# OpenAI
> OpenAI, a San Francisco-based US artificial intelligence company, operates ChatGPT and the GPT model family that ignited the global generative AI race, and is pursuing a public listing at a reported US$1 trillion valuation.

**Meta:** type: reference · date: 2026-07-03 · heads:  · 4 takes · 4 lenses · 2 regions

## What it is

OpenAI is a US artificial intelligence research company headquartered in San Francisco, California. It was founded in December 2015 as a nonprofit and restructured as a Delaware public benefit corporation (PBC) on October 28, 2025, with the OpenAI Foundation retaining a 26% equity stake and Microsoft holding 27%. The company's stated mission is to ensure that artificial general intelligence "benefits all of humanity." Its primary consumer product is ChatGPT, the AI assistant that triggered the global generative AI adoption wave. The API platform serves enterprises and developers building on the GPT model family. As of mid-2026, OpenAI is the dominant Western AI foundation-model company by revenue, user scale, and fundraising.

## History

Sam Altman, Ilya Sutskever, Greg Brockman, Elon Musk, and others co-founded OpenAI in December 2015, with US$1 billion pledged, though only US$133 million was actually received by 2021. The nonprofit structure was designed to prevent concentrated corporate control of AGI. In 2019, OpenAI created a "capped-profit" subsidiary, limiting investor returns to 100 times their investment, to access compute-scale capital a nonprofit could not attract. Microsoft invested US$1 billion that year. GPT-3 in 2020 and DALL-E in 2021 built the research profile. ChatGPT's November 2022 launch drove the company to 100 million users in two months, the fastest consumer software adoption ever recorded. Microsoft committed an additional US$10 billion in January 2023. In November 2023, the board abruptly removed Altman; he was reinstated after five days when employees threatened mass walkout and Microsoft offered to hire the departing team. That governance crisis, combined with mounting capital needs, drove the 2025 restructuring: on October 28, 2025, OpenAI finalized the PBC conversion, replacing the nonprofit's control-without-equity arrangement with a formal 26% stake in the for-profit arm.

## Current state

OpenAI generated US$20 billion in annual revenue in 2025 and was annualizing at approximately US$25 billion by early 2026, up from US$3.7 billion in 2024. ChatGPT reached 900 million weekly active users in February 2026 and crossed 1 billion monthly active users by June 2026. The company has more than 50 million paying ChatGPT Plus subscribers and over 4,500 employees. Its March 2026 funding round closed at US$122 billion committed and an US$852 billion post-money valuation, co-led by SoftBank, with Nvidia and Amazon as strategic anchors. Enterprise revenue now exceeds 40% of total. Cash burn is projected at US$27 billion in 2026, with cash-flow-positive not expected before 2030. In June 2026, OpenAI unveiled [Jalapeño](/ko/n/openai-jalapeno-broadcom-chip-2026), its first custom inference processor designed with Broadcom, targeting lower cost-per-query and reduced GPU dependence. The company filed a confidential S-1 with the US Securities and Exchange Commission in June 2026, setting up a public listing most likely in 2027 according to [reporting from late June 2026](/ko/n/openai-ipo-delay-2027).

## Relationships

Microsoft, with a 27% stake worth approximately US$135 billion at the March 2026 valuation, is both the largest equity holder outside the Foundation and the primary infrastructure partner, through long-term Azure compute agreements totaling US$250 billion. SoftBank's total committed capital is expected to reach approximately US$65 billion by October 2026, making it the largest single financial backer. Apple integrated ChatGPT into Apple Intelligence starting June 2024. Elon Musk, a co-founder who departed the board in 2018 after a governance dispute, filed US court litigation challenging the PBC conversion on mission-drift grounds; that case was ongoing as of mid-2026. Chinese frontier labs, including [Zhipu with GLM-5.2](/ko/n/zhipu-glm52-open-weight-jun2026), and US inference specialists tracked by [Groq](/ko/n/groq-650m-inference-pivot-2026) and [Cerebras](/ko/n/cerebras-openai-750mw-2026), are competing at the lower cost and open-weight end of the market, narrowing OpenAI's technical margin over time.

## What to watch

- Whether the [planned 2027 IPO at a US$1 trillion target valuation](/ko/n/openai-ipo-2027-tender-2026) holds, or whether cash-burn and market conditions force a lower price or further delay.
- The deployment timeline and independent benchmarks for the Jalapeño inference chip, and how much of OpenAI's inference workload shifts off Nvidia merchant GPUs.
- Resolution of the Musk litigation and whether US courts or regulators impose structural conditions on OpenAI's PBC governance.
- Whether the revenue trajectory (annualizing at US$25 billion in early 2026, targeting US$200 billion by 2030) closes the gap against projected US$27 billion annual cash burn.

## Regional takes (batched by bias / lens)

### encyclopedic overview
- **Wikipedia** (global, en) — Comprehensive reference covering OpenAI's founding in December 2015, capped-profit restructuring in 2019, PBC conversion on October 28 2025, funding history through 2026, governance crisis of November 2023, and key products including ChatGPT and the GPT series.
  Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OpenAI

### corporate structure analysis
- **Built In** (united-states, en) — Analysis of the October 2025 PBC conversion: the OpenAI Foundation holds 26% equity (worth approximately US$130 billion) in OpenAI Group PBC, Microsoft holds 27%, and the foundation retains a warrant for additional shares if the valuation increases tenfold within 15 years.
  Source: https://builtin.com/articles/openai-new-corporate-structure

### user and market statistics
- **Backlinko** (united-states, en) — Aggregated usage data updated April 2026: ChatGPT reached 900 million weekly active users in February 2026; OpenAI monthly revenue stands at US$2 billion; 50 million paying ChatGPT Plus subscribers; 4,500 plus employees worldwide.
  Source: https://backlinko.com/chatgpt-stats

### private market financials
- **Sacra** (united-states, en) — Private company financial intelligence: OpenAI reached US$25 billion annualized revenue by early 2026, has raised US$178 billion total, projects US$27 billion cash burn in 2026, and is not expected to reach cash-flow-positive before 2030.
  Source: https://sacra.com/c/openai/

## Across the graph
- Related: [[openai-ipo-delay-2027]], [[openai-ipo-2027-tender-2026]], [[openai-jalapeno-broadcom-chip-2026]], [[cerebras-openai-750mw-2026]], [[groq-650m-inference-pivot-2026]], [[zhipu-glm52-open-weight-jun2026]]
- Entities: Openai, Corporate:microsoft, Softbank, Corporate:nvidia, Sam Altman

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Canonical: https://rbtfl.xyz/ko/n/openai-dossier