OpenAI will remain a nonprofit company | Press review n°5

A selection of important news about artificial intelligence during the week of May 5 to 11, 2025.

Image from Placidplace on Pixabay

Welcome to the fifth press review of Artificial reality. I publish a selection of the latest important developments in AI every week. Have a good read!

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📰 Read

OpenAI will remain a nonprofit company

The company which owns ChatGPT abandons its plan to become a for-profit business. In a press release published on Monday, it explains having taken that decision “after hearing from civic leaders and having discussions with the offices of the Attorneys General of California and Delaware”, where it is respectively headquartered and registered.

OpenAI was founded in 2015 as a nonprofit research laboratory to “benefit all of humanity”. But this idealistic objective quickly proved difficult to keep because of the very important fundraising needs associated with building advanced artificial intelligence systems. It thus considered becoming a for-profit company to be able “to directly consider the interests” of investors, which provoked negative reactions, in particular from Elon Musk.

The businessman, who cofounded OpenAI before leaving three years later, filed two lawsuits against the AI lab. He claims the company abandoned his mission to benefit humanity when it entered in a partnership with Microsoft. Meta also opposed its potential switch to a for-profit.

The new organization of OpenAI, which has to be approved by the attorney general offices in California and Delaware by early 2026, will therefore maintain the nonprofit structure already in place, which will continue to control the for-profit subsidiary. The latter will become a Public Benefit Corporation, a type of company whose goals include making a positive impact on society. AI companies Anthropic and xAI also operate under this structure.

Interviewed in Wired, the copresident of Public Citizen, a consumer rights advocacy group, remains skeptical about the decision of OpenAI.

“This leaves us where we are, which is with a nonprofit purportedly controlling a for-profit but exercising no visible restraint on the for-profit.”

- Robert Weissman

Other important news of the week

• All your data belong to us

• Zuckerberg’s Grand Vision: Most of Your Friends Will Be AI

• Zuckerberg’s new Meta AI app gets personal in a very creepy way

• Meta to Add Facial Recognition To Glasses After All

• Meta’s AI app is a nightmarish social feed

• Meta Taps New Head of AI Lab After Staffer’s Return From Google

• OpenAI Hires Instacart C.E.O. to Run Business and Operations

• OpenAI and the FDA Are Holding Talks About Using AI In Drug Evaluation

• OpenAI expects to cut share of revenue it pays Microsoft by 2030

• OpenAI Reaches Agreement to Buy Startup Windsurf for $3 Billion

• Introducing OpenAI for Countries

• Apple Eyes Move to AI Search, Ending Era Defined by Google

• Apple’s Existential Crisis: Can It Build a Future Around AI?

• Apple is planning smart glasses with and without AR

• Elon Musk's Grok AI Will 'Remove Her Clothes' In Public, On X

• Musk's xAI joins TWG Global, Palantir for AI push in financial sector

• New Funding Talks Could Value Elon Musk’s xAI at $120 Billion

• Amazon Has Made a Robot With a Sense of Touch

• Amazon offers peek at new human jobs in an AI bot world

• The Hidden Dangers of AI Chatbots

• The Giants of Silicon Valley Are Having a Midlife Crisis Over AI

• U.S. to Overhaul Curbs on AI Chip Exports After Industry Backlash

• AI’s Threat to Google Just Got Real

• AI Is Not Your Friend

• Microsoft employees are banned from using DeepSeek app, president says

• DeepSeek Punctured the Myth That Silicon Valley Could Control AI

• Neuralink implant enables patient to make YouTube videos with generative AI’s help

• By 2026, most firms expect to have a Chief AI Officer on staff

• Mistral claims its newest AI model delivers leading performance for the price

• AI to flag suspicious behavior on New York City subways

• Predictive policing AI is on the rise − making it accountable to the public could curb its harmful effects

• Google agrees to fund the development of three new nuclear sites

• Why the UAE has mandated AI learning in schools

• Reddit will tighten verification to keep out human-like AI bots

• Anthropic rolls out an API for AI-powered web search

• Anthropic launches a program to support scientific research

• A.I. Is Getting More Powerful, but Its Hallucinations Are Getting Worse

• Over 250 CEOs sign open letter supporting K-12 AI and computer science education

• US Border Agents Are Asking for Help Taking Photos of Everyone Entering the Country by Car

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🎥 Watch

Top executives of OpenAI, Microsoft, AMD and CoreWeave testified before the American Congress on Thursday about the opportunities, risks and needs of the artificial intelligence industry. They called the members of the Committee on Commerce to reduce regulations in this sector and to support data centers and energy infrastructures investments to help the United States keep its lead over China.

The senators also adressed other themes such as cybersecurity, data privacy, energy needs of AI and the fact that it’s able to create content that can mislead people.

Read: OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and other US tech leaders testify to Congress on AI competition with China and OpenAI, Microsoft tell Senate ‘no one country can win AI’

Other important videos of the week

• Apple Exploring AI Search Options in Move Away From Google

• How AI Is Changing Art for Creatives

• David Sacks Explains How AI Will Go 1,000,000x in Four Years

• This is the dawn of machine consciousness | Joscha Bach full interview

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🔈 Listen

In the latest episode of Hard Fork, the tech podcast of The New York Times, author Karen Hao presents her new book Empire of AI, which talks in details about OpenAI. She believes the benefits of using ChatGPT do not outweigh the moral costs.

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Thank you for reading the fifth press review of Artificial reality! Have a good week.