NEW YORK, Dec. 27 (Xinhua) -- OpenAI, founded a decade ago as a research organization, is considering a change to the artificial intelligence (AI) company's structure that would create a more conventional money-making corporation alongside a nonprofit arm, reported Bloomberg News on Friday.
The board is evaluating a plan that would turn OpenAI's business into a public benefit corporation, an entity free to pursue income but with the goal of bettering society, while retaining a nonprofit side, according to a blog post. As part of the new structure, the nonprofit arm would hold shares in the moneymaking entity.
OpenAI's existing for-profit arm is currently controlled by its nonprofit organization. Under the proposal, the business would become a Delaware Public Benefit Corp., or PBC. The nonprofit entity would continue to exist as one of the "best-resourced nonprofits in history" and would then hold a "significant interest" in the for-profit arm, in the form of shares determined by independent financial advisers at a fair valuation, OpenAI's board said.
When OpenAI was founded in 2015, it adopted the idealistic mission of building artificial intelligence that would be safe and beneficial to humanity. In 2019, OpenAI created the for-profit subsidiary to help fund the high costs of AI model development. By 2022, when OpenAI debuted its ChatGPT chatbot, the company became a superpower in the AI industry, and put its operations under greater scrutiny. ■
