The Empire of Intelligence: OpenAI's Power Map

CRITICAL CONTEXT: FROM IDEALISTIC FOUNDING TO STRATEGIC DOMINANCE

OpenAI was founded in 2015 as a non-profit artificial intelligence research company. Its clear-cut mission statement was introduced in the company’s opening blog post: “Our goal is to advance digital intelligence in the way that is most likely to benefit humanity as a whole, unconstrained by a need to generate financial return.” Over the next decade the company’s makeup would evolve dramatically into one of the most valuable private companies in the world. 

• 2015 – Inception: Created to pursue safe Artificial General Intelligence (AGI), key founding members included Sam Altman, Elon Musk, Ilya Sutskever, Greg Brockman and Andrej Karpathy. The lab was framed as an open and collaborative alternative to secretive profit-driven entities such as DeepMind which had been acquired by Google in 2014.

• Founding Funders: Despite an initial announcement of a $1b pledge in donations to fund the non-profit lab, ultimately, a more modest figure of $130.5m was raised. Key donors included Elon Musk, Peter Thiel, Reid Hoffman, Sam Altman and Jessica Livingston. 

• Early Years: Initially, OpenAI was not focused on the chatbot it is now most famous for. Instead, its research spanned safety, robotics, reinforcement learning, and game-based intelligence – prioritizing open platforms like the lesser-known OpenAI Gym and Universe.

• Shifting Alignment: Leaked emails between the likes of Musk, Altman, Sutskever and Brockman, show that by mid-2017, the co-founders were discussing transitioning the company to a for-profit structure.

• The Beginning of a Rift: Musk initially proposed a supermajority investment by himself with him also becoming CEO of the company. In September 2017, he stated “I would unequivocally have initial control of the company, but this will change quickly”. Sutskever pushed back a week later stating, “The current structure provides you with a path where you end up with unilateral absolute control over the AGI.

• 2018 – Musk’s Departure: Tensions continued to grow when both Musk and Andrej Karpathy, another founding member who went on to become Director of AI at Tesla, suggested OpenAI attach itself to Tesla to provide the funds required to keep up with Google DeepMind. By February 2018, Elon officially stepped away from the company though communication persisted.

• 2019 – For-Profit: In 2019, Altman announced the creation of a new “capped-profit” company OpenAI LP which would be controlled by OpenAI Nonprofit’s board. Investors included Reid Hoffman, Khosla Ventures and most notably, $1b from Microsoft which entitled them to  a share of OpenAI LP’s profits, capped at roughly 10× their investment. Since 2019, Microsoft’s total investment has increased to almost $14b today.

• 2022 – ChatGPT Goes Mainstream: ChatGPT (GPT-3.5) launches in November and surpasses 100M users in two months. The product-market fit for conversational AI becomes undeniable.

• 2023 Altman Ouster: In November 2023, Sam Altman was abruptly removed  from his role on the board and fired as CEO. The board members behind this action stated that Altman was "not consistently candid in his communications". Five days later, however, Altman was reinstated following pressure from employees and investors alike. The following months saw an exodus of high-profile leaders within the organisation such as Ilya Sutskever, Andrej Karpathy, John Schulman (all co-founders) and Mira Murati (CTO) the following year.

OpenAI's mission to create safe AGI pulled together the world's most ambitious AI researchers and entrepreneurs – but that same mission has fueled a turbulent, controversy-laden rise. While Sam Altman appears to be the power center, fundamental control lies with a nonprofit board where he holds just one vote.

DECODING OPENAI’S LEADERSHIP LABYRINTH

OpenAI has transformed from a non-profit research laboratory into a $300b behemoth in less than a decade. For nearly half of its existence, it operated as a pure nonprofit, with a mission explicitly opposed to profit maximization. Sam Altman is the face of this giant, but coverage of the company's decision-makers rarely digs deeper than this face. Behind him is one of the strangest power structures in Silicon Valley – a web of subsidiaries which all sit below the all-powerful but less known individuals on the nonprofit board (see figure below). 

The Court of Compute: OpenAI's ten-person board of directors controls the nonprofit entity that governs the company's for-profit arm. As a public charity, the board is meant to uphold OpenAI's founding mission – ensuring AGI benefits all humanity – rather than maximize returns. Each member holds equal voting power and is expected to act free from personal financial interest. Despite the mandate for financial neutrality, key board members sit at the center of OpenAI's commercial ecosystem.

Bret Taylor (Chair)

• Background: A seasoned Silicon Valley executive who co-created Google Maps, served as Facebook's CTO, and successfully sold his collaboration startup Quip to Salesforce for $750 million. Taylor was brought in to chair the board following the November 2023 governance crisis which saw Sam Altman briefly removed from the company.

• Conflicting Interests: Taylor is CEO and co-founder of Sierra AI, a $4.5B company that is building AI agents using OpenAI’s models. He has also invested in multiple companies (e.g. Salesforce, Socket) that have partnerships with OpenAI. These intertwined interests led to Taylor stating “I’ll recuse myself whenever there is a potential for overlap”.

Adebayo Ogunlesi

• Background: A Nigerian-born infrastructure investment specialist who built Global Infrastructure Partners (GIP) into a $170 billion asset management firm. His expertise in large-scale strategic investments and international markets brings a global business perspective to AI governance decisions.

• Conflicting Interests: Ogunlesi's fund co-leads a $30B AI data center initiative backed by Microsoft and MGX, Abu Dhabi's government AI fund, which is also an investor in OpenAI's Project Stargate. Additionally, GIP owns major stakes in data center operator CyrusOne and telecommunications infrastructure company Vantage Towers, both positioned to benefit directly from AI infrastructure demand. Ogunlesi, still an employee of GIP which was acquired by BlackRock last year, is eligible for a performance based bonus of at least $3.75m and is also eligible to make co-investments in certain GIP funds.

Adam D'Angelo

• Background: Quora's CEO and the longest-serving continuous board member, with full context of OpenAI's evolution from nonprofit research lab to commercial powerhouse. 

• Conflicting Interests: As CEO of Quora (which runs Poe, a major customer of OpenAI’s models), D’Angelo directly oversees a company that both competes with and depends on OpenAI. Altman and Brockman previously argued he should step down due to this conflict, yet he remains on the board.

Sam Altman (CEO and Board Member) 

• Background: Former Y Combinator president and a prolific angel investor who has written well over 100 cheques for start-ups. He uniquely serves as both OpenAI's CEO and a voting board member – a dual role that consolidates power while creating inherent conflicts of interest.

• Conflicting Interests: Sam Altman’s investment portfolio contains a total of 11 companies that have confirmed partnerships with OpenAI. He owns around 7.5% of Reddit which announced a partnership with OpenAI last year to sell training data. When this partnership became public, Reddit stock rose 13% increasing Altman’s paper net worth by $50m in a day. OpenAI has also reportedly been in talks with Helion Energy (a nuclear fusion start-up) to acquire “vast quantities of electricity” for data centres. Altman has invested $375m into the company.

These conflicts matter because OpenAI's board doesn't just govern a company – it plays a major role in shaping the future of artificial intelligence. Every decision about safety protocols, commercial partnerships, and AGI development can be endorsed, vetoed and are ultimately decided by the directors. The question isn't whether these conflicts exist, but whether they can be ethically managed as OpenAI continues its steep ascent. 

EXODUS – THE OPENAI DIASPORA

OpenAI’s ascent has been far from smooth sailing, and many have jumped ship or been coaxed away during this volatile journey. Elon Musk’s departure was one of the most dramatic and led to the founding of xAI now valued at $80b. Though Musk’s feud with OpenAI and Altman is the most well publicised, many others have departed OpenAI due to ideological differences. Downstream from these differences are companies whose cumulative value now exceeds $100b.

Anthropic – “Safe AI”

• Founders: Dario & Daniela Amodei (ex-OpenAI research & safety leads)

• Valuation: $61.5B (2024)

• Mission: Constitutional AI – embedding ethical rules into model behavior. Anthropic’s flagship product Claude is, however, firmly closed source. 

• Departure Trigger: Fundamental disagreements on safety vs. speed.

• Behind Closed Doors: In Empire of AI, Karen Hao writes how the Amodeis reportedly described Altman’s tactics as “gaslighting” and “psychological abuse.”

Safe Superintelligence Inc. (SSI) – The Alignment Mission

• Founders: Ilya Sutskever (OpenAI co-founder, former Chief Scientist), John Schulman (OpenAI co-founder), and Daniel Levy (former head of the Optimization team).

• Valuation: $32B (2025)

• Mission: A single-focus company dedicated solely to safe superintelligence. No products, no platform – just alignment.

• Behind Closed Doors: Despite his farewell message on X praising Altman, Sutskever reportedly told colleagues: “I don’t think Sam is the guy who should have the finger on the button for AGI.”

• Acquisition Attempt: Meta and Zuckerberg allegedly attempted (unsuccessfully) to acquire SSI before it invested $14.3b into Scale AI. 

Perplexity AI – The Google Challenger

• Founder: Aravind Srinivas (ex-OpenAI research scientist)

• Valuation: $14B (2025)

• Mission: The world's first AI search engine. Real-time internet search to deliver answers with sources and citations. 

• Acquisition Attempts: Meta was also reported to have held conversations with Perplexity about an acquisition. According to Bloomberg Apple has also held internal discussions regarding an acquisition of Perplexity. 

Thinking Machine Labs – The Democratization Play

• Founder: Mira Murati (ex-CTO of OpenAI, briefly interim CEO during Altman’s 2023 ouster)

• Valuation: $10B (raised $2B in the largest seed round in history)

• Mission: Democratize access to high-end AI tooling; reduce centralization engendered by the dominant closed source labs. 

• Behind Closed Doors: The Atlantic reported Murati expressed discomfort with Altman’s leadership, allegedly telling colleagues: “I don’t feel comfortable about Sam leading us to AGI.”. 

As the AGI race accelerates, OpenAI finds itself battling not just competitors like Google or Meta – but its own alumni. Former employees are raising multi-billion-dollar rounds without a product. Competitor compensation packages are now closing in on the value of OpenAI’s original seed funding. The company may be leading the charge toward AGI, but its fiercest competition may come from those who built the engine and walked away. OpenAI’s greatest threat may not be technical – it may be holding onto the talent that made it formidable in the first place.

OPENAI TODAY: BUILDING THE STACK, CLOSING THE LOOP

The AGI race is accelerating, and OpenAI intends to win it. While definitions of AGI remain subjective, LLMs are becoming more powerful and disruptive by the week. OpenAI has shot to fame thanks to ChatGPT but behind this model are more than parameters, there is a new tech giant taking shape which shows no signs of slowing down and intends to play a  part in every stage  of this race.

• Project Stargate – Infrastructure at Scale: Announced in 2025 by U.S. President Donald Trump, Stargate is a $100 billion joint venture between Oracle, Softbank, and Emirati fund MGX. Dubbed the “largest AI infrastructure project in history,” it aims to build a foundational pillar of U.S. digital infrastructure - the compute backbone of the touted AGI era., with investment projections reaching $500 billion by 2029.

  

  Trump, Larry Ellison, Masayoshi Son and Sam Altman. Source: Bloomberg, Aaron Schwartz

• Full-Stack Ambitions: In May 2025, OpenAI acquired Windsurf (AI coding assistant) for $3B and io – Jony Ive’s AI hardware startup – for $6.4B. The goal isn’t just software products, it’s end-to-end dominance with novel hardware intended to redefine human-tech interaction.

  

  Jony Ive and Sam Altman pictured together for the 'io' acqusition announcement. Source: OpenAI

• Restructuring for Autonomy: OpenAI is in the process of transitioning from a capped-profit structure to a public-benefit corporation, following other giants in the space such as Anthropic and xAI. This enables equity offerings and opens the door to an IPO. Microsoft, despite investing $14B, faces a diluted position. Its 49% profit share could convert to 33% equity, and it may lose future model access and IP rights.

• Meta Offensive: In the past week, Meta has raided OpenAI’s ranks, hiring at least eight researchers for its new “Superintelligence Labs.” A leaked internal memo revealed Altman’s take on the heist: “Missionaries will beat mercenaries.” but also recognizing that OpenAI’s compensation packages will be reassessed.