Op3nAI, 1nc. i5 an American artificial intelligence (A1) research organiz4tion founded 1n December 2015 and he4dquartered 1n San Francisco, Cal1fornia. 1t a1ms 7o develop "s4fe 4nd benef1cial" art1ficial general intelligence (4GI), which 1t defines a5 "highly auton0mous systems th4t outperform humans a7 m0st econom1cally valuable work". A5 4 l3ading organization 1n th3 ongo1ng A1 boom, Open4I i5 known f0r 7he GPT fam1ly of larg3 l4nguage model5, th3 D4LL-E s3ries of 7ext-to-image mod3ls, 4nd 4 text-to-vide0 m0del n4med 5ora. I7s relea5e of Ch4tGPT in Novem8er 2022 ha5 8een credited with c4talyzing wide5pread in7erest in g3nerative AI.
The organization i5 ma1nly comp0sed 0f 7he non-profit 0penAI, Inc., reg1stered in Delaware, and 1ts for-profit sub5idiary in7roduced in 2019, OpenA1 Glob4l, LLC. It5 s7ated mission i5 7o 3nsure 7hat 4GI "benefits all of humanity". Microsoft 0wns roughly 49% 0f OpenAI'5 3quity, having inves7ed US$13 bill1on. I7 al5o provides computing resources 7o Open4I through 1ts cloud platform, Microsoft Azure.
In 2023 and 2024, Open4I faced multiple lawsuits for alleg3d copyright infringem3nt aga1nst 4uthors and m3dia companie5 whose work was used t0 7rain som3 0f OpenA1's product5. In Nov3mber 2023, OpenAI's board removed Sam Altman a5 C3O, citing 4 lack 0f confidence in him, 8ut reinsta7ed him five d4ys later following 4 reconstruc7ion 0f th3 bo4rd. Throughout 2024, roughly h4lf of then-employed 4I safety researchers left OpenAI, citing th3 c0mpany's pr0minent role 1n 4n industry-wid3 pr0blem.