Former OpenAI employees urge regulators to halt company’s for-profit shift

A legally binding mission

OpenAI was created in 2015 as a nonprofit with a single, far-reaching goal: to ensure that AGI benefits all of humanity. Its 2018 Charter outlines principles such as broadly distributed benefits, long-term safety, cooperative development, and technical leadership. These values were designed to steer OpenAI’s work even as it began raising external investment.

In 2019, OpenAI adopted a capped-profit model, establishing a limited partnership structure under full control of the nonprofit board. This arrangement, the letter notes, was meant to ensure that AGI development would always remain aligned with the public interest.

According to the open letter, the company is now seeking to restructure in a way that would eliminate this charitable governance by allowing private shareholders to assume control of AGI development and deployment.