OpenAI explained: who controls it, what it sells, and how it makes money

OpenAI makes ChatGPT, the GPT model family and the Codex coding agent. Since October 2025 it has been a for-profit public benefit corporation controlled by a nonprofit foundation. It says ChatGPT reaches more than 1.2 billion people a week. Its last closed funding round alone brought in $122 billion of committed capital. This explainer covers where OpenAI came from, how it's structured now, what it sells and at what price, how it makes money, and the questions that remain open. Facts are current as of October 8, 2026.

From nonprofit lab to public benefit corporation

2015: a nonprofit. OpenAI announced itself on December 11, 2015, as a "non-profit artificial intelligence research company." Its backers pledged $1 billion in total, among them Sam Altman, Greg Brockman, Elon Musk, Reid Hoffman, Jessica Livingston, Peter Thiel, Amazon Web Services, Infosys and YC Research. Altman and Musk were co-chairs. Ilya Sutskever was research director and Brockman was CTO.

2019: "capped profit." On March 11, 2019, OpenAI created OpenAI LP, a hybrid it called "capped-profit." Investors and employees could earn returns up to a cap, which was 100 times the investment for first-round investors. Anything above the cap went to the nonprofit, and the nonprofit's board controlled the company. This structure is what let Microsoft, and later many others, invest.

2022–2023: ChatGPT and the board crisis. ChatGPT launched on November 30, 2022. A year later the board removed Altman as CEO, and within days he returned. OpenAI's November 29, 2023 post announced his return alongside a new initial board chaired by Bret Taylor, with a non-voting observer seat for Microsoft.

2025: the recapitalization. On October 28, 2025, OpenAI completed a restructuring:

• The nonprofit was renamed the OpenAI Foundation.
• The operating business became OpenAI Group PBC, a public benefit corporation.
• OpenAI says the nonprofit "remains in control of the for-profit." The Foundation appoints the PBC's board.
• At the time, OpenAI valued the Foundation's equity at about $130 billion. TechCrunch reported the split as 26% for the Foundation (plus a warrant for more if the company keeps growing), about 27% for Microsoft, worth roughly $135 billion, and 47% for other investors and employees.
• The deal followed nearly a year of talks with the California and Delaware attorneys general, whose conditions include continued measures to protect teens.

These percentages are from before OpenAI's 2026 fundraising, so current holdings are likely diluted. OpenAI hasn't published updated figures. The Foundation, chaired by Bret Taylor, said in March 2026 that it expects to invest at least $1 billion over the following year, toward a previously announced $25 billion commitment to health and "AI resilience."

The Microsoft relationship, as it stands now

Microsoft first invested in 2019. The relationship has been renegotiated twice in the past year:

• October 28, 2025. Microsoft's rights to OpenAI's models and products were extended through 2032. An independent expert panel would verify any OpenAI claim to have reached AGI. OpenAI committed to buy an additional $250 billion of Azure services. Microsoft gave up its right of first refusal to be OpenAI's compute provider.
• April 27, 2026. Microsoft's license to OpenAI IP through 2032 became non-exclusive. Microsoft remains OpenAI's "primary cloud partner," and OpenAI products ship first on Azure unless Microsoft "cannot and chooses not to" support them. OpenAI "can now serve all its products to customers across any cloud provider." Microsoft no longer pays OpenAI a revenue share. OpenAI's payments to Microsoft continue through 2030 "at the same percentage but subject to a total cap." Microsoft remains "a major shareholder."

In practice, OpenAI models now appear outside Azure too. GPT-6 Astra launched on AWS Bedrock as well as Azure.

What OpenAI sells

Last verified: October 8, 2026 (prices in USD from OpenAI's pricing and help pages)

The product line now has several layers:

• ChatGPT is split into a Chat tab, a Work tab for agentic tasks, and newer always-on "Dots" agents for some Pro and Business users.
• Codex is OpenAI's coding agent, available as a CLI, IDE extension, desktop app and cloud service.
• The API includes the GPT-6 family (see our GPT-6 launch story) and, since September 2026, an Agents API that rents out the Codex agent harness.
• Enterprise extras announced at DevDay on September 29, 2026 include a marketplace where companies can spend part of their OpenAI commitment on partner software.

How it makes money

OpenAI's most recent official numbers come from its March 31, 2026 funding announcement:

• "We are now generating $2B in revenue per month."
• Enterprise "makes up more than 40% of our revenue."
• More than 900 million weekly ChatGPT users and "over 50 million subscribers."
• Codex had "over 2 million weekly users."
• The ads pilot reached "more than $100 million in ARR in under six weeks."

Newer figures are reported, not official, and the reports don't agree. On September 29, 2026, Reuters, summarizing a Bloomberg report, said OpenAI's annualized revenue run rate was "nearing $70 billion." TechCrunch and Quartz, summarizing the same Bloomberg report, put annualized revenue at about $40 billion after growth of roughly 70% since July. We could not read the Bloomberg original, and OpenAI hasn't published a current figure, so treat both numbers as unconfirmed. Our funding news story sets out the reports side by side.

The revenue streams are:

1. Consumer subscriptions (Go, Plus, Pro). The $500 Pro tier, launched September 29, 2026, shows OpenAI pricing heavy users by compute. At the same time, it cut the Pro 200 allowance for new subscribers.
2. Business and enterprise seats. This is the more than 40% that OpenAI cites.
3. API usage, billed per token, with discounts for batch and flex processing and surcharges for very long prompts and fast modes. For why sticker prices can mislead, see token pricing isn't the story.
4. Advertising. OpenAI said on January 16, 2026, that it would start testing ads on the Free and Go tiers in the US. Ads reached Free and Go users in the UK on June 4, 2026. On October 5, 2026, it announced a visual ad format to be tested in the US later in October, along with integrations for measuring conversions. OpenAI says ads "do not influence" ChatGPT's answers, and that Plus, Pro, Business and Enterprise stay ad-free.

Funding and valuation

According to Reuters, Altman said in September that OpenAI would not go public in 2026. Bloomberg described the new round as bridge financing in place of an IPO, and said the talks are early and the terms could change.

Criticisms and open questions

• Does the nonprofit really control the company? On paper, the Foundation appoints the PBC's board. But the company was valued at $852 billion after its March 2026 round (and is reported to be seeking about $1.4 trillion), keeps raising tens of billions, and outsiders can't easily see how the Foundation would hold a mission line against commercial pressure. Its board membership beyond Bret Taylor isn't listed on the post we reviewed.
• Ads in an assistant. OpenAI says ads don't shape answers and are kept away from sensitive conversations. Those are company commitments, and outsiders have no independent audit to check them against.
• Safety under commercial pressure. OpenAI's GPT-6 Astra launch post says the model meets the "Critical" cybersecurity threshold of OpenAI's Preparedness Framework, and OpenAI restricts some uses of it. TechCrunch, citing The Wall Street Journal, reported on September 29, 2026 that a planned GPT-6.1 Astra was scrapped after internal testing found "higher levels of deception"; OpenAI's own pages don't mention it. OpenAI's October 7, 2026 deployment-safety update for GPT-6 Sol and Luna records statistically significant regressions on some safety evaluations compared with the GPT-5.6 models. Our GPT-6 launch story has the details.
• Costs. OpenAI doesn't publish audited financials. It has committed to enormous compute purchases, including the $250 billion of additional Azure services alone. Whether revenue can grow fast enough to cover them is the central bet behind the $1.4 trillion valuation now being reported.
• Customer trust on pricing. Heavy Codex and Pro users have complained on OpenAI's community forum about the Pro 200 allowance cut announced on September 29. These are user reports, but they show the strain of selling plans with fixed prices on top of variable compute costs.

For the closest comparison, read Anthropic explained.