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OpenAI scraps controversial plan to become for-profit after mounting pressure

The nonprofit board will retain control, but now investor billions hang in the balance.

The restructuring would have also allowed OpenAI to remove the cap on returns for investors, potentially making the firm more appealing to venture capitalists, with the nonprofit arm continuing to exist but only as a minority stakeholder rather than maintaining governance control. In April, a group of legal scholars, AI researchers, and tech industry watchdogs openly opposed OpenAI's plans to restructure, sending a letter to the attorneys general of California and Delaware. Former OpenAI employees, Nobel laureates, and law professors also sent letters to state officials requesting that they halt the restructuring efforts out of safety concerns about which part of the company would be in control of hypothetical superintelligent future AI products.

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