Nonprofit organisation
A spokesperson for OpenAI, Liz Bourgeois, said in an email that the organisation’s missions and goals have remained constant, though the way it’s carried out its mission has evolved alongside advances in technology.
Attorneys who specialise in advising nonprofits have been watching OpenAI’s meteoric rise and its changing structure closely. Some wonder if its size and the scale of its current ambitions have reached or exceeded the limits of how nonprofits and for-profits may interact.
They also wonder about the extent to which its primary activities advance its charitable mission, which it must, and whether some may privately benefit from its work, which is prohibited.
In general, nonprofit experts agree that OpenAI has gone to great lengths to arrange its corporate structure to comply with the rules that govern nonprofit organisations.
OpenAI’s application to the IRS appears typical, said Andrew Steinberg, counsel at Venable LLP and a member of the American Bar Association’s nonprofit organisations committee.
If the organisation’s plans and structure changed, it would need to report that information on its annual tax returns, Steinberg said, which it has.
“At the time that the IRS reviewed the application, there wasn’t information that that corporate structure that exists today and the investment structure that they pursued was what they had in mind,” he said. “And that’s okay because that may have developed later.”
