OpenAI Abandons Nonprofit Status and Assembles a 300-Person Sales Team | [Jingwei’s Low-Key Sharing] on Christmas 2024: Navigating the Future of AI with Uncertainty and Hope.

OpenAI’s Abandonment of Non-Profit Status Sparks Controversy

When OpenAI was founded, it was a non-profit organization aiming to ensure that artificial general intelligence (AGI) benefits all of humanity. Managed by a board of directors and without a single owner. However, as the scale of financing expands, contradictions with investors have become prominent. Especially in the non-profit structure, when AGI is achieved, shareholders seeking commercial profits such as Microsoft will be excluded from the most advanced models.

AI large models are costly, and OpenAI is running in the red. The revenue target for 2024 is 4 billion U.S. dollars, but the net loss in the first half of the year is as high as 3 billion U.S. dollars. The total loss from 2023 to 2028 is expected to be huge. Its existing profit model has not high profits and mainly relies on personal subscriptions and API access. In the next few years, the computing cost of model training may increase significantly.

Although it completed a 6.6 billion U.S. dollar financing in October, it still needs to accelerate commercialization. In the proposed reorganization, OpenAI will retain an independent non-profit entity, hold shares in the new for-profit company and may set up a trust, focusing on the mission of benefiting humanity. Sam Altman explained that it was because he didn’t know that huge amounts of capital were needed that it became a product company. This transformation has been strongly criticized by Musk, Zuckerberg and others. Musk filed a lawsuit, and Zuckerberg urged the California attorney general to prevent OpenAI’s transformation.

While OpenAI is experiencing a brain drain of technical talents, new commercial talents are emerging. For example, Kevin Weil, who has successful product experience at Twitter and Instagram, now leads OpenAI’s product team and is considering introducing advertisements. OpenAI’s sales team has reached 300 people, accounting for one-fifth of the total employees. OpenAI’s newly appointed chief revenue officer has set a goal of achieving an annual revenue of 100 billion U.S. dollars by 2029. OpenAI is deeply mired in copyright litigation and faces a dilemma of brain drain, but still needs to find new sources of income, such as recruiting advertising sales talents from tech giants. OpenAI’s transformation has sparked a debate about whether it should become a non-profit top AI laboratory or a profitable AI giant, and the debate will not stop. OpenAI currently needs to fight for survival and leadership.