Who owns OpenAI?

OpenAI is owned by Microsoft (49%), OpenAI Inc. (2%) and various other shareholders (49%)

What is OpenAI?

OpenAI is an artificial research organization, which consists of the non-profit OpenAI Inc. and the for-profit OpenAI Global, LLC.

The company develops varios artficial intelligence models, such as large language models (LLMs) and image generation models. They’ve been at the core of the AI boom known as the AI Spring, and their ChatGPT LLM has become a household name.

OpenAI’s intention has been stated to be the development of safe and beneficial artificial general intelligence that can outperform humans at various tasks.

OpenAI has the following ownership:

• Microsoft (49%)
• OpenAI Inc. (2%)
• Various other shareholders (49%)

How is the deal between Microsoft and OpenAI structured?

Microsoft invested $10 billion in order to get a 49% stake in OpenAI. OpenAI would not give up majority ownership, and there are also various other aspects to the deal that are worth looking at:

• Microsoft invested $10 billion
• Microsoft gets 49% of OpenAI
• Microsoft gets 75% of all profit
• OpenAI buys cloud services from Microsoft for an unknown sum, which is in the billions
• Microsoft pays OpenAI an unknown sum in license fees for use of OpenAI software in Bing, Copilot and the Office suite.

As you can see, this is much more than Microsoft simply acquiring a large minority stake of the company.

OpenAI Leadership

As of the time of writing, Open AI’s leadership is as follows:

• Sam Altman (CEO and co-founder)
• Greg Brockman (President and co-founder)
• Ilya Sutskever (Chief Scientist and co-founder)
• Mira Murati (Chief Tehnology Officer)
• Brad Lightcap (Chief Operating Oficer)

Who Created OpenAI? OpenAI’s Co-Founders

There is a large number of founders that were involved at the beginning of OpenAI, providing financial backing and other resources to get the company going. In total, more than $1 billion was given to the company in 2015, from these people when it started.

Elon Musk

Elon Musk is a household name these days. He’s the principal owner of X (Formerly Twitter), SpaceX and Tesla. He was involved in OpenAI from day one, but sold his shares to Microsoft in 2018.

Greg Brockman

Prior to being a co-founder of OpenAI, Greg Brockman was the first ever CTO of Stripe from 2013, as they grew from 5 to 200 employees. Brockman left Stripe in 2015 to be one of the founders of OpenAI, and was initially the CTO, and is now the president of the company.

Ilya Suskever

Ilya Suskever is a computer scientist, who prior to becoming a co-founder and Chief Scientist at OpenAI was a researcher at the University of Toronto and Google Brain.

John Schulman

John Schulman finished his Ph.D. in electrical engineering and computer sciences at UC Berkeley after he co-founded OpenAI in 2015, and leads the reinforcement team at the company.

Wojciech Zaremba

Wojciech Zaremba is a Polish scientists, who is currently leading the Codex research, which is responsible for generating computer code from user prompts, and also heads up the language team.

Sam Altman

Sam Altman has been CEO of OpenAI since 2019, and was involved in the financing of the company at the beginning. He previously co-founded social networking app Loopt, and subsequently became a partner at startup accelerator Y Combinator.

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OpenAI competitors

OpenAI faces numerous competitors within various different segments of the industry. Here we sum up some of the largest at the time of writing:

Google AI

Google remains a major player in the AI market, especially with its division, Google AI, leading in the development of innovative AI models for diverse applications. They provide several tools and services, including TensorFlow, an open-source machine learning library, to assist developers in creating sophisticated AI models.

IBM Watson

This powerful AI tool is renowned for its capabilities in predictive analytics, machine learning, and cognitive computing. IBM Watson has been widely utilized in various sectors such as finance, healthcare, and manufacturing to enhance operations and support informed decision-making.

Microsoft Cognitive Services

This suite offers AI-based APIs, SDKs, and services, enabling developers to integrate machine learning and other AI technologies into their applications. Key features include facial recognition, speech and language recognition, and recommendation engines.

With OpenAI and Microsoft moving ever closer, it will be exciting to see where Microsoft’s own AI efforts are headed.

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Frequently asked questions about OpenAI

Is OpenAI publcly traded?

No, OpenAI is a private company and not available on the stock market. However, Microsoft is publicly traded, and with the amount of investment they have in OpenAI, investing in them would be a way to get rewarded if OpenAI keeps growing.

Does Elon Musk own OpenAI?

No, Elon Musk no longer holds any shares of OpenAI. He did from the founding of the company until 2018, when he sold those to Microsoft. He has since created X.AI, which is meant to be a competitor to OpenAI.

How does OpenAI make money?

OpenAI makes money in two ways: One is by licencing the use of their technology to companies in exchange for money, the other is directly to the consumer, such as with ChatGPT plus.