[dragonwriter]

> OpenAI is not a charity.

OpenAI is a charity nonprofit, in fact.

> Microsoft's investment is in OpenAI Global, LLC, a for-profit company.

OpenAI Global LLC is a subsidiary two levels down from OpenAI, which is expressly (by the operating agreement that is the LLC's foundational document) subordinated to OpenAI’s charitable purpose, and which is completely controlled (despite the charity's indirect and less-than-complete ownership) by OpenAI GP LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of the charity, on behalf of the OpenAI charity.

And, particularly, the OpenAI board is. as the excerpts you quote in your post expressly state, the board of the nonprofit that is the top of the structure. It controls everything underneath because each of the subordinate organizations foundational documents give it (well, for the two entities with outside invesment, OpenAI GP LLC, the charity's wholly-owned and -controlled subsidiary) complete control.

[hackernewds]

well not anymore, as they cannot function as a nonprofit.

also infamously they fundraised as a nonprofit, but retracted to admit they needed a for profit structure to thrive, which Elon is miffed about and Sam has defended explicitly

[dragonwriter]

> well not anymore, as they cannot function as a nonprofit.

There's been a lot of news lately, but unless I've missed something, even with the tentative agreement of a new board for the charity nonprofit, they are and plan to remain a charity nonprofit with the same nominal mission.

> also infamously they fundraised as a nonprofit, but retracted to admit they needed a for profit structure to thrive

No, they admitted they needed to sell products rather than merely take donations to survive, and needed to be able to return profits from doing that to investors to scale up enough to do that, so they formed a for-profit subsidiary with its own for-profit subsidiary, both controlled by another subsidiary, all subordinated to the charity nonprofit, to do that.

[DebtDeflation]

>they are and plan to remain a charity nonprofit

Once the temporary board has selected a permanent board, give it a couple of months and then get back to us. They will almost certainly choose to spin the for-profit subsidiary off as an independent company. Probably with some contractual arrangement where they commit x funding to the non-profit in exchange for IP licensing. Which is the way they should have structured this back in 2019.

[tempestn]

"Almost certainly"? Here's a fun exercise. Over the course of, say, a year, keep track of all your predictions along these lines, and how certain you are of each. Almost certainly, expressed as a percentage, would be maybe 95%? Then see how often the predicted events occur, compared to how sure you are.

Personally I'm nowhere near 95% confident that will happen. I'd say I'm about 75% confident it won't. So I wouldn't be utterly shocked, but I would be quite surprised.

[kyle_grove]

I’m pretty confident (close to the 95% level) they will abandon the public charity structure, but throughout this saga, I have been baffled by the discourse’s willingness to handwave away OpenAI’s peculiar legal structure as irrelevant to these events.

[tempestn]

Within a few months? I don't think it should be possible to be 95% confident of that without inside info. As you said, many unexpected things have happened already. IMO that should bring the most confident predictions down to the 80-85% level at most.