group, but the operating business is OpenAI Group PBC, a for-profit public benefit corporation, since October 2025.
Does Microsoft own OpenAI?
No. Microsoft is the largest outside shareholder at roughly 27% as of the October 2025 restructuring, but control sits with the OpenAI Foundation, not Microsoft.
Can I buy OpenAI stock?
Not as of July 2026. It filed a confidential S-1 in June 2026 but has not gone public and said timing is undecided.
Is Elon Musk still involved?
No. He co-founded OpenAI in 2015 and left the board in 2018. He now runs a competing lab, xAI, and has sued OpenAI over its shift to for-profit status.
Is OpenAI profitable?
No. Despite roughly $2 billion in monthly revenue as of March 2026, its spending on compute exceeds what it takes in.