OpenAI abandons plans to become a for-profit company

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman announced Monday that the company behind ChatGPT was abandoning its plan to become a for-profit company, which has been contested by Elon Musk and others. "We made the decision to remain a non-profit company after listening to community leaders and engaging with the attorneys general's offices in California and Delaware," Altman said in an email to staff posted simultaneously on the company's website.

OpenAI currently operates through a hybrid structure, as a nonprofit organization with a for-profit arm. Altman, however, initially believed that the move toward for-profit status was crucial to achieving its goals, which included developing so-called "general" AI (as intelligent as humans).

This project was notably harshly criticized by billionaire Elon Musk. The American billionaire and CEO of SpaceX was part of the 11-person team that founded OpenAI in 2015, with non-profit status, with the stated goal of working for the good of humanity through open-source artificial intelligence (AI) programs.

But disagreements between Mr. Musk and management, particularly CEO Sam Altman, mounted, and he eventually left the company in 2018. The relationship between the two men has deteriorated significantly since OpenAI became a Silicon Valley star thanks to the success of ChatGPT, its generative AI model launched in late 2022. According to Elon Musk, OpenAI's leadership abused his trust and betrayed the organization's founding principles. In 2023, he founded xAI, which is developing its own competing model.