Organization Profile
OpenAI is an American artificial intelligence research and deployment company headquartered at 1455 3rd Street, San Francisco, California. Originally founded as a 501(c)(3) nonprofit in December 2015, it restructured into a “capped-profit” subsidiary in 2019 and completed conversion to a Public Benefit Corporation in October 2025. The nonprofit entity was renamed the OpenAI Foundation, retaining approximately 26% financial stake in OpenAI Group. [1][2][3]
OpenAI develops large-scale generative AI models and consumer-facing products, including ChatGPT, GPT-series models, DALL-E, Whisper, Sora, and developer APIs. ChatGPT has over 800 million weekly active users as of early 2026. OpenAI’s revenue reached approximately $20 billion in 2025 and is projected at $29 billion for 2026. The company is not yet profitable, with approximately $8 billion in cash burn in 2025. [4][5]
Sam Altman, CEO since 2019, has stated he holds zero equity in OpenAI — a claim made under oath before the US Senate in May 2023 and repeated in subsequent contexts. At the company’s $852 billion valuation (March 2026), this makes OpenAI the most valuable company in history led by someone who claims to own none of it. [1][5][6]
Basic Information
| Field | Value | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Legal name | OpenAI Global, LLC (PBC) | Since October 2025 conversion [2] |
| Parent | OpenAI Foundation (501(c)(3)) | Retains ~26% stake + board appointment + safety veto [2] |
| Previous structure | OpenAI, Inc. (nonprofit) → OpenAI LP (capped-profit, 2019) → PBC (2025) | Three structural transformations in 10 years [1][2][3] |
| Founded | December 8, 2015 | As nonprofit [1] |
| Tax-exempt status | Received 2016 | [3] |
| HQ | 1455 3rd Street (Pioneer Building), San Francisco, CA | Mission District [1] |
| CEO | Sam Altman | Claims zero equity [6] |
| CEO of Applications | Fidji Simo | Former Instacart CEO (Moritz on Instacart board) [1] |
| President | Greg Brockman | On sabbatical Aug 2024, returned Nov 2024 [1] |
| CFO | Sarah Friar | [1] |
| Employees | ~8,800 | As of April 2026 [4] |
| Valuation | $852 billion | March 2026 SoftBank round [5] |
| Revenue (2025) | ~$20 billion | 10x growth from 2023 ($2B) [5] |
| Monthly revenue | ~$2 billion | As of March 2026 [5] |
| Gross margin | 33% | Down from 40% in 2024 — inference cost pressure [5] |
| Weekly active users | 900 million+ | ChatGPT [5] |
| Paying subscribers | 50 million+ | Across all tiers [5] |
| Investors | Microsoft (27%), employees/investors (47%), Foundation (26%) | [1] |
Founding
OpenAI was co-founded in December 2015 by Sam Altman, Greg Brockman, Elon Musk, Ilya Sutskever, and others including Trevor Blackwell, Vicki Cheung, Andrej Karpathy, Durk Kingma, John Schulman, Pamela Vagata, and Wojciech Zaremba. Founding donors and backers included Jessica Livingston, Peter Thiel, Reid Hoffman, Amazon Web Services, Infosys, and YC Research. The group pledged over $1 billion, though per TechCrunch investigation, YC Research “did not contribute anything at all.” [1][7][8]
OpenAI was initially listed as a YC Research project. Sam Altman’s September 2016 blog post explicitly classified OpenAI alongside Basic Income, HARC, and Cities as one of four “groups” under YC Research. OpenAI later became operationally independent, though the exact date of formal separation from YC Research is not publicly documented. [8][9]
The founding dinner took place at the Rosewood Hotel in August 2015. Greg Brockman was introduced to Sam Altman by Patrick Collison (Stripe CEO). [1][10]
Corporate Structure Evolution
| Date | Structure | Key Change |
|---|---|---|
| Dec 2015 | 501(c)(3) nonprofit | “Ensure that artificial general intelligence benefits all of humanity” [1] |
| 2016 | Tax-exempt status received | [3] |
| Mar 2019 | OpenAI LP created — “capped-profit” for-profit subsidiary | Profit cap set at 100x investor returns. Nonprofit parent retains control. Altman becomes CEO. [1][2][3] |
| Jul 2019 | Microsoft invests $1 billion | Mostly Azure credits [1][11] |
| ~2021 | Profit cap reduced | From 100x to “single digits” — without public announcement [3] |
| Jan 2023 | Microsoft invests ~$10 billion more | [1] |
| Nov 2022 | ChatGPT launched | Consumer product that changed public AI awareness globally [1] |
| Oct 2025 | PBC conversion completed | Nonprofit becomes “OpenAI Foundation” with ~26% stake. Foundation no longer controls the for-profit. [2] |
| Mar 2026 | $122 billion funding round | SoftBank-led. $852B valuation. Largest single-round funding in history. [5] |
Public Citizen argued OpenAI should pay at least $30 billion to convert — based on a 20-30% control premium at the then-$150 billion valuation. The California Attorney General launched an investigation. Meta wrote to the AG calling the precedent of “seismic implications for Silicon Valley” — allowing startups to use nonprofit status during unprofitable development and convert once profitable. [3][12]
Bloomberg Tax analysis: a charitable nonprofit can never truly “convert” to a for-profit under law, because once an entity has tax-exempt status, its assets must “forever exist” for charitable purposes. [3]
Board of Directors — Current (Post-PBC Conversion)
| Name | Role | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Bret Taylor | Chairman | Appointed after Nov 2023 reinstatement [1] |
| Adam D’Angelo | Director | Quora CEO. Only board member who voted to fire Altman in Nov 2023 who remained on the board. Originally selected by Altman in 2018 as Musk’s replacement. [1][13] |
| Larry Summers | Director | Former US Treasury Secretary. Appointed after Nov 2023 reinstatement. [1] |
| Fidji Simo | CEO of Applications / Director | Former Instacart CEO [1] |
| Sue Desmond-Hellmann | Director | Former Gates Foundation CEO [1] |
| Nicole Seligman | Director | [1] |
Board of Directors — Removed November 2023
| Name | Why They Were Removed |
|---|---|
| Helen Toner | Co-authored paper on AI safety perceived as critical of OpenAI [1] |
| Tasha McCauley | Voted to fire Altman [1] |
| Ilya Sutskever | Initially voted to fire Altman, then reportedly wavered [1] |
Key Personnel
| Name | Title | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Sam Altman | CEO | Claims zero equity. $76,001 salary per 2023 IRS filing. $2.8B personal investment portfolio in 400+ companies. [1][5][6] |
| Greg Brockman | President | Co-founder. Private diary entered as evidence in Musk trial: “This is the only chance we have to get out from Elon… Financially, what will take me to $1B?” (Sep 2017). Sabbatical Aug-Nov 2024. [1][10][14] |
| Fidji Simo | CEO of Applications | Former Instacart CEO. Championed TBPN acquisition then took medical leave the next day. [1] |
| Brad Lightcap | Special Projects (formerly COO) | Moved from COO to “special projects” reporting directly to Altman on April 3, 2026 — 27 days before Musk trial. Executes Altman-adjacent deals. [15] |
| Chris Lehane | Chief Strategy Officer | Former Clinton “Master of Disaster.” Ran Altman’s crisis response during Nov 2023 firing (then at Airbnb). Now formally at OpenAI. [1] |
| Sarah Friar | CFO | Former Square/Block CFO [1] |
Products
| Product | Launched | Description |
|---|---|---|
| GPT-1 | Jun 2018 | First generative pre-trained transformer [1] |
| GPT-2 | Feb 2019 | Initially withheld citing misuse concerns [1] |
| GPT-3 | Jun 2020 | Same month as Project Covalence launch [1] |
| DALL-E | Jan 2021 | Image generation [1] |
| ChatGPT | Nov 2022 | Consumer chatbot — 100M users in 2 months [1] |
| GPT-4 | Mar 2023 | Multimodal [1] |
| Sora | 2024 | Video generation [1] |
| GPT-5.5 / o3 | 2025 | Reasoning models [1] |
| ChatGPT Pro | Dec 2024 | $200/month tier — 5.8% of consumer revenue [5] |
Funding History
| Round | Date | Amount | Lead / Key Investors |
|---|---|---|---|
| Founding | Dec 2015 | $1B+ pledged | Altman, Musk, Thiel, Hoffman, Livingston, AWS, Infosys, YC Research |
| Microsoft | Jul 2019 | $1B | Microsoft (mostly Azure credits) |
| Microsoft | Jan 2023 | ~$10B | Microsoft |
| Series A/B | Various | Various | Thrive Capital, Khosla Ventures, others |
| Series E | Oct 2024 | $6.6B | Thrive Capital (led), Microsoft, NVIDIA, SoftBank |
| Series F | Mar 2025 | $40B | SoftBank |
| Series G | Mar 2026 | $122B | SoftBank-led. Largest single round in history. |
| Total raised | ~$180B | [4][5] |
Revenue History
| Year | Revenue | Key Milestone |
|---|---|---|
| 2022 | $28M | Pre-ChatGPT [5] |
| 2023 | $2B | ChatGPT launched Nov 2022 [5] |
| 2024 | $6B | Enterprise growing [5] |
| 2025 | $20B | 10x growth from 2023. $8B cash burn. [5] |
| 2026 (projected) | $29B | IPO preparation underway [5] |
The November 2023 Firing and Reinstatement
On November 17, 2023, the OpenAI board voted to fire Sam Altman as CEO, citing a loss of confidence in his candor. Ilya Sutskever had provided the board with two self-deleting documents: an “Altman memo” listing concerns about Altman’s pattern of lying and manipulation, and a “Brockman memo” regarding Brockman’s alleged bullying. [1][13][14]
Altman was reinstated on November 22, 2023 — five days later — before an independent investigation could be completed. Board members Helen Toner, Tasha McCauley, and Ilya Sutskever were removed. A new board was installed: Bret Taylor (chair), Larry Summers, and Adam D’Angelo (the only firing-vote member who remained). [1]
WilmerHale was engaged for an “independent investigation” of the integrity allegations as a condition of the board transition. Per reporting, it produced no written report — only oral briefings — and was described by six people involved as appearing “designed to limit transparency” and “a hunt for clear criminality” to acquit rather than inquire. [14]
Musk v. Altman
Elon Musk filed suit against Sam Altman and OpenAI in February 2024, alleging breach of the original nonprofit mission and self-dealing. The case went to jury trial beginning April 27, 2026 in Oakland (Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers). [14][16]
Key evidence entered at trial included Brockman’s private diary and internal emails. A trial exhibit identified nine companies where Altman held personal stakes that had business dealings with OpenAI, with a combined portfolio value exceeding $2 billion. Formation Bio (TrialSpark) appeared on this list with a $19 million stake. [6][16]
On May 18, 2026, the jury found in OpenAI’s favor, concluding that Musk’s claims were time-barred. The verdict removes a significant legal overhang ahead of OpenAI’s planned IPO. Musk has indicated he will appeal. [16][17]
Political Activity and Donations
| Donor | Recipient | Amount | Date |
|---|---|---|---|
| Sam Altman | Trump inaugural fund | $1,000,000 | Dec 2024 |
| Greg Brockman | MAGA Inc. | $12,500,000 | Same day as a16z |
| Sam Altman + a16z | Leading the Future PAC | Co-founded | 2024 |
Sam Altman’s 2016 blog post compared Trump to Hitler, invoked “Germany in the 1930s,” and called him a “demagogic hate-monger.” He later donated $1 million to Trump’s inaugural fund, Brockman donated $25 million to MAGA Inc., and OpenAI signed military contracts and announced the $500 billion Stargate infrastructure project at the White House. [18][19]
Altman’s Personal Investment Conflicts
The Musk v. Altman trial exhibit identified companies where Altman holds personal stakes that conducted business with OpenAI. When asked about recusal for these deals, OpenAI has consistently stated that “COO Brad Lightcap led it” without confirming or denying that Altman recused. [6][15][20]
Known overlap companies include:
| Company | Altman Stake | OpenAI Relationship |
|---|---|---|
| 8.7% (~$1.3B) | Data licensing deal for AI training [20][21] | |
| Formation Bio (TrialSpark) | $19M | Sanofi/OpenAI/Formation Bio AI collaboration [6][22] |
| Stripe | $633M | Payments infrastructure for ChatGPT [6] |
| Helion Energy | $375M personal | Power purchase agreement for data centers [6] |
| Cerebras | Undisclosed | Chip partnership discussions [6] |
| Retro Biosciences | $180M personal | Longevity research — potential AI/bio intersection [6] |
On April 3, 2026, Lightcap was moved from COO to “special projects” focused on “complex deals and investments across the company,” reporting directly to Altman. The recusal firewall moved closer to Altman, not further away. [15]
Key Acquisitions
| Acquisition | Date | Price | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| TBPN | Apr 2, 2026 | “Low hundreds of millions” | Tech podcast show. Host John Coogan has 13-year pre-existing relationship with Altman (Soylent investment 2013). Placed in Strategy org under Chris Lehane. Fidji Simo championed acquisition, then took medical leave the following day. [23] |
| Rockset | Jun 2024 | ~$100M | Database company [1] |
| Multi | 2024 | Undisclosed | Screen-sharing startup [1] |
The OpenAI Startup Fund Anomaly
Sam Altman personally owned the $325 million OpenAI Startup Fund — a venture fund making investments in AI startups using OpenAI’s brand and relationships. Despite telling the Senate in May 2023 “I have no equity in OpenAI,” ownership of this fund was not disclosed in that framing. The fund was transferred to Ian Hathaway in April 2024 after the ownership structure drew scrutiny. [6][14]
Related Entities in the Altman Nonprofit Network
| Entity | Altman Role | Chris Clark Role | Connection |
|---|---|---|---|
| OpenAI | CEO | Head of Strategy (2016–2024) | For-profit [1] |
| OpenResearch | Director, largest creditor ($14M+ loan) | President / COO | Nonprofit — $1M grant to TrialSpark [24] |
| UBI Charitable | Connected via Clark | President / Treasurer | Nonprofit — received $10M from OpenAI + $15M anonymous DAF [7][24] |
Chris Clark simultaneously served at all three entities. A single individual linking three Altman-connected organizations across nonprofit and for-profit lines. [7][24]
IPO Path
OpenAI is actively preparing for a 2026-2027 IPO. Cynthia Gaylor (former DocuSign CFO) was hired as first head of investor relations. The May 2026 Musk verdict removed the primary legal overhang. Internal targets include filing in H2 2026 with potential valuation up to $1 trillion. [5]
The OpenAI Foundation
When OpenAI converted to a PBC in October 2025, the original nonprofit entity was renamed the OpenAI Foundation. Per reporting, the Foundation retains approximately 26% equity (~$130B stake at $500B valuation), board appointment power, and a veto on new model releases via a Safety and Security Committee. The Foundation committed $25B to healthcare and disease research. The profit cap — originally 100x (2019), quietly reduced to “single digits” by 2021 — was removed entirely under the PBC structure. [2][3]
Both the California AG and Delaware AG reached safety agreements with OpenAI as conditions of the conversion. [2]
The Foundation will have its own profile page on this site. Its governance, funding, and relationship to the for-profit entity raise separate analytical questions about whether a 26% non-controlling stake with advisory powers constitutes meaningful nonprofit oversight of a $852 billion corporation.
Stargate and Military Contracts
Stargate ($500B announcement, January 2025): Announced at the White House with President Trump as a joint venture between OpenAI, Oracle, and SoftBank for AI data center infrastructure. Altman stood beside Trump and said “We wouldn’t be able to do this without you, Mr. President.” The joint venture stalled within weeks due to a three-way control fight. No staff hired, no data centers built as a unified entity. SoftBank’s $30 billion commitment was contingent on the for-profit conversion (completed October 2025). SoftBank scrambled to raise capital — selling its entire Nvidia stake ($5.83B) and T-Mobile shares. [25]
Pentagon Contract (February-March 2026): OpenAI signed an “all lawful purposes” military contract with the Department of Defense. Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei’s leaked internal memo described OpenAI’s safety claims as “mendacious,” “safety theater,” and “straight up lies.” Former Uber executive Emil Michael: “I called Sam, and he was willing to jump.” OpenAI’s robotics chief resigned. ChatGPT uninstalls reportedly jumped 295% following the announcement. [26]
Warner Fundraiser (March 2025): Altman hosted a fundraiser for Sen. Mark Warner (D-VA), demonstrating bipartisan donor positioning alongside the Trump relationship. [27]
Key Departures
| Name | Role | Departed | Why It Matters |
|---|---|---|---|
| Elon Musk | Co-founder, board | Feb 2018 | Cited Tesla AI conflict. Now suing for $130B+. [1][14] |
| Dario Amodei | VP of Research | 2020 | Founded Anthropic — direct competitor. Left over safety concerns and the for-profit direction. Confronted Altman about Microsoft “merge and assist” clause; Altman denied clause existed; Amodei read it aloud. [14] |
| Daniela Amodei | VP of Operations | 2020 | Co-founded Anthropic with Dario. [1] |
| Ilya Sutskever | Co-founder, Chief Scientist | 2024 | Compiled the self-deleting memos that led to Altman’s firing. Founded SSI (Safe Superintelligence). Wedding officiant for Brockman — then adversary. [1][13] |
| Jan Leike | Head of Alignment | 2024 | Altman promised 20% of compute for alignment work. Actual allocation: 1-2%, on “the oldest cluster with the worst chips.” Murati told Leike to stop pressing — commitment “had never been realistic.” [14] |
| Mira Murati | CTO | 2024 | Altman told Murati the general counsel had approved GPT-4 safety review; GC replied “I don’t know where Sam got that impression.” [14] |
Expanded Partnership and Deal Network
| Partner | Deal | Date | Altman Conflict? |
|---|---|---|---|
| Microsoft | $1B (2019), $10B+ (2023), Azure cloud | Ongoing | Nadella personal alliance [1] |
| Sanofi + Formation Bio | Muse AI platform — drug development | May 2024 | Altman $19M stake in Formation Bio [6][22] |
| Data licensing for AI training | May 2024 | Altman 8.7% stake in Reddit [20][21] | |
| Apple | Apple Intelligence integration | Jun 2024 | Possibly Lightcap’s one independent deal — OpenAI now contesting Apple [15] |
| Stripe | Agentic Commerce Protocol — payments for ChatGPT | Sep 2025 | Altman $633M in Stripe [6] |
| Moderna | ChatGPT Enterprise deployment | 2024 | No direct Altman stake found — possibly genuine institutional deal [15] |
| Nvidia | $100B “letter of intent” for 10GW deployment | Sep 2025 | Deal broke down — Nvidia CFO: “no assurance any investment will be completed.” WSJ reported negotiations broke down Jan 2026. [25] |
| US Dept of Defense | “All lawful purposes” military contract | Feb-Mar 2026 | Followed $26M in Trump donations [26] |
The Brockman Diary (Court Exhibit)
Greg Brockman’s private diary, unsealed as Exhibit A in Musk v. Altman, documents that OpenAI’s founders privately concluded they wanted a for-profit structure by November 2017 — two years before the 2019 for-profit announcement, and while the organization continued collecting donations as a nonprofit. [28]
Key entries:
- September 2017: “This is the only chance we have to get out from Elon… Financially, what will take me to $1B?” [28]
- November 2017: “cannot say that we are committed to the non-profit. don’t wanna say that we’re committed. if three months later we’re doing b-corp then it was a lie.” [28]
- November 2017: “our conclusion is we truly want the b-corp.” [28]
- November 2017: “it’d be wrong to steal the non-profit from [Musk]. to convert to a b-corp without him. that’d be pretty morally bankrupt.” [28]
Judge Gonzalez Rogers cited the diary in her January 15, 2026 ruling denying summary judgment: “ample evidence in the record” and “Brockman’s electronic notes could be read to suggest that Brockman intended to deceive.” [29]
Microsoft CTO Kevin Scott’s internal note, also in the court record: “I can’t imagine they funded an open effort to concentrate ML talent so that they could then go build a closed, for-profit thing on its back.” Microsoft invested billions anyway. [30]
Early 2019: Altman personally approached Reid Hoffman and Vinod Khosla. Both wrote checks on the explicit condition of creating a for-profit entity. The checks they wrote in 2019 funded a structural change that internal documents show was desired since November 2017. [31]
Microsoft / Nadella Dependency
Microsoft’s relationship with OpenAI creates a structural dependency that explains Nadella’s intervention during the November 2023 firing. Key data points: [34]
- Microsoft holds 27% equity in OpenAI with NO formal board seat — observer only
- OpenAI committed to $250B+ in Microsoft Azure cloud purchases
- OpenAI represents approximately 45% of Microsoft’s future sales backlog (per Jefferies analyst)
- Microsoft shares lost $357 billion in a single day partly from OpenAI dependency fears
- Nadella learned of Altman’s firing “one minute before the public” and was “livid and blindsided”
- Nadella hired Altman to Microsoft within 48 hours (before reinstatement ultimately occurred)
- AGI clause paradox: if OpenAI achieves AGI, its technology licenses to Microsoft terminate — the closer OpenAI gets to its mission, the more likely it loses its biggest partner
Mustafa Suleyman (CEO of Microsoft AI) is building Microsoft’s in-house frontier models as a hedge against OpenAI dependency. His division exists because Microsoft cannot afford single-source dependency on a company whose CEO’s own board fired him for lack of candor. [34]
The Anthropic Contrast: Military Ethics
The sequence of the Pentagon deal is analytically significant: [32]
- Anthropic (founded by Altman’s former VP of Research who left over ethical concerns) negotiated a $200 million Pentagon contract
- Anthropic requested two red lines: no mass domestic surveillance of Americans, no fully autonomous weapons without human oversight
- Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth gave Anthropic a deadline to remove the restrictions
- Anthropic refused
- Hegseth designated Anthropic a “supply chain risk to national security” — a label historically reserved for foreign adversaries, never before applied to an American company
- That same night, OpenAI announced it had signed a deal with the DoD for “all lawful purposes” — essentially the deal Anthropic refused
- Altman later admitted it “looked opportunistic and sloppy” and that OpenAI “shouldn’t have rushed”
At an employee all-hands meeting, Altman told staff: “So maybe you think the Iran strike was good and the Venezuela invasion was bad. You don’t get to weigh in on that.” OpenAI explicitly surrendered operational control over how the military uses its AI. [32][35]
ChatGPT uninstalls jumped 295% after the Pentagon deal announcement. Anthropic climbed to #2 in the App Store. [32]
Safety Commitment Erosion Timeline
| Promise | What Was Delivered |
|---|---|
| “Nonprofit dedicated to benefiting all humanity” (2015) | For-profit PBC with 0% nonprofit control (2025) |
| 100x profit cap (2019) | Quietly reduced to “single digits” then removed entirely |
| “20% of compute for alignment” (2023 — Leike) | Actual: 1-2%, on “the oldest cluster with the worst chips.” Murati: “had never been realistic” |
| Safety review for GPT-4 (Murati) | Altman said GC approved it; GC: “I don’t know where Sam got that impression” |
| $1B AI safety prize (told to Berkeley student) | “Seemed to waver” and “stopped talking about it.” Pivoted to in-house superalignment team (later disbanded) |
| Superalignment team | Disbanded after Leike and Sutskever departed |
| “Open” in OpenAI | Models progressively closed; GPT-4 training data undisclosed |
| Independent investigation of Nov 2023 firing (WilmerHale) | No written report. Oral briefings only. “Designed to limit transparency.” |
| Congressional testimony: “I have no equity in OpenAI” (May 2023) | Personally owned $325M OpenAI Startup Fund. Transferred to Hathaway April 2024 — after testimony. |
The COVID / OpenAI Connection
GPT-3 was released in June 2020 — the same month Project Covalence launched. On Sam Altman’s COVID deal flow spreadsheet (created February 2, 2020), MILA explicitly requested “Collaborators in Model-based RL from OpenAI” alongside “BSL4 lab collaborators to evaluate on live cultures.” A research organization was seeking OpenAI AI tools AND access to the highest-biosafety-level laboratories for live pathogen work — on Sam Altman’s personal COVID funding spreadsheet. [33]
OpenAI was classified as a YC Research project at this time. The CEO of OpenAI (Altman) created a COVID deal funnel that included requests for his own company’s AI tools combined with BSL4 laboratory access for dangerous pathogen research. The $1M OpenResearch grant to TrialSpark for Project Covalence flowed from the same individual’s nonprofit in the same year. [33]
— [Archive] Brockman diary entries (court exhibit, Musk v. Altman): “cannot say that we are committed to the non-profit” (Nov 2017); openai.com/index/the-truth-elon-left-out/ 29. [Archive] Judge Gonzalez Rogers ruling, Jan 15, 2026: “ample evidence in the record,” “Brockman’s electronic notes could be read to suggest that Brockman intended to deceive” 30. [Archive] Microsoft CTO Kevin Scott internal note (court exhibit): “I can’t imagine they funded an open effort to concentrate ML talent so that they could then go build a closed, for-profit thing on its back” 31. [Archive] AiCoin / Silicon Valley 101: Hoffman and Khosla funded the for-profit pivot on explicit condition of creating for-profit division 32. [Archive] Anthropic: Pentagon contract refused over autonomous weapons/mass surveillance red lines. Designated “supply chain risk” by Hegseth. Amodei staff memo: “mendacious,” “straight up lies” 33. [Archive] Sam Altman COVID spreadsheet: MILA entry requesting “Collaborators from OpenAI” + “BSL4 lab collaborators.” blog.samaltman.com/funding-for-covid-19-projects 34. [Archive] Jefferies analyst Brent Thill: OpenAI = 45% of Microsoft’s sales backlog. Microsoft shares lost $357B in single day partly from dependency fears 35. [Archive] Altman all-hands meeting quote: “So maybe you think the Iran strike was good and the Venezuela invasion was bad. You don’t get to weigh in on that”
- [Archive] Wikipedia: OpenAI: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OpenAI
- [Archive] OpenAI: PBC conversion announcement, October 2025
- [Archive] Bloomberg Tax analysis: nonprofit-to-for-profit conversion legal framework
- [Archive] Tracxn: OpenAI company profile 2026: https://tracxn.com/d/companies/openai/
- [Archive] Sacra: OpenAI revenue, valuation & funding: https://sacra.com/c/openai/
- [Archive] Reuters: “OpenAI chief Altman has over $2 billion stake in companies that dealt with OpenAI,” May 13, 2026
- [Archive] TechCrunch: “The nonprofits accelerating Sam Altman’s AI vision,” Feb 21, 2023: https://techcrunch.com/2023/02/21/the-non-profits-accelerating-sam-altmans-ai-vision/
- [Archive] YC Blog: “YC Research,” Oct 7, 2015: https://www.ycombinator.com/blog/tag/yc-research
- [Archive] YC Blog: “YC Changes,” Sep 13, 2016: https://www.ycombinator.com/blog/yc-changes
- [Archive] Greg Brockman profile — Stellar Development Foundation, Stripe CTO background, Patrick Collison introduction
- [Archive] Microsoft $1B investment announcement, July 2019
- [Archive] Public Citizen letters to California AG Rob Bonta re: OpenAI conversion premium
- [Archive] Shivon Zilis email March 25, 2018: “They have Adam D’Angelo as the potential fifth to take your place” — Altman selected D’Angelo as Musk’s board replacement
- [Archive] The New Yorker: Farrow/Marantz OpenAI investigation, April 2026
- [Archive] TechCrunch: “OpenAI executive shuffle includes new role for COO Brad Lightcap,” Apr 3, 2026: https://techcrunch.com/2026/04/03/openai-executive-shuffle-new-roles-coo-brad-lightcap-fidji-simo-kate-rouch/
- [Archive] Reuters: “OpenAI defeats Elon Musk’s lawsuit, removes obstacle to IPO,” May 18, 2026
- [Archive] Business Insider: “Sam Altman’s court appearance shines a light on his tech investments,” May 2026
- [Archive] AP News: “Sam Altman planned $1M donation to Trump inaugural fund,” Dec 13, 2024
- [Archive] blog.samaltman.com: “Trump” (2016 Hitler comparison)
- [Archive] TechCrunch: “Formation Bio raises $372M to boost drug development with AI,” Jun 26, 2024 — Lightcap/recusal language
- [Archive] OpenAI: “OpenAI and Reddit Partnership,” May 16, 2024
- [Archive] Sanofi: “Sanofi, Formation Bio and OpenAI announce first-in-class AI collaboration,” May 21, 2024
- [Archive] Multiple sources: TBPN acquisition — Coogan/Soylent relationship, Lehane placement, Simo medical leave
- [Archive] ProPublica Nonprofit Explorer: Open Research Lab Inc. (EIN 81-0861414) and UBI Charitable
- [Archive] Multiple sources: Stargate announcement January 2025; SoftBank conditional commitment; Nvidia deal breakdown January 2026
- [Archive] Multiple sources: Pentagon “all lawful purposes” contract; Amodei leaked memo (“mendacious,” “safety theater”); ChatGPT uninstalls 295%
- [Archive] Altman fundraiser for Sen. Mark Warner (D-VA), March 2025
DISCLAIMER
This analysis does not constitute evidence of illegal action. The opinions expressed here are the professional opinions and analytical conclusions of the author, a published corporate ethics researcher and analyst specializing in business leadership ethics, governance structures, and nonprofit compliance. Readers are encouraged to examine the primary sources cited above and draw their own conclusions.
A conflict does not become less important because it was routed through a quieter entity. It becomes more important to map.
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