Top OpenAI execs jump ship as the nonprofit reportedly plans a for-profit future
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Less open AI… OpenAI is said to be changing up its corporate status to for-profit. A few hours before Reuters reported the switcheroo on Thursday, CTO Mira Murati — who played a key role in launching ChatGPT and Dall-E — said she was leaving the company. (The announcement surprised employees, who apparently responded on Slack with “WTF” emojis.) On the same day, OpenAI’s chief research officer, Bob McGrew, also stepped down, adding to a year of high-level departures. Altman said there was no link between the staff shake-up and restructuring reports.
From AI to B: OpenAI will become a for-profit benefit corporation, sources said, meaning a profit-chasing company that meets certain ESG criteria. Rivals Anthropic and Elon Musk’s xAI operate similarly.
Hey ChatGPT, make a budget… AI supercomputers are super expensive to run, and OpenAI’s only recently started revving up revenue with subscriptions and licensing deals. CGPT reportedly has 200M weekly users, and an unknown # pay $20/month for the pro version it intro’d last year. This month, OpenAI said its corporate CGPT subscription hit 1M paid users. The company’s said to be raking in $3B in annual sales but — *dramatic pause* — is spending $7B. It’s said to have spent $540M last year on developing GPT-4, with Altman calling the cost of running the model “eye-watering.”
Even if OpenAI goes for-profit, Microsoft will get 75% of its earnings until Altman’s startup earns back the Big Tech co’s $13B investment (it was a term in their deal).
The goal matters… OpenAI was founded as a nonprofit in 2015 with a mission to build AI that “benefits all of humanity.” Then it switched to a “capped profit” structure overseen by a nonprofit board. Now it may go fully for-profit. Critics worry that could lead to the irresponsible development of AI. Adding to concerns, OpenAI this year dissolved the team it had dedicated to analyzing AI’s long-term risks.