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 2026-08-17) · Updated 2026-08-17
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.
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 | $40.0bn | as of 2026-08-13 |
| Staff | 4,500 | as of 2026-03-21 |
| Active users | 920m | |
| Revenue / employee | $9m |
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
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Affärslivet Research. (2026). OpenAI — company profile. Affärslivet. https://xn--affrslivet-s5a.com/en/ai/labs/openai
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