OpenAI Turns 10: From Nonprofit Lab to $500B AI Powerhouse

From a small nonprofit research lab to a for-profit startup valued at more than 500 billion dollars in exactly ten years — that is the remarkable trajectory of OpenAI. Along the way, some of the world’s most powerful technology companies poured tens of billions of dollars into the organization, and their role in shaping the rise of generative artificial intelligence is impossible to deny.

OpenAI was founded a decade ago, on December 11, 2015, when Elon Musk and a small group of tech-savvy entrepreneurs — among them a then-lesser-known Sam Altman — committed roughly one billion dollars to create a nonprofit lab dedicated to developing artificial intelligence “for the benefit of humanity.” The original vision was ambitious and idealistic: open research, shared progress, and safeguards against AI becoming concentrated in the hands of a few corporations or governments.

Ten years later, the organization still called OpenAI has largely shed its nonprofit character. Its estimated valuation now exceeds 500 billion dollars, placing it among the most valuable technology companies on the planet — a striking outcome for a project that began as an experiment in open, nonprofit research.

From research lab to global phenomenon

For much of its first seven years, OpenAI operated mostly under the radar, known primarily within academic and developer circles. That changed dramatically three years ago with the public release of ChatGPT. The conversational AI system quickly became a global sensation, drawing millions of users within days and fundamentally reshaping how the public perceived artificial intelligence.

By that time, Elon Musk was no longer involved with the organization. Just months after ChatGPT’s debut, the world’s richest man launched his own AI company, xAI. Even under optimistic estimates, xAI’s current valuation is believed to be no more than half of OpenAI’s — a telling comparison that underscores how dominant OpenAI has become in the generative AI space.

Nvidia and the hardware foundation

One of OpenAI’s most crucial partners since its earliest days has been Nvidia, now the world’s most valuable semiconductor company. The AI boom propelled Nvidia to unprecedented heights, and OpenAI played a significant role in that ascent.

In 2016, Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang personally delivered OpenAI’s first DGX-1 supercomputer, a machine that cost around 300 000 dollars per unit and represented billions of dollars in research and development investment by the Santa Clara-based chipmaker. The system was shipped at Elon Musk’s request and tailored specifically for large-scale AI workloads.

Huang later admitted that he “turned a little pale” upon learning that such an expensive machine would be used by a nonprofit organization — a moment that neatly illustrates the tension between idealism and the immense capital requirements of cutting-edge AI research.

Tensions with Musk

That very nonprofit structure later became a source of seemingly irreconcilable conflict between Elon Musk and Sam Altman, who became OpenAI’s CEO in 2019. Their disagreements date back to 2017, when Musk reportedly threatened to stop funding the organization if it transitioned toward a for-profit model.

The dispute escalated publicly in 2024, when Musk sued OpenAI and repeatedly criticized its close relationship with Microsoft, one of its most important investors. At one point, Musk even made a 97 billion-dollar acquisition offer for the company — an offer that ultimately went nowhere. He withdrew the lawsuit later that same year, only to file a new one in 2025, this time accusing OpenAI and Apple of anti-competitive behavior.

Rivals born from within

OpenAI has not only inspired external competitors like xAI but has also given rise to rivals from within its own ranks. One of the most notable is Anthropic, founded at the end of 2020 by the Amodei brothers after they left OpenAI. Anthropic has positioned itself as a safety-focused AI company and has rapidly gained investor confidence.

The company is currently in the midst of another funding round that could push its valuation as high as 350 billion dollars. Major technology players such as Microsoft and Nvidia are rumored to be among the potential backers, highlighting how intensely competitive — and capital-heavy — the AI sector has become.

Big tech backing and bold forecasts

OpenAI’s influence is further underscored by the list of companies standing behind it. Microsoft, Oracle, Nvidia, and Amazon all count themselves among its strategic partners and investors, treating their involvement as a long-term bet on the future of artificial intelligence.

Exactly how long-term these commitments are remains unclear, but Sam Altman has publicly suggested that OpenAI’s projected revenue of around 20 billion dollars this year could grow to several hundred billion dollars annually by 2030 — a forecast that would place the company among the most profitable enterprises in history.

Pressure from Google

The most serious near-term challenge to these ambitions may come from Google. With the release of Gemini 3.0 last month, Google appears to have reached a significant technological milestone. In response, OpenAI rapidly reallocated resources to accelerate and sharpen ChatGPT’s development.

One of the first visible outcomes of this push was the release of ChatGPT-5.2 on Thursday. According to developers, it currently delivers the most accurate and reliable results for everyday professional use, setting a new benchmark in practical AI performance.

In a recent interview with CNBC, Altman sought to temper concerns about Google’s advances. He stated that, in the short term, Gemini’s impact on OpenAI’s results was far smaller than management had initially expected — suggesting that the race at the top of AI development remains very much open.

OpenAI’s first decade tells a story of rapid evolution, internal conflict, and extraordinary technological acceleration. What began as a nonprofit experiment has become one of the defining forces of the modern tech industry, shaping not only how AI is built, but how society interacts with machines that can think, write, and reason alongside us.

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