[ccorda]

A few comments have noted that it's common for non-profits own for-profits (Mozilla Foundation, college endowments, etc).

What seems different here is that rather than funneling profits up to the non-profit, the intent seems to be to make payouts to fellow board members and employees:

> Only a minority of board members are allowed to hold financial stakes in the partnership at one time. Furthermore, only board members without such stakes can vote on decisions where the interests of limited partners and OpenAI Nonprofit’s mission may conflict—including any decisions about making payouts to investors and employees. [1]

IANAL, but has anyone seen this sort of arrangement before?

[1] https://openai.com/blog/openai-lp

[lacker]

Every for-profit pays its employees, right? I don't think the fact that they make these payments is unusual, they're just making it clear that partners with a stake in the for-profit recuse themselves when the nonprofit is approving these payouts. It's similar to a company CEO not voting when the board approves their own pay package, even though they're a board member.

[ccorda]

I agree that payments on their own (e.g. salary, bonuses) don't seem counter to the non-profit's interest. But what if we're talking about 100B of equity -- equity that otherwise would have gone to the parent non-profit?