OpenAI said on Thursday that it was giving an equity stake worth at least $100 billion to the nonprofit that controls the organization and has reached a tentative deal to settle financial issues with its partner Microsoft.
Both moves were considered essential steps that would allow OpenAI to go ahead with a plan to restructure itself — shifting from being managed by a nonprofit to becoming a public benefit corporation.
One of the biggest impediments to OpenAI changing its structure has been Microsoft’s investments. Between 2019 and 2023, Microsoft invested more than $13 billion in OpenAI, which gave the tech giant roughly 49 percent of OpenAI’s future profits. Microsoft has been reluctant to change its agreement with OpenAI without receiving ample compensation.
The twin announcements were made as OpenAI’s plan to change its operation faces increasing pressure from regulators, competitors and artificial intelligence experts who worry that it has become too focused on becoming a tech industry giant while abandoning its early promises to focus on the safety of A.I. technology.
Microsoft and OpenAI said in a joint statement that they had signed a nonbinding memorandum of understanding to restructure their relationship and that they will look to formalize it in a contract. They provided no additional details.
As part of their new deal, Microsoft and OpenAI have renegotiated the financial terms of a commercial agreement they signed in 2019. The deal includes how the two companies share technology and how they share revenue from those technologies.
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The post OpenAI Takes Big Steps Toward Its Long-Planned Reorganization appeared first on New York Times.
