AI Lab Profile · United States
OpenAI
OpenAI is independent AI lab (capped-profit under a non-profit parent), Microsoft-backed, founded in 2015 and headquartered in San Francisco, USA. Frontier GPT models and ChatGPT; brought generative AI to the mainstream; deep Microsoft partnership.
Founded 2015 · San Francisco, USA · openai.com · Financials: Epoch AI (as of 2026-10-05) · Updated 2026-10-05
Overview
To ensure that artificial general intelligence (AGI) benefits all of humanity.
Launched in December 2015 as a non-profit AI research organisation by a group including Sam Altman, Elon Musk, Greg Brockman and Ilya Sutskever; Musk later departed the board.
Companies building products on OpenAI's models can compare generative AI consultancies and AI agent development companies that integrate them into production systems.
Flagship AI models
Key models released by OpenAI, most recent last. Dates are the public release month where confirmed.
- 2020-06 GPT-3175B-parameter model that popularised large-scale few-shot prompting
- 2023-03 GPT-4Multimodal frontier model behind ChatGPT Plus
- 2024-05 GPT-4oNatively multimodal 'omni' model (text, audio, vision)
- 2024-09 o1First 'reasoning' model trained to think before answering
- 2025-08 GPT-5Frontier model unifying reasoning and fast responses
- 2025-11 GPT-5.1Update to the GPT-5 series; the 5.x line continued with incremental releases into 2026
Funding & financials
Quantitative figures from Epoch AI's Data on AI Companies (CC BY 4.0). Each is the latest dated figure Epoch holds; private labs disclose selectively, so undisclosed values are marked as such — never estimated.
| Total equity funding | $182.8bn | |
| Latest valuation | $852.0bn | as of 2026-03-31 |
| Est. annualised revenue | $70.0bn | as of 2026-09-29 |
| Staff | 4,500 | as of 2026-03-21 |
| Active users | 1200m | |
| Revenue / employee | $16m |
Key facts
- Launched ChatGPT on 30 November 2022; it reached an estimated 100 million users within two months, one of the fastest consumer-product adoptions on record.
- Microsoft is the primary strategic investor and cloud partner, having committed a reported cumulative total in excess of USD 13 billion since 2019.
- Primarily a closed-weights lab, but in August 2025 it released 'gpt-oss', its first open-weight models since GPT-2.
- Structured as a capped-profit company (OpenAI LP / OpenAI Global) governed by a non-profit parent.
Frequently asked
- When was OpenAI founded?
- OpenAI was founded in 2015, by Sam Altman, Elon Musk, Greg Brockman and others. It is headquartered in San Francisco, USA.
- How much funding has OpenAI raised?
- OpenAI has raised about $182.8bn in total equity funding, at a latest valuation of about $852.0bn (2026-03-31). Source: Epoch AI.
- What are OpenAI's main AI models?
- OpenAI's notable models include o1, GPT-5, GPT-5.1. Frontier GPT models and ChatGPT; brought generative AI to the mainstream; deep Microsoft partnership.
Sources
Cite this company profile
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Affärslivet Research. (2026). OpenAI — company profile. Affärslivet. https://xn--affrslivet-s5a.com/en/ai/labs/openai
MLA
"OpenAI — company profile." Affärslivet, 2026-10-05, xn--affrslivet-s5a.com/en/ai/labs/openai.
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