OpenAI set to become for-profit company after mass leader exit

The ChatGPT parent company plans to disempower its non-profit board and restructure itself into a for-profit business, according to reporting by Reuters. The move may allow co-founder and CEO Sam Altman to receive equity from the company for the first time and could receive a 7 percent stake in the $150 billion company, according to multiple media reports. The news came just one day after several high-ranking OpenAI leaders announced their plans to leave the company. OpenAI co-founder Elon Musk, who left the company in 2018, described the reported restructuring as illegal. A non-profit can’t just be converted into a for-profit, he wrote early Thursday morning.

Are the departures related to the restructuring? OpenAI co-founder Sam Atman said Chief Technology Officer Mira Murati, Vice President of Research Barret Zoph, and Chief Research Officer Bob McGrew each made the decision to leave independently and amicably. Leadership changes are a natural part of quickly growing companies, Altman said in a company message shared online. The abruptness of this change is unnatural but OpenAI is not a normal company, he added. Altman said CTO Murati’s rationale for leaving made sense and did not comment or intimate reasoning behind research leaders Zoph and McGrew’s decisions to leave.

Musk also offered commentary on the exodus and re-posted a picture of the four leaders alongside three more versions of the same image. In each progressive image, an additional member of the team was removed until only Altman remained. Sam Altman is Little Finger, Musk wrote, referencing a cunning villain in the Game of Thrones franchise. 

Dig deeper: Read Josh Schumacher’s report on Elon Musk renewing a lawsuit against OpenAI.