OpenAI
From Non‑Profit Visionaries to Enterprise Platform
Original Business Case Weekly articleThis is the story of OpenAI’s turbulent path to define the future of intelligence. From a utopian vision of AI to a highest-stakes game of corporate power. Grab a cup of tea, and let’s begin.
The beginning (2015)
Your call
You are an OpenAI founding director in 2015. A nonprofit structure protects a public-benefit mission and limits access to the capital and compute frontier research may require. Do you launch as a nonprofit, create a public-benefit company, or separate research from commercial deployment at the start? Which governance power must remain independent of funders?