At Associated Press (AP), Matt O’Brien and Thalia Beaty report

After months of pursuing a plan to convert itself into a for-profit business, OpenAI is reversing course and said Monday its nonprofit will continue to control the company that makes ChatGPT and other artificial intelligence products.

“We made the decision for the nonprofit to stay in control after hearing from civic leaders and having discussions with the offices of the Attorneys General of California and Delaware,” said CEO Sam Altman in a letter to employees.

“OpenAI reverses course and says its nonprofit will continue to control its business,” May 5, 2025

Instead, OpenAI, developer of ChatGPT, will pursue becoming a public benefit corporation:

Public benefit corporations were first created in Delaware in 2013 and other states have adopted the same or similar laws that require the companies to pursue not just profit but a social good. Public benefit corporations, which include Amalgamated Bank and the online education platform Coursera, need to define that social good, which can vary broadly, when they incorporate.

Altman said that converting from a limited liability company to a public benefit corporation “just sets us up to be a more understandable structure to do the things that a company of our scope has to do.” “Control its business,”

At Gizmodo, tech journalist AJ Dellinger offers an interpretation:

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman has been working on wriggling out from under the control of the company’s nonprofit board ever since they (briefly) fired him. But, after several efforts to prevent the move, including a lawsuit filed by OpenAI co-founder Elon Musk, the company announced on Monday that it will keep its structure for now.

The desire to ditch its nonprofit structure stems primarily from one thing: money. Being organized as a nonprofit means that OpenAI isn’t driven by providing a return on investment for shareholders (at least in theory), but instead focused on its stated mission of ensuring “artificial general intelligence benefits all of humanity.” Being a nonprofit has also led to some complications for OpenAI’s fundraising efforts. The company secured $40 billion in funding, primarily from SoftBank, earlier this year, but that money was contingent on OpenAI completing its planned restructuring to a for-profit entity. Now that funding is in limbo.

“Elon Musk Gets His Wish: OpenAI Will Remain a Nonprofit,” May 5, 2025

Anthropic and Elon Musk’s company xAI are both public benefit corporations. However, AP says, “OpenAI would remain unique in that its public benefit corporation would still be controlled by the nonprofit’s board.”

Sam Altman, OpenAI’s CEO, is a billionaire ($1.5B) so non-profit status should not be assumed to be equivalent to voluntary poverty.