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OpenAI - Overview and History
referenceCredibility Rating
3/5
Good(3)Good quality. Reputable source with community review or editorial standards, but less rigorous than peer-reviewed venues.
Rating inherited from publication venue: Wikipedia
Useful background reference for understanding OpenAI's organizational history, governance structure, and role in AI development; relevant context for discussions of AI lab accountability and safety practices.
Metadata
Importance: 45/100wiki pagereference
Summary
Wikipedia's reference article on OpenAI, covering its founding, mission, organizational structure, and key milestones. It provides background on OpenAI's transition from a nonprofit to a capped-profit model and its major research outputs including GPT series and ChatGPT. The article also touches on governance controversies and OpenAI's role in the broader AI landscape.
Key Points
- •Founded in 2015 by Sam Altman, Elon Musk, and others with a stated mission to ensure artificial general intelligence benefits all of humanity.
- •Transitioned from a nonprofit to a 'capped-profit' hybrid structure in 2019 to attract investment while maintaining mission alignment.
- •Developed influential AI systems including GPT-3, GPT-4, DALL-E, Codex, and ChatGPT, shaping modern AI capabilities.
- •Experienced significant governance crisis in November 2023 when the board briefly ousted CEO Sam Altman before reinstating him.
- •Operates as one of the most prominent AI labs globally, with major partnerships including a large investment and compute deal with Microsoft.
Cited by 2 pages
| Page | Type | Quality |
|---|---|---|
| Deep Learning Revolution Era | Historical | 44.0 |
| OpenAI Foundation | Organization | 87.0 |
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From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
American artificial intelligence company
Not to be confused with [OpenAL](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OpenAL "OpenAL"), [OpenAPI](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OpenAPI_(disambiguation) "OpenAPI (disambiguation)"), or [Open-source artificial intelligence](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open-source_artificial_intelligence "Open-source artificial intelligence").
| [](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:OpenAI_logo_2025_(wordmark).svg) |
| Company type | [Private](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Privately_held_company "Privately held company") |
| Industry | [Artificial intelligence](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Artificial_intelligence "Artificial intelligence") |
| Founded | December 8, 2015 (10 years ago) (2015-12-08)[\[1\]](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OpenAI#cite_note-OpenCorporates-1) |
| Founders | - [Sam Altman](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sam_Altman "Sam Altman")<br>- [Elon Musk](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elon_Musk "Elon Musk")<br>- [Ilya Sutskever](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ilya_Sutskever "Ilya Sutskever")<br>- [Greg Brockman](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greg_Brockman "Greg Brockman")<br>- [Trevor Blackwell](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trevor_Blackwell "Trevor Blackwell")<br>- Vicki Cheung<br>- [Andrej Karpathy](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andrej_Karpathy "Andrej Karpathy")<br>- Durk Kingma<br>- [John Schulman](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Schulman "John Schulman")<br>- Pamela Vagata<br>- [Wojciech Zaremba](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wojciech_Zaremba "Wojciech Zaremba") |
| Headquarters | 1455 [3rd Street](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Third_Street_(San_Francisco) "Third Street (San Francisco)"), [San Francisco](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/San_Francisco "San Francisco"), [California](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California "California"), U.S.[\[2\]](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OpenAI#cite_note-2) |
| Key people | - [Bret Taylor](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bret_Taylor "Bret Taylor") ( [chairman](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chairman "Chairman"))<br>- Sam Altman ( [CEO](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chief_executive_officer "Chief executive officer"))<br>- Greg Brockman ( [president](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/President_(corporate_title) "President (corporate title)"))<br>- [Sarah Friar](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sarah_Friar "Sarah Friar") ( [CFO](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chief_financial_officer "Chief financial officer"))[\[3\]](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OpenAI#cite_note-NYT5-3)<br>- [Fidji Simo](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fidji_Simo "Fidji Simo") (CEO of Applications) |
| Products | - [ChatGPT](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ChatGPT "ChatGPT")<br>- [GPT-5.4](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GPT-5.4 "GPT-5.4")<br>- [OpenAI Codex](https://en.wikip
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