A new document charts OpenAI's journey from nonprofit to $157 billion World News company

This is a measure of the enormous distance that OpenAI and the technology it researches and develops have come in less than a decade.

In the application, OpenAI indicated that it did not plan to enter into any joint ventures with for-profit companies, which it did. It also stated that it did not plan to play any role in the development of commercial products or equipment and pledged to make its research freely available to the public.

OpenAI spokeswoman Liz Bourgeois said in an email that the organization's mission and goals remain unchanged, although the way it pursues them has evolved as technology advances.

Lawyers specializing in advising non-profit organizations are closely monitoring OpenAI's rapid development and its changing structure. Some wonder whether the scale of its size and current ambitions has exceeded or exceeded the limits of how nonprofits and for-profits can interact.

They also wonder how far her core activities contribute to her charitable mission, which she certainly does, and whether some may personally benefit from her activities, which is prohibited.

Overall, nonprofit experts agree that OpenAI has made every effort to organize its corporate structure to be consistent with nonprofit rules. OpenAI's application to the IRS seems typical, said Andrew Steinberg, general counsel at Venable LLP and a member of the organizing committee of the nonprofit American Bar Association.

If the organization's plans and structure change, it must report that information on its annual tax return, Steinberg said, which he has.

At the time the IRS was reviewing the request, there was no information indicating it had in mind the current corporate structure or investment structure it was using, he added. And there's nothing wrong with that, because it can evolve later.

Here are some highlights from the app:

Basic research goals

At first, OpenAI's research plans look strange in light of the race to develop artificial intelligence that will begin with the release of ChatGPT in 2022.

OpenAI told the IRS that it plans to train an AI agent to solve various games. His goal was to build a robot that could do housework and develop technology that could carry out complex instructions in natural language.

Currently, its products, which include text-to-image generators and chatbots that can detect emotions and write code, have exceeded these technological thresholds.

No commercial ambitions

The nonprofit OpenAI indicated in its application that it does not plan to enter into joint ventures with for-profit organizations

It also states that OpenAI has no plans to play any role in the development of commercial products or tools. It intends to make its research available to the public free of charge and on a non-discriminatory basis.

OpenAI spokesman Bourgeois said the company believes the best way to achieve its mission is to develop products that help people use artificial intelligence to solve problems, including many of the products it offers for free. But they believe the development of trade partnerships has helped them achieve their goals, he said.

Intellectual property

In 2016, OpenAI reported to the IRS that regularly sharing its research results with the public is critical to OpenAI's mission. OpenAI will regularly publish its research results on its website and make the software it develops available to the world under an open source software license.

It also wrote that it intends to retain ownership of any intellectual property it develops.

The value of that intellectual property, and whether it belongs to nonprofits or nonprofit subsidiaries, could become an important question if OpenAI decides to change its corporate structure, which Altman confirmed in September that it was considering.