[lmeyerov]

From a business view, the big innovation of OpenAI is marketing an industrial R&D lab as something good CS people will join and investors will fund.

The calculus is more like DeepMind: Can they keep attracting top talent, can the top talent ever do something the org structure can execute on commercially, and maaaaybe, in likely worst case, can they recoup big losses via aquihire, and the responsible investors look like they were in good company if they were wrong.

From that lens. OpenAI... yet in reality mostly closed. Non-profit... But really VC model. Peer review may sometimes happen, but the perceived quality and awareness is from a top content marketing team and even ex journalists. No immediate commercial path beyond selling for talent, but by merely employing Sam, investors feel like he can always pivot the co to make money in the case of a down round.

DeepMind did something similar yet without the marketing skill. OpenAI is doing it even better by, for now, removing the pressure for commercialization.

As someone coming from both R&D and enterprise data startups, I get two conflicting emotions. I'm sad that almost all top tier scientists don't get such outreach and funding help. On the otherhand, the industry has not been able to repeat Bell Labs (widescale R&D that commercialized) for decades so OpenAI's continued ability to draw R&D funding without expectation of ROI in any timeline is cool.