OpenAI CEO Says Company Could Become a For-Profit Corporation Like xAI, Anthropic (reuters.com) 23
Wednesday The Information reported that OpenAI had doubled its annualized revenue — a measure of the previous month's revenue multiplied by 12 — in the last six months. It's now $3.4 billion (which is up from around $1 billion last summer, notes Engadget).
And now an anonymous reader shares a new report from The Information: OpenAI CEO Sam Altman recently told some shareholders that the artificial intelligence developer is considering changing its governance structure to a for-profit business that OpenAI's nonprofit board doesn't control, according to a person who heard the comments. One scenario Altman said the board is considering is a for-profit benefit corporation, which rivals such as Anthropic and xAI are using, this person said. Such a change could open the door to an eventual initial public offering of OpenAI, which currently sports a private valuation of $86 billion, and may give Altman an opportunity to take a stake in the fast-growing company, a move some investors have been pushing.
More from Reuters: The restructuring discussions are fluid and Altman and his fellow directors could ultimately decide to take a different approach, The Information added. In response to Reuters' queries about the report, OpenAI said: "We remain focused on building AI that benefits everyone. The nonprofit is core to our mission and will continue to exist."
Is that a classic non-denial denial?
Note that the nonprofit's "continuing to exist" does not in any way preclude OpenAI from becoming a for-profit business — with a spin-off nonprofit, continuing to exist...
And now an anonymous reader shares a new report from The Information: OpenAI CEO Sam Altman recently told some shareholders that the artificial intelligence developer is considering changing its governance structure to a for-profit business that OpenAI's nonprofit board doesn't control, according to a person who heard the comments. One scenario Altman said the board is considering is a for-profit benefit corporation, which rivals such as Anthropic and xAI are using, this person said. Such a change could open the door to an eventual initial public offering of OpenAI, which currently sports a private valuation of $86 billion, and may give Altman an opportunity to take a stake in the fast-growing company, a move some investors have been pushing.
More from Reuters: The restructuring discussions are fluid and Altman and his fellow directors could ultimately decide to take a different approach, The Information added. In response to Reuters' queries about the report, OpenAI said: "We remain focused on building AI that benefits everyone. The nonprofit is core to our mission and will continue to exist."
Is that a classic non-denial denial?
Note that the nonprofit's "continuing to exist" does not in any way preclude OpenAI from becoming a for-profit business — with a spin-off nonprofit, continuing to exist...
what a shocker (Score:5, Funny)
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Alternate headline: OpenAI CEO self-dealing? (Score:3)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
"Self-dealing is the conduct of a trustee, attorney, corporate officer, or other fiduciary that consists of taking advantage of their position in a transaction and acting in their own interests rather than in the interests of the beneficiaries of the trust, corporate shareholders, or their clients. According to the political scientist Andrew Stark, "[i]n self-dealing, an officeholder's official role allows her to affect one or more of her own personal interests." It is a for
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Anything worth doing is worth doing for money.
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Wait, did you just say all the hype about putting AI into your laptop and phone is just vaporware, a figment, an Eliza, a Racter, Dark Matter?
It's Dark Energy isn't it. It is. It's fudding dark energy
Except it will harvest everything you say or type and store it forever, and you will pay money for that.
This helps explain (Score:1, Troll)
Why that pedo guy Must frantically dropped his lawsuit against OpenAI [cnn.com]. Not only does he want his own AI to be worth something, which is why he recently shifted a mountain of Nvidia chips from Tesla to the flailing Shitter [businessinsider.com], but OpenAI showed emails when Must acknowledged the company needed to pursue a profit-making operation to fund operations.
The whiner has also threatened to ban all Apple products from his companies [cnn.com] if Apple goes ahead with using OpenAI in its products.
Looks like he's pissed he gave up on
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He was forced to divest himself of OpenAI due to conflicts of interest with Tesla, genius
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OPEN ai (Score:1)
Who wants to be a billionaire? (Score:3, Insightful)
Almost everyone obviously, but few manoeuvre with as much focus as Altman. Cryptoscams, abusing non-profit status for PR only, whatever it takes.
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Yep. Some people are simply scum, nothing to add. They already have far more than most people and still need more.
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Only insane people want to continue making money past a few million. Number go up!
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Almost everyone obviously
Abstractly sure. But the fanciest houses are tens of millions, and if you want multiple residences you probably want something a bit smaller for the secondary ones just because it's less of a headache.
And again, you can get a pretty comfortable private jets for a few million.
A personal staff is probably a million or so a year.
Realistically, what else do you want?
If you have a hundred million I think the marginal benefits from additional cash are pretty modest. Beyond that point there's only three things to
Greed (Score:2, Troll)
Greed fucks up everything, sooner or later. OpenAI is no exception.
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Now they got the funding nookie, they don't need to pretend anymore. In a few years when the customers complain enough about the slop and the upfront funding has run out, they will be quietly acquired by Microsoft and nobod
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Yep. Google demonstrated how to do it.
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> The internet does not make people stupid. It makes the stupid ones more obvious.
Nice +1
Similar to Florida Man. He gets a bad rap because police records are more public in Florida. There are Florida men in Nevada, TRUST ME
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Thanks.
All your online activity belong us says NSA.AI (Score:2)
“Retired U.S. Army General Paul M. Nakasone brings cybersecurity experience to OpenAI’s Board of Directors and Safety and Security Committee.”
how would that legally work? (Score:3)
Why wouldn't every startup start as a nonprofit with nonprofit benefits? the nonprofit side would just decide to sell it at nominal sum to create billionaires?
Another record? (Score:3)
60 days to 1M users for ChatGPT -- they beat the previous record of almost a year, it think it was tiktok?
Now they can capture another record:
Fastest company to ignore their "benefit humanity" (or "do no evil") PR line.
Google took at least, what, a decade? These guys will do it much faster.
As Gordon Gekko said, "Greed, for lack of a better term, is good."
Startup strategy (Score:2)
So you have an idea for a startup.
First, form a nonprofit org. Avoid paying taxes.
Then, when things get going good, switch to for-profit.
How is this even a thing?