OpenAI’s 10-Year Transformation: From Kitchen Table Nonprofit to $500 Billion Global Institution

OpenAI has completed the most significant corporate transformation in AI history. The company that started as a nonprofit research lab in 2015 with $137 million in donations has become a $500 billion enterprise.

The Three Phases:

Phase 1: The Nonprofit Origin (2015)

• $137M in donations
• Mission: AGI for humanity
• No products, no revenue
• Researchers around a kitchen table

Phase 2: The Capped-Profit Hybrid (2019)

• 100x return cap for investors
• Nonprofit control over for-profit subsidiary
• Microsoft compute + capital
• Products launch: GPT, API

Phase 3: The PBC Transformation (2025)

• Public Benefit Corporation structure
• Profit cap removed
• IPO path cleared
• Stargate infrastructure
• $500B valuation

The question isn’t whether OpenAI becomes a trillion-dollar company — it’s whether the original mission survives the journey.

This is part of a comprehensive analysis. Read the full analysis on The Business Engineer.