Nonprofit Commission publishes its report to OpenAI's board

An independent commission convened by OpenAI to advise on the future of its nonprofit published its report to the company’s board. Chaired by Daniel Zingale and including members such as labour organiser Dolores Huerta, the commission said it had consulted OpenAI’s senior engineers but deliberately avoided direct contact with chief executive Sam Altman to preserve its independence, and drew on more than 500 nonprofits and community groups through a series of listening sessions.

The report argued that OpenAI should continue to be controlled by its nonprofit arm because the technology it was developing was “too consequential” to be governed by a corporation alone, and that a human should lead the nonprofit rather than treat it as a passive holding vehicle. Its recommendations focused on how that nonprofit should behave once resourced, rather than fixing a specific figure: it proposed OpenAI direct philanthropic capital toward closing gaps in economic opportunity and AI literacy, fund a rapid-response mechanism for communities affected by the technology, and build governance structures that gave ordinary people, not just experts, a voice in how the nonprofit’s resources were used.

The report landed in the middle of OpenAI’s contested conversion of its for-profit arm into a public benefit corporation, a process opposed by the California and Delaware attorneys general, some former employees, and a lawsuit from Elon Musk, all of whom argued the restructuring risked diluting the nonprofit’s founding mission. It gave OpenAI’s board public cover to argue that outside voices, not just its own leadership, favoured continued nonprofit control. The board followed two months later by announcing that the nonprofit would hold a stake it valued at more than $100 billion in the restructured company — a figure the commission’s report had not itself specified.