OpenAI Glossary

AI lab founded in 2015 as a nonprofit; its nonprofit foundation now controls a public-benefit corporation that develops ChatGPT, GPT models, image systems, and Codex.

OpenAI was founded in 2015 as a nonprofit research organisation with a mission to ensure that artificial general intelligence benefits all of humanity. It created a capped-profit subsidiary in 2019. In October 2025 it completed another recapitalisation: the nonprofit became the OpenAI Foundation, and the operating company became OpenAI Group PBC, a public-benefit corporation controlled by the Foundation through special governance rights.

The organisation develops the GPT model family, ChatGPT, image and video systems, and Codex coding products. GitHub Copilot is a separate GitHub product that has used OpenAI models; it should not be described as an OpenAI product.

For this Dictionary, OpenAI is the market comparator: ChatGPT helped define the consumer-facing AI product after its November 2022 launch. The Lab Character entry treats OpenAI as a dated case study in the tension between a founding mission, governance arrangements, and commercial scale. The November 2023 board crisis and the October 2025 recapitalisation are important inflection points, but neither supplies a complete moral verdict on the institution.

See also

• GPT — the model family
• ChatGPT — the consumer product
• Lab Character
• Anthropic — the lab founded by former OpenAI staff

Source

• OpenAI, “Our structure”, accessed 6 September 2026.

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