OpenAI boss set for $10bn payday from move to for-profit model

The chief executive of OpenAI is set to enter the ranks of Big Tech billionaires under proposals to shift the company to a “for-profit” model.
Sam Altman, 39, could be handed a 7 per cent stake in the American start-up behind ChatGPT, which was launched as a non-profit organisation in 2015. Under the new structure, analysts calculate that the company’s value would soar to $150 billion, making Altman’s prospective stake worth more than $10 billion on paper.
Suggestions that the Microsoft-backed company could upend its founding principles, under which it was designed as a non-profit researcher, coincided with the exit of three more key executives.
Mira Murati, 35, the chief technology officer who was briefly parachuted in as chief executive in November after Altman was ousted and then reinstated in a fraught weekend, said she was “stepping away because I want to create the time and space to do my own exploration”. Bob McGrew, the company’s chief research officer, and Barret Zoph, vice-president of research, also said they were leaving.
OpenAI has struggled to balance its commercial pursuits with its original structure, established when it was founded by entrepreneurs including Elon Musk in 2015 with a mission to safely build futuristic AI to help humanity.
According to reports, under the latest corporate reshuffle being considered by the board, the San Francisco-based company would shift its designation to become a “public benefit corporation”. This would combine the role of helping society with that of making a profit.
Speaking at a technology conference in Italy, Altman confirmed that OpenAI had been considering an overhaul to get to the “next stage”, but insisted that this was not connected to the latest resignations. “OpenAI will be stronger for it as we are for all of our transitions,” Altman told the Italian Tech Week event in Turin. “I saw some stuff that this was, like, related to a restructure. That’s totally not true. Most of the stuff I saw was also just totally wrong. But we have been thinking about [a restructuring]. Our board has, for almost a year, independently, as we think about what it takes to get to our next stage.”
Responding to the reports, OpenAI said that it would retain a non-profit division. “We remain focused on building AI that benefits everyone and, as we’ve previously shared, we’re working with our board to ensure that we’re best positioned to succeed in our mission. The non-profit is core to our mission and will continue to exist.”
Bret Taylor, chairman of OpenAI, said: “The board has had discussions about whether it would be beneficial to the company and our mission to have Sam be compensated with equity, but no specific figures have been discussed nor have any decisions been made.”
The latest exits come after those of other senior OpenAI executives, including Ilya Sutskever and John Schulman, two co-founders who left the company this year. Several safety executives, including Jan Leike, have quit the business amid concern about the commitment to safety in its models.
In a parting shot when he resigned in May, Leike said: “Building smarter-than-human machines is an inherently dangerous endeavour, but over the past years, safety culture and processes have taken a back seat to shiny products.”
OpenAI has said it has boosted its safety work, internal governance and federal government collaboration to keep up with the models’ new capabilities. “As part of developing these new models, we have come up with a new safety training approach that harnesses their reasoning capabilities to make them adhere to safety and alignment guidelines,” it said in a statement this month.