OpenAI is getting a corporate makeover.
The ChatGPT maker revealed in a company blog post (via The New York Times) that it plans to undergo some changes at the structural level soon. Specifically, OpenAI will become a Public Benefit Corporation, or PBC, a type of corporation in U.S. corporate law that explicitly exists to generate profits and benefit society in some way.
It still has “ordinary shares of stock,” per OpenAI. Still, this new structure will incentivize the company to “balance shareholder interests, stakeholder interests, and a public benefit interest in its decisionmaking,” in its own words.
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Prior to this, OpenAI had both for-profit and nonprofit arms in its corporate operations. That will still be the case, with the non-profit holding shares in the PBC. However, OpenAI claimed in its blog post that this new structure will give it a greater ability to raise funds than before, though the blog post didn’t really say how.
The for-profit arm will run day-to-day operations for OpenAI, while the non-profit arm will “hire a leadership team and staff to pursue charitable initiatives in sectors such as health care, education, and science.”
It’s not entirely clear how or if this will impact OpenAI’s consumer-facing products or the user experience that goes with them in the short term. However, with ChatGPT experiencing a big service outage the day after Christmas, a big new helping of money and resources will probably be very welcome, if that is indeed how this goes down.
