Marc Zuckerberg asks US government to stop OpenAI's for-profit plans

Meta's boss Mark Zuckerberg has turned to the Californian government with a request: It should stop the AI startup OpenAI's plans to restructure itself from a non-profit organization to a for-profit organization. The letter is addressed to Attorney General Rob Bonta.

According to the letter, OpenAI should not be allowed to seize assets that were built up as a "charitable organization" and use them to generate large potential profits. Tech billionaire Elon Musk is also mentioned. He is also against OpenAI's intended for-profit status and is already involved in a legal dispute against the company. According to Zuckerberg, Musk would be representing the interests of the Californians. Musk was one of the co-founders of OpenAI in 2015, but left three years later, before the great success of services such as ChatGPT.

Zuckerberg fears "seismic impact"

OpenAI received 6.6 billion dollars from investors in the form of a convertible bond in its last financing round at the end of September. The new money from investors is linked to the condition that OpenAI gives up its non-profit status. Previously, investors could only receive a certain return, with the surplus automatically going to the non-profit organization. The new structure would no longer limit how much donors could earn from their investment.

Zuckerberg believes OpenAI's course could have a "seismic impact" on Silicon Valley. It is nothing less than a "paradigm shift" for tech start-ups because it offers the incentive to start organizations as non-profits to raise millions in tax-free donations for research and development – only to switch to the for-profit model when the business model becomes profitable.

OpenAI sees itself as serving humanity

The US news portal TheVerge published the letter in full. The medium also quotes a statement from OpenAI CEO Bret Taylor. OpenAI's top management is focused on "fulfilling its fiduciary duty", which includes putting OpenAI on the best possible economic footing. In doing so, OpenAI is also pursuing its mission to ensure that all of humanity benefits from AI.

Any potential restructuring would ensure that part of OpenAI remains non-profit and receives the full value for its current involvement in the for-profit wing. OpenAI donors and employees currently still share to a certain extent in the profits of a for-profit subsidiary of OpenAI, which is controlled by the management of the non-profit umbrella company. So far, however, only part of the profits have been distributed, with the rest going to the non-profit management. OpenAI must now remove this limitation and become fully for-profit – or repay the money from the last financing round to the investors.

Meta itself offers the Llama AI model, which Zuckerberg wants to make the most widely used AI in the world. This is also likely to have played a role in his letter to the US government. Musk is also entering an AI chatbot into the race: His system called Grok is soon to have its own app for smartphones – something that competitors such as Anthropic, Google and OpenAI have long been offering.

(nen)