OpenAI is a U.S.-based artificial intelligence research and deployment company founded in 2015, best known for creating ChatGPT and advancing safe, large-scale AI systems.

The OpenAI story began in December 2015 when tech leaders including Elon Musk, Sam Altman, Greg Brockman, Ilya Sutskever, and others launched the organization with the mission of ensuring that artificial general intelligence (AGI) benefits all of humanity. Initially structured as a non-profit, OpenAI focused on open research and collaboration, publishing breakthroughs in reinforcement learning and unsupervised language models. Over time, the group transitioned into a capped-profit model to attract the massive funding required to train frontier AI systems, while maintaining its commitment to safety and broad benefit.

OpenAI rose to global prominence with the release of ChatGPT in late 2022, which quickly became one of the fastest-growing consumer applications in history. Its underlying models, GPT‑3.5 and GPT‑4, demonstrated unprecedented capabilities in natural language understanding, reasoning, and content generation. Beyond chatbots, OpenAI has developed tools like Codex (for programming assistance) and DALL·E (for image generation), showcasing the versatility of large-scale AI. The company also emphasizes alignment research, safety guardrails, and partnerships with Microsoft, which invested billions and integrated OpenAI’s models into products like Azure and Microsoft 365.

Today, OpenAI is led by CEO Sam Altman, who has become one of the most visible figures in the AI boom. The company continues to balance innovation with caution, investing in biosecurity startups to mitigate risks and advocating for global AI governance frameworks. With infrastructure commitments projected at over $1 trillion and ambitions to scale AI into every sector, OpenAI positions itself not only as a technology leader but also as a steward of how advanced AI reshapes economies, societies, and human creativity.