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OpenAI

Featured Verified Company
AI Research Lab & Developer Platform

The AI research and deployment company behind ChatGPT, the GPT-5.6 model family and the OpenAI API.

AI Research & Deployment San Francisco, California, USA Founded 2015 5,001-10,000
900M+ Users
98.1K+ views
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At a Glance

Founded 2015
Headquarters San Francisco, California, USA
Employees 5,001-10,000
Total Funding $190B+ · $852B valuation
Category AI Research Lab & Developer Platform
Active Products 6
Social

About OpenAI

OpenAI is an American AI research and deployment company founded in December 2015 and headquartered in San Francisco. It builds the GPT model family, the ChatGPT assistant used by more than 900 million people a week, image, audio and video models, and the developer platform behind them. Since October 2025 it has operated as OpenAI Group PBC, a public benefit corporation controlled by the non-profit OpenAI Foundation.
  • Frontier model research
  • ChatGPT
  • Developer platform
  • Enterprise deployment
  • Safety and alignment
  • Compute and infrastructure
Read Full Company Story

OpenAI AI Models View all

Featured ChatGPT OpenAI Conversational AI assistant by OpenAI 4.8 (2K) Freemium Explore Featured DALL·E OpenAI Text-to-image generation by OpenAI 4.5 (1.1K) Freemium Explore Featured Sora OpenAI OpenAI's text-to-video model with synchronised dialogue and sound. The Sora apps closed on 26 April 2026 and the sora-2 API retires on 24 September 2026. 4.5 (800) Paid Explore

OpenAI Models

GPT-5.6 Sol

Frontier model for complex professional work.

GPT-5.6 Terra

Balances intelligence and cost for everyday workloads.

GPT-5.6 Luna

Optimised for cost-sensitive, high-volume tasks.

GPT-5.5

The generally available flagship for coding and professional work.

GPT Image 2

State-of-the-art image generation.

Sora 2

Video with synchronised audio — API retires 24 September 2026.

gpt-audio-1.5

Voice model for audio in, audio out.

text-embedding-3-large

Most capable embedding model for search and retrieval.

What Does OpenAI Do?

Frontier model research

Trains the GPT and o-series models that set the pace for the field, and publishes the specs and evaluations behind them.

ChatGPT

A consumer, business and enterprise assistant used by more than 900 million people every week across web, mobile and desktop.

Developer platform

APIs for text, images, audio, embeddings, agents and realtime voice, with official Python and JavaScript SDKs.

Enterprise deployment

ChatGPT Business and Enterprise add admin controls, SSO, data residency and compliance reporting, and exclude business data from training.

Safety and alignment

Runs a preparedness framework, publishes a model spec and ships system cards with each frontier release.

Compute and infrastructure

Builds data-centre capacity with Microsoft, Nvidia, Amazon and SoftBank to train and serve models at global scale.

Leadership at OpenAI

Sam Altman

CEO & Co-founder

Co-founded OpenAI in 2015 and has led it as CEO since 2019, setting product direction and raising the capital behind its compute build-out.

Greg Brockman

President & Co-founder

Co-founder and President. Formerly CTO of Stripe; leads engineering and infrastructure.

Jakub Pachocki

Chief Scientist

Chief Scientist since 2024, previously leading the GPT-4 and reasoning research efforts.

Brad Lightcap

Chief Operating Officer

Runs commercial operations, partnerships and the API business.

Sarah Friar

Chief Financial Officer

CFO since 2024; previously CEO of Nextdoor and CFO of Square.

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Company Timeline

  1. 2015

    Founded in San Francisco as a non-profit AI research lab by Sam Altman, Elon Musk, Greg Brockman, Ilya Sutskever and others.

  2. 2018

    Publishes GPT-1 and the generative pre-training paper that names the architecture behind every later model.

  3. 2019

    Adopts a capped-profit structure and takes a $1B investment from Microsoft.

  4. 2020

    GPT-3 ships to developers through the first OpenAI API.

  5. 2021

    DALL·E and Codex bring image generation and code models to the platform.

  6. 2022

    ChatGPT launches on 30 November and passes a million users in five days.

  7. 2023

    GPT-4 arrives, followed by ChatGPT Enterprise and custom GPTs.

  8. 2024

    GPT-4o adds native voice and vision; the o1 reasoning models and the first Sora preview follow.

  9. 2025

    GPT-5 launches, and the company recapitalises as OpenAI Group PBC under the non-profit OpenAI Foundation.

  10. 2026

    Closes a record $122B round at an $852B valuation and ships the GPT-5.6 family.

Frequently Asked Questions

What does OpenAI do?
OpenAI researches, builds and sells AI models. Its main outputs are the GPT model family, the ChatGPT assistant used by more than 900 million people a week, image, audio and video models, and the API platform developers use to build on all of them.

Who owns OpenAI, and is it a non-profit?
Both. OpenAI completed a recapitalisation on 28 October 2025: the non-profit OpenAI Foundation controls OpenAI Group PBC, a public benefit corporation that runs the commercial business. Microsoft holds roughly 27% of the PBC, and the Foundation holds equity worth about $130 billion alongside a mission mandate.

Is ChatGPT free to use?
Yes, there is a free tier. Paid plans add higher limits, faster models and extra tools: ChatGPT Plus and Pro for individuals, and ChatGPT Business and Enterprise for organisations. API usage is billed separately, per token or per unit of output.

Which OpenAI models are current in 2026?
GPT-5.5 is the generally available flagship, with the GPT-5.6 family — Sol for frontier work, Terra for balanced cost and intelligence, Luna for high-volume tasks — released publicly in July 2026. Alongside them sit GPT Image 2, gpt-audio-1.5 for voice, GPT-4o for general multimodal work, and the text-embedding-3 models.

How much funding has OpenAI raised?
Around $190 billion in total. The largest round closed on 31 March 2026: $122 billion at an $852 billion post-money valuation, the biggest private funding round on record. Amazon committed $50 billion, with Nvidia and SoftBank at $30 billion each, and Microsoft also participating.

Who runs OpenAI?
Sam Altman is CEO and a co-founder. Greg Brockman is President and co-founder, Jakub Pachocki is Chief Scientist, Brad Lightcap is Chief Operating Officer and Sarah Friar is Chief Financial Officer. The OpenAI Foundation board oversees the group.

Does OpenAI train its models on my data?
It depends on the surface. Content from ChatGPT Business, Enterprise and the API is not used to train OpenAI models by default. Consumer ChatGPT conversations may be used to improve models unless you turn that off in data controls, and a temporary chat is never used for training.

What happened to Sora?
OpenAI announced the wind-down on 24 March 2026, closed the Sora web and mobile apps on 26 April 2026, and will remove the Videos API on 24 September 2026. The company said the Sora team is refocusing on world-simulation research for robotics and that compute had to be traded against products with lower cost per unit of value.

How do I contact OpenAI?
Product and billing questions go through help.openai.com, which routes to OpenAI support. Press enquiries use press@openai.com, and security reports go through the OpenAI security disclosure programme. There is no general public phone line.

Company Information

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