OpenAI

Updated June 2026

OpenAI is the company behind ChatGPT and the GPT model family — the most-used AI products in the world. Founded as a nonprofit in 2015, it restructured into the OpenAI Group public-benefit corporation in 2025 (still controlled by its nonprofit Foundation), reached a $852 billion valuation in 2026, and runs the Stargate compute build-out with SoftBank, Oracle and Nvidia.

Website →API →Pricing →Status →

OpenAI is the company behind ChatGPT and the GPT model family — the most-used AI products in the world, with ChatGPT crossing one billion monthly active users in June 2026 (OpenAI). Founded as a nonprofit in December 2015 to ensure artificial general intelligence “benefits all of humanity,” it launched the modern AI era with ChatGPT in November 2022 and has set the pace — on models, products and fundraising — ever since.

The defining 2026 story is scale on every axis. OpenAI completed a contentious recapitalisation into the OpenAI Group public-benefit corporation (still controlled by its nonprofit, now the OpenAI Foundation), raised the largest private funding round in history at a $852 billion valuation, reached roughly $25 billion in annualised revenue, and is pouring capital into the Stargate compute build-out with SoftBank, Oracle and Nvidia. It also remains the most legally and politically scrutinised AI lab, from the New York Times copyright case to Elon Musk’s failed lawsuit.

Quick facts

History and founding

OpenAI was founded on 11 December 2015 by a group including Sam Altman, Elon Musk, Greg Brockman, Ilya Sutskever and others, as a nonprofit research lab. Musk departed the board in 2018; in 2019 OpenAI created a “capped-profit” subsidiary to raise capital and took its first major Microsoft investment. The November 2022 launch of ChatGPT became the fastest-growing consumer product in history and triggered the industry-wide AI race.

In November 2023, the board abruptly fired Altman, only to reinstate him days later after an employee and investor revolt — the most dramatic governance crisis in tech, and a catalyst for the structural changes that followed. Several co-founders and safety leaders later left, including Ilya Sutskever and Jan Leike (2024); Jakub Pachocki became Chief Scientist.

Corporate structure and the Microsoft relationship

OpenAI’s structure was overhauled in a recapitalisation announced in October 2025 and carried into 2026. The for-profit became the OpenAI Group PBC, a public-benefit corporation, while the original nonprofit — renamed the OpenAI Foundation — retains control and holds equity valued at roughly $130 billion, with more vesting at future valuation milestones (OpenAI).

The recapitalisation also reset the Microsoft relationship. After cumulative investment of about $13 billion, Microsoft now holds an investment in OpenAI Group valued at roughly $135 billion — about 27% on an as-converted basis — keeps a 20% revenue share through 2030 (now capped), and licences OpenAI’s models through 2032. Crucially, the deal removed the AGI exit clause and lets OpenAI serve products on any cloud, though Microsoft Azure remains a primary partner (CNBC). OpenAI is now widely reported to be preparing an IPO.

Funding and valuation

OpenAI has raised the largest private rounds in history, increasingly from a syndicate of investors and compute partners rather than Microsoft alone.

The 2026 round is backed by an unusually deep bench: SoftBank committed about $30 billion (in three tranches across 2026), Nvidia up to $30 billion, and Amazon roughly $50 billion in compute credits, alongside Microsoft’s standing stake. The financing is tightly bound to compute — a recurring critique is the circularity of OpenAI, Nvidia, Oracle and SoftBank investing in and buying from one another.

Models and the GPT-5 line

OpenAI folded its separate “o-series” reasoning models into the unified GPT-5 family during 2025–2026; the models now blend fast responses and deeper reasoning under one line. Live benchmarks for each model render in the table below this page.

GPT-5.5 is the current default, generally available across ChatGPT, the API and Codex. It has an ~1.05M-token context window (400K in Codex), and posts about 82.6% on SWE-bench Verified (independently measured) and 58.6% on the memorisation-resistant SWE-bench Pro — strong, though Anthropic’s Claude Opus 4.7/4.8 lead on SWE-bench Pro. GPT-5.5’s clearest edge is agentic terminal coding, where it tops Terminal-Bench. OpenAI also ships GPT-5 Pro for maximum reasoning and the gpt-oss open-weight models. See best AI for coding and best AI models for where these rank; vendor numbers are a ceiling and standardised leaderboards a floor.

Products and ecosystem

• ChatGPT — the flagship assistant across web, mobile and desktop; 1B+ monthly users, with Free, Plus ($20), Pro ($200), Team, Enterprise and Edu tiers.
• API platform — the developer business, with the GPT-5 models, the Responses and Realtime APIs, tool use and the Agents SDK.
• Codex — OpenAI’s agentic coding tool (terminal, IDE and cloud), a direct rival to Claude Code; OpenAI’s fastest-growing product since its May 2026 push.
• Sora — text-to-video. The standalone Sora app was shut down in March 2026 over unsustainable compute cost (reportedly ~$1M/day at peak); Sora 2 continues with stronger physics, audio and control.
• DALL-E (image generation), Operator (a computer-using agent), and Deep Research.
• Stargate — the compute joint venture with SoftBank, Oracle and Nvidia; its flagship Abilene, Texas site (Oracle Cloud, Nvidia GB200) trained GPT-5.5.
• io — the hardware group from OpenAI’s 2025 acquisition of Jony Ive’s design startup, developing a dedicated AI device (not yet shipped).

Business and financials

OpenAI’s revenue reached roughly $25 billion annualised in 2026, on about a $2-billion-per-month run rate (Sacra). Growth is increasingly enterprise-led: business now makes up over 40% of revenue and is on track for parity with consumer by the end of 2026. On the consumer side, ChatGPT has 50 million-plus paid subscribers and over 1 billion monthly active users, with 900 million-plus weekly and a trajectory toward 1 billion weekly by year end.

Despite that revenue, OpenAI is not profitable: it spends enormous sums on compute and the Stargate build-out, and the scale of its committed capital and infrastructure deals is the central question hanging over the business.

Leadership

• Sam Altman — Chief Executive Officer and co-founder.
• Greg Brockman — President and co-founder.
• Jakub Pachocki — Chief Scientist (since 2024).
• Mark Chen — Chief Research Officer.
• Brad Lightcap — Chief Operating Officer.
• Sarah Friar — Chief Financial Officer (former Nextdoor CEO).
• Fidji Simo — CEO of Applications (joined 2025).

OpenAI saw notable churn in 2026: several executives departed in April (including Sora lead Bill Peebles and science VP Kevin Weil), and the company has been reshuffling its C-suite amid IPO preparations (CNBC).

Competition and market position

OpenAI’s dominant asset is distribution: ChatGPT is the default AI product for most of the world, and the API is the default for many developers. Its main rivals are Anthropic (which leads on coding and has overtaken OpenAI on revenue growth and valuation), Google (the only rival with a full owned stack — models, chips, cloud and distribution), and a fast-improving open-weight field led by DeepSeek and others.

OpenAI’s edge is breadth — frontier text models, image (DALL-E), video (Sora), voice, agents (Operator, Codex) and the largest consumer footprint — plus the Stargate compute commitment. Its pressure points are coding leadership (Claude is ahead on the hardest benchmarks), profitability, and the governance and legal overhang that comes with being the most visible company in AI.

Controversies

• Musk v. OpenAI. Elon Musk’s long-running suit against OpenAI, Altman, Brockman and Microsoft ended on 18 May 2026 when an Oakland jury found all of Musk’s claims time-barred; Musk has said he will appeal.
• New York Times copyright case. The consolidated copyright litigation in the Southern District of New York (16 suits) is ongoing; in early 2026 the court ordered OpenAI to produce around 20 million anonymised ChatGPT logs, raising user-privacy concerns alongside the copyright questions.
• Governance and the nonprofit mission. The recapitalisation into a PBC drew criticism that OpenAI has drifted from its founding nonprofit purpose, even as the Foundation retains formal control.
• Compute spend and circular financing. The interlocking investments and purchase commitments among OpenAI, Nvidia, Oracle and SoftBank have prompted questions about how much demand is real versus financed.
• Sora and content safety. Sora’s deepfake and likeness risks, and the March 2026 shutdown of the standalone app over cost, drew scrutiny.

Recent developments (2026)

• GPT-5.5 (23 April 2026) became the default model across ChatGPT, the API and Codex; GPT-5.2 was retired from ChatGPT in June.
• $852 billion valuation reached in the March 2026 round (~$122B committed), the largest private raise ever.
• ChatGPT passed 1 billion monthly active users in June 2026.
• Codex became OpenAI’s fastest-growing product after its May 2026 expansion.
• Musk’s lawsuit failed at trial in May 2026.
• Stargate scaled up, with GPT-5.5 trained at the Abilene, Texas flagship site.

Where OpenAI excels

• Distribution and brand. ChatGPT is the default AI for over a billion people; no rival matches its reach.
• Product breadth. Text, image, video, voice, agents and developer tooling under one roof.
• Agentic coding momentum. Codex is growing fast, and GPT-5.5 leads agentic terminal-coding benchmarks.
• Capital and compute. The Stargate build-out and a deep investor syndicate fund frontier-scale training.

Where OpenAI falls short

• Coding quality. On the hardest coding benchmarks (SWE-bench Pro), Claude leads GPT-5.5.
• Profitability. Heavy compute spend keeps OpenAI loss-making despite huge revenue.
• Legal and governance overhang. Copyright litigation, the log-disclosure order and PBC-conversion criticism are ongoing risks.
• Dependence on partners. Compute and capital are tightly tied to Microsoft, Oracle, Nvidia and SoftBank.

Developer resources

OpenAI’s developer stack centres on the API platform — the GPT-5 models (including GPT-5.5 and GPT-5 Pro), the Responses and Realtime APIs, structured outputs, tool use, the Agents SDK, and the gpt-oss open-weight models for self-hosting. Codex provides agentic coding in the terminal, IDEs and the cloud, and OpenAI’s models are available on Microsoft Azure (Azure OpenAI / Foundry) as well as OpenAI’s own platform. Pricing is on the pricing page and status at status.openai.com.

Frequently asked questions

Who owns OpenAI?

OpenAI is controlled by its nonprofit, the OpenAI Foundation, which oversees the for-profit OpenAI Group PBC and holds equity worth roughly $130 billion. Microsoft is the largest outside investor, with a stake of about 27% (valued ~$135 billion) after the 2025–2026 recapitalisation, alongside SoftBank, Nvidia, Amazon and others. No single investor controls the company.

How much is OpenAI worth?

OpenAI reached an $852 billion valuation in its March 2026 funding round — the largest private raise in history, with more than $120 billion committed — and is reported to be preparing for an IPO.

What is OpenAI’s latest model?

GPT-5.5, released on 23 April 2026, is the current flagship and the default in ChatGPT, the API and Codex. OpenAI also offers GPT-5 Pro for maximum reasoning and the open-weight gpt-oss models.

How many people use ChatGPT?

ChatGPT passed 1 billion monthly active users in June 2026, with over 900 million weekly active users and more than 50 million paying subscribers — the most-used AI product in the world.

Is OpenAI profitable?

No. OpenAI generates roughly $25 billion in annualised revenue (about $2 billion per month) but spends heavily on compute and the Stargate build-out, so it remains loss-making.

Is ChatGPT or Claude better?

It depends on the task. OpenAI’s ChatGPT has far greater reach and broader multimodal features (image, video, voice), while Anthropic’s Claude leads independent coding benchmarks and is often preferred for software engineering and long-document work. See ChatGPT vs Claude for the head-to-head.

What is Stargate?

Stargate is OpenAI’s compute build-out, a joint venture with SoftBank, Oracle and Nvidia. Its flagship site in Abilene, Texas runs on Oracle Cloud and Nvidia GB200 systems and was used to train GPT-5.5; it is among the largest infrastructure projects in the industry.

Models

Apps

• ChatGPT