What OpenAI Foundation does

OpenAI Foundation is the nonprofit parent entity established in 2015 with a mission to ensure artificial general intelligence benefits all of humanity. Following its October 2025 restructuring, the Foundation controls the for-profit OpenAI Group Public Benefit Corporation (PBC), holding a 26% equity stake valued at approximately $130 billion, while the for-profit subsidiary conducts commercial AI operations including ChatGPT, the OpenAI API platform, Codex, Sora 2, and enterprise products. The Foundation itself pursues philanthropic activities with commitments exceeding $1 billion over the next year across life sciences (including a $100 million Alzheimer's research initiative with UCSF and Arc Institute), AI resilience, workforce/economic impact (including $250 million for workers navigating AI disruption and the $500 million RAISE US workforce initiative), and community programs (including $40.5 million disbursed to 208 US nonprofits through the People-First AI Fund).

OpenAI's commercial operations center on frontier foundation models spanning the GPT-5.6 family (Sol, Terra, Luna), GPT-5.5, GPT-5.4, o-series reasoning models, Codex for autonomous coding and agent workflows, Sora 2 for video generation, DALL-E/ChatGPT Images 2.0 for image generation, Whisper and Voice Engine for audio, and domain-specialized GPT-Rosalind for life sciences. The technology stack supports multimodal capabilities across text, image, video, audio, and code with enterprise-grade security (SOC 2 Type 2, HIPAA compliance via BAAs, zero data retention options). The Daybreak cybersecurity platform with GPT-5.5-Cyber and Patch the Planet initiative extends into defensive security with 27+ partner vendors.

The business model combines usage-based API pricing ($1-$30 per 1M tokens depending on model tier), consumer subscriptions (ChatGPT free, Plus at $20/month, Pro, Enterprise), enterprise licensing with dedicated account teams, education and healthcare specialized tiers, and a growing partner/reseller ecosystem including Oracle, Tata/TCS, Broadcom, and major systems integrators. Annualized revenue reached $25 billion by March 2026, growing from $2 billion in 2023. Customers span individual consumers, developers/startups, SMBs, and large enterprises across financial services (Morgan Stanley, BNY), technology (Cisco, Samsung, HP, NVIDIA, Oracle), biotech (Moderna), transportation (Uber), and government/defense sectors across 8+ countries. A confidential S-1 was submitted to the SEC in June 2026, preserving IPO optionality.

Name

OpenAI Foundation

Legal name

OpenAI Foundation

Website

https://openai.com

Company type

Private

Founded year

2015

Operating status

Operating

Short description

OpenAI Foundation is the nonprofit parent of OpenAI Group PBC, controlling a for-profit AI research and deployment company. It develops frontier models (GPT-5.6, Codex, Sora 2) serving consumers, developers, enterprises, and governments, while pursuing philanthropic initiatives in life sciences and AI resilience.

Ownership category

akta.pro rank

Product category

AI Foundation Models / Generative AI Platform

NAICS

Grantmaking Foundations (813211)

SIC

Finance Services (6199)

akta.pro primary industry

Private Foundations (BPAGAKAA)

akta.pro secondary industries

Health & Medical Research Grantmaking Foundations (BPAGAKAL), Community Foundations (BPAGAKAB)

Keywords

• Foundation models
• Large language models
• Generative AI platform
• AI agent platforms
• Conversational AI

Headquarters

HQ city

San Francisco

HQ country

United States

HQ region

North America

Offices1 record

Markets served

GTM type

B2B and B2C

Offering type

Software

Cost components

Technology or R&D, Infrastructure, Personnel, Marketing or Sales, Operations

Revenue model

1. API Usage-based Revenue: Pay-per-token pricing for API access to frontier models including GPT-5.6, GPT-5.4, Codex, and other models. Revenue scales with customer usage volume.
2. ChatGPT Subscriptions: Subscription tiers including ChatGPT (free with limits), Plus ($20/month), Pro, and Enterprise plans with varying capability levels and access.
3. Enterprise Licensing: Custom enterprise agreements with dedicated account teams, compliance features (HIPAA, SOC 2), and volume-based pricing for large deployments.
4. ChatGPT for Education: Educational institution licensing with specialized features for academic use cases.
5. OpenAI Foundation Philanthropy: Nonprofit arm holds 26% equity stake in OpenAI Group PBC, valued at ~$130 billion, generating significant non-operating asset value.

Pricing tiers

Go-to-market motion3 records

Distribution channels8 records

Marketing channels10 records

Core offering

OpenAI Foundation is the nonprofit parent of OpenAI Group PBC; through the Group it develops and deploys frontier multimodal foundation models (GPT-5.6 Sol/Terra/Luna, GPT-5.5, GPT-5.4, o3/o4-mini reasoning, Codex agents, Sora 2 video, DALL-E image, Whisper audio) and makes them available to consumers via ChatGPT, to developers via the OpenAI API Platform, and to enterprises and government/defense partners through ChatGPT Enterprise, Daybreak cybersecurity, and partner networks. The Foundation directly runs philanthropic grantmaking (over $1B pledged across life sciences, AI resilience, jobs/economic impact, and community programs) supported by its 26% equity stake in OpenAI Group PBC valued at ~$130 billion.

Product overview

OpenAI Foundation operates a platform-plus-modules architecture centered on the ChatGPT consumer product and the OpenAI API developer platform, backed by frontier foundation models (GPT-5.6 Sol/Terra/Luna, GPT-5.5, GPT-5.4, o-series). The product portfolio spans consumer ChatGPT (Free, Plus, Pro, Enterprise, Edu, Healthcare, Clinicians tiers), the Codex AI agent platform for coding and knowledge work, Sora 2 for video generation, DALL-E and ChatGPT Images 2.0 for image generation, Whisper and Voice Engine for audio, GPT-Rosalind for life sciences, the Daybreak cybersecurity platform (including Codex Security, GPT-5.5-Cyber, and Patch the Planet), and the OpenAI API Platform providing programmatic access to all models. Role-specific Codex plugins extend into data analytics, creative production, sales, product design, and investment workflows, while the OpenAI Partner Network and Oracle/Tata partnerships expand distribution and integration capabilities.

Differentiator

Problem solved

Functional benefit

Brands

• ChatGPT: AI conversational assistant available in free, Plus, Pro, and Enterprise tiers
• Codex
• Sora
• DALL-E
• GPT
• ChatGPT Enterprise
• ChatGPT Edu
• Daybreak
• Codex Security
• People-First AI Fund
• GPT-Rosalind

Products and services

• ChatGPT OpenAI's flagship conversational AI assistant providing text, image, voice, code, and reasoning assistance for personal productivity, learning, research, writing, and creative work; available via free, Plus, and Pro subscription tiers across web, iOS, and Android.
• ChatGPT Enterprise Enterprise-grade ChatGPT offering with advanced security (SOC 2 Type 2, HIPAA BAAs, data residency controls), administrative controls (RBAC, billing alerts, usage analytics), dedicated account team, and priority support for large organizations; key customers include Cisco, Morgan Stanley, BNY, Moderna, Uber.
• ChatGPT Business Business-tier ChatGPT for smaller teams, providing advanced security, admin controls, and collaboration tools for organizations that need enterprise features without the full Enterprise contract.
• ChatGPT for Education Education-tier ChatGPT tailored for academic institutions, with secure ad-free environment, education-specific features, and deployment for universities and K-12 systems including Greece's 'AI in Schools' program.
• ChatGPT for Healthcare Healthcare-specialized ChatGPT deployment that supports medical professionals with documentation, research, and care delivery tasks; backed by a network of 260+ physicians across 60 countries evaluating responses against HealthBench benchmarks.
• ChatGPT for Clinicians ChatGPT variant designed for clinical workflows, supporting healthcare professionals with documentation, research, and care delivery in hospitals and provider organizations.
• OpenAI API Platform Self-serve developer platform providing programmatic access to frontier models (GPT-5.6, GPT-5.5, GPT-5.4, o-series), the Agents SDK, Responses API, Realtime API, prompt caching, and enterprise-grade security (SOC 2 Type 2, HIPAA BAA, zero data retention, data residency, IP allowlist, mTLS, SSO, MFA) for text, image, audio, video, and code workloads.
• Codex OpenAI's AI agent platform for coding and knowledge work, used by 5+ million people weekly; supports multi-step autonomous tasks across software development, data analysis, sales, creative, and operational workflows through the Agents SDK and Responses API.
• Sora 2 OpenAI's text-to-video generation model producing physically accurate, realistic, and controllable video with synchronized dialogue and sound effects; released September 2025.
• DALL-E (and ChatGPT Images 2.0) OpenAI's text-to-image generation systems, including the latest ChatGPT Images 2.0 released April 2026, producing precise and photorealistic images with C2PA content provenance and SynthID watermarking.
• Whisper OpenAI's automatic speech recognition model approaching human-level robustness and accuracy on English speech recognition, used in APIs and product integrations since September 2022.
• Voice Engine OpenAI's synthetic voice generation technology, released March 2024 with an embedded audio watermark for provenance, powering natural-sounding voice agents and the Realtime API.
• GPT-5.6 (Sol / Terra / Luna) Next-generation GPT-5.6 model family available via the API with three capability tiers — Sol (flagship, $5 input / $30 output per 1M tokens), Terra (balanced everyday work, $2.50/$15), and Luna (fast and affordable, $1/$6) — featuring max reasoning effort and ultra mode with subagents.
• GPT-5.5 Flagship GPT-5.5 general-purpose large language model with 1.05M context length, 128K max output tokens, and stronger reasoning for real-world professional work; available via API and ChatGPT.
• GPT-5.4 GPT-5.4 frontier large language model for professional work, released March 2026 at $2.50 input / $15 output per 1M tokens, with improved reasoning and agentic capabilities.
• GPT-5.3 Instant Fast, cost-efficient GPT-5.3 Instant model variant for smoother everyday conversations, released March 2026 and available to free ChatGPT users.
• OpenAI o3 and o4-mini (Reasoning Models) OpenAI's o3 and o4-mini reasoning models, released April 2026, that use chain-of-thought processes to solve complex STEM problems with full tool access (o3 most capable, o4-mini cost-effective).
• GPT-Rosalind Domain-specialized AI model for life sciences research advancing biological reasoning, medicinal chemistry expertise, genomics analysis, and experimental workflow capabilities for researchers and biodefense partners.
• Daybreak Cybersecurity Platform OpenAI's cybersecurity platform providing AI-powered vulnerability discovery and patching tools including Codex Security, GPT-5.5-Cyber (with Trusted Access for Cyber), and the Patch the Planet open-source initiative; partnered with 28+ security vendors in the Daybreak Cyber Partner Program.

Quantifiable outcome

• 5+ million people use Codex weekly
• +6 more outcomes

Named customers12 records

Segments7 records

Ideal customer profiles5 records

Technology focussed Yes

API detail

Has API

Yes

API docs

API detail

Core technology

AI maturity

App detail

Integration108 records

AI capability18 records

Feature15 records

Partnerships

14 partnerships are on record, tiered minor, flagship and core.

• HPminorStrategic or Co-development Partner · 28 June 2026Frontier partnership with HP to scale early AI wins across HP's enterprise operations.
• RAISE US (Nonprofit Workforce Initiative)flagshipStrategic or Co-development Partner · 25 June 2026RAISE US is a bipartisan nonprofit workforce initiative co-founded by former Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo and former Indiana Governor Eric Holcomb. OpenAI Foundation is an anchor partner alongside Amazon, Anthropic, Microsoft, and Bank of America. The initiative aims to retrain American workers displaced by AI with over $500 million in commitments, piloting programs in Arkansas, Connecticut, Maryland, and Utah. OpenAI Foundation specifically committed $250 million to support workers and economies navigating AI disruption.
• BroadcomcoreTechnology or Integration · 24 June 2026OpenAI and Broadcom partnership to develop the Jalapeño LLM-optimized inference chip for efficient AI inference workloads.
• Trail of BitscoreStrategic or Co-development Partner · 22 June 2026Co-founded the Patch the Planet initiative for open-source security. Expert security researchers equipped with Codex Security work directly with open source maintainers to validate and patch vulnerabilities.
• HackerOnecoreStrategic or Co-development Partner · 22 June 2026Collaboration partner in Patch the Planet initiative for open-source vulnerability detection and patching.
• Daybreak Cyber Partner Program (27 partners including Accenture, Akamai, NCC Group, Capgemini, Cato Networks, Check Point, Cisco, Cloudflare, Cognizant, CrowdStrike, Darktrace, Elastic, EY, Fortinet, GuidePoint Security, IBM, KPMG, Okta, Palo Alto Networks, Proofpoint, PwC, SentinelOne, SpecterOps, Sophos, Tenable, Trend AI, Wiz, Zscaler)coreChannel Partner/ Reseller/ Distributor · 22 June 2026Daybreak Cyber Partner Program enables security partners to scale AI-powered cybersecurity capabilities to more organizations through trusted access to GPT-5.5 with Trusted Access for Cyber. Partners integrate OpenAI's cyber capabilities into their security products and services.
• Government Partners (Australia, Canada, France, Germany, Japan, Republic of Korea, UK, EU/ENISA)coreStrategic or Co-development Partner · 22 June 2026Trusted Access for Cyber partnerships with governments to uplift defensive cybersecurity capabilities and protect critical infrastructure. Includes collaboration with US government on cyber Executive Order framework and pre-deployment testing for GPT-5.5 and 5.5-Cyber.
• Samsung ElectronicsminorStrategic or Co-development Partner · 21 June 2026Samsung bringing ChatGPT and Codex to employees for productivity enhancement across operations.
• OnaminorStrategic or Co-development Partner · 11 June 2026OpenAI announced acquisition of Ona, expanding capabilities in AI applications and services.
• OraclecoreTechnology or Integration · 10 June 2026Partnership enables access to OpenAI models and Codex through Oracle cloud infrastructure commitment. OpenAI models available via Oracle Cloud.
• Common Sense Media (Youth AI Safety Institute)coreStrategic or Co-development Partner · 5 May 2026$20 million annual budget backing from OpenAI Foundation for independent research and testing lab to study AI risks to children and teens. Conducts red team testing of AI models and publishes consumer guides for youth safety.
• University of California, San Francisco (UCSF)coreStrategic or Co-development Partner · 13 April 2026$100 million Alzheimer research grant partnership. UCSF uses AI to analyze patient biomarkers to improve diagnosis and streamline clinical trials.
• Arc InstitutecoreStrategic or Co-development Partner · 13 April 2026$100 million Alzheimer research grant partnership. Arc Institute conducts experiments on how health risk factors interact and trains AI models to identify effective interventions.
• Tata Group / TCScoreStrategic or Co-development Partner · 20 February 2026Strategic partnership for AI infrastructure and enterprise solutions in India. TCS's HyperVault unit leads an AI factory project starting at 100MW capacity with plans to scale to 1GW, featuring liquid-cooled data centers. Partnership includes deploying ChatGPT Enterprise to TCS workforce, integrating OpenAI's Codex into TCS software engineering, and a skilling initiative targeting 1 million Indian youth through the OpenAI Foundation.

Scale indicators14 records

Recent moves10 records

Expansion highlights10 records

Broad incumbents

• Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation: The largest private foundation in the world with a focus on global health, education, and poverty. Gates Foundation is comparable in scale and grantmaking ambition to OpenAI Foundation's $25B+ life sciences commitment, representing the gold standard for large-scale philanthropic deployment.
• Howard Hughes Medical Institute: Largest private biomedical research organization in the US, operating as both a grantmaker and direct research organization. HHMI's hybrid model of grantmaking plus operating research programs is structurally similar to OpenAI Foundation's combination of grantmaking and AI deployment.
• Wellcome Trust: One of the world's largest charitable foundations with a focus on health research. Wellcome Trust provides a useful comparison as a similarly-sized private foundation with a primary focus on life sciences and health, making it directly comparable to OpenAI Foundation's $25B life sciences commitment.
• Meta AI (FAIR): Meta's AI research division and a leading frontier AI lab with significant open-source contributions (LLaMA). FAIR is a broad incumbent peer with strong research capabilities and substantial compute resources through Meta's infrastructure.
• Google DeepMind: Google's AI research division and a leading frontier AI lab. DeepMind is a broad incumbent comparable to OpenAI in capability, with significantly more compute resources through Google's infrastructure, though lacking the nonprofit-parent structure.

Emerging players

• Mistral AI: European AI lab developing frontier open-weight language models with significant venture backing. Mistral is an emerging player that competes with OpenAI on open-weight models and represents a meaningful but partial competitive overlap, particularly in European markets.

Direct peers

• xAI: Elon Musk's AI company building frontier models with significant capital backing. xAI is a direct competitive peer founded by the same individual (Musk) who is also OpenAI's most prominent legal adversary, making it a uniquely relevant comparison for both AI capabilities and nonprofit governance concerns.
• Allen Institute for AI (Ai2): Nonprofit AI research institute founded by Paul Allen with a mission to advance AI for the common good. Ai2 is the closest direct peer to OpenAI Foundation's dual structure of nonprofit AI research with philanthropic mission, though at significantly smaller scale.
• Anthropic: Public benefit corporation developing frontier AI models with a stated mission of building safe AI systems. Anthropic is a direct competitive peer to OpenAI's operations and shares a similar mission-driven corporate structure, though it is structured as a PBC without a controlling nonprofit parent.
• Mozilla Foundation: Nonprofit foundation that controls Mozilla Corporation and pursues a mission of an open, accessible internet. Mozilla's dual nonprofit/for-profit structure and tech-focused mission make it a structural peer, though with much smaller scale and a different industry focus.

Market position

Strengths5 records

Weaknesses5 records

Competitive moat8 records

Key risks5 records

Key highlights6 records

Customer concentration

• Xx.com/OpenAI
• GitHubgithub.com/openai
• YouTubeyoutube.com/OpenAI
• LinkedInlinkedin.com/company/openai
• Instagraminstagram.com/openai
• TikToktiktok.com/@openai

Compliance3 records

Revenue estimate

Valuation estimate

Number of profiles

Profiles7 records

Subsidiaries2 records

Funding overview

Funding rounds

Investors

Funding detail is available on the Subscription and Enterprise plan.Contact sales →

M&A

Investments65 records

M&A and investment is available on the Subscription and Enterprise plan.Contact sales →

Frequently asked questions about OpenAI Foundation