Parmy Olson, Columnist

OpenAI Can't Have Its Money Both Ways

Its nonprofit pledge looks like window dressing when new financial incentives will move it further away from building AGI “for humanity.”

May 6, 2025 at 3:58 PM UTC

By Parmy Olson

Parmy Olson is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist covering technology. A former reporter for the Wall Street Journal and Forbes, she is author of “Supremacy: AI, ChatGPT and the Race That Will Change the World.”

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman.
Photographer: Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images North America

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Sam Altman’s reputation for spin was out in full force this week in a published “letter to employees” announcing that he was abandoning plans to turn OpenAI into a for-profit company. Instead, it will “continue to be overseen and controlled” by its nonprofit board.

Hooray for humans, you might think, since that board has a unique fiduciary duty to all people, with a mission to “advance digital intelligence in the way that is most likely to benefit humanity as a whole.” But his investors may be cheering the most, as OpenAI also appears to be removing its 100x cap on profits. In a Monday blog post, the company stated: