Ten years after its launch on December 11, 2015, as a non-profit research lab dedicated to developing artificial intelligence “for the benefit of humanity,” OpenAI seems far removed from its initial vision. Born with $1 billion in backing from Elon Musk and a group of tech pioneers, the project was intended to be free from commercial pressures, but it has now become one of the fastest-growing commercial entities in the world.
Musk’s Departure… and the Beginning of the Split
Elon Musk, who was the most prominent backer during the founding years, withdrew from OpenAI in early 2018 and later created its competitor, xAI. Over the past two years, his conflict with co-founder and CEO Sam Altman has taken on a fiercely competitive legal and media dimension.
In 2024, Musk filed a lawsuit against the company, accusing it of abandoning its original mission. He criticized its close ties to Microsoft, its current largest shareholder, and even attempted to prevent its transformation into a for-profit entity. He later sought to acquire it for $97.4 billion, an offer that was rejected.
Last October, OpenAI announced the completion of a restructuring process that allowed the non-profit organization to retain control of the newly formed for-profit company, with several major investors in attendance.
OpenAI: From a Small Lab to the Top
Just three years after launching ChatGPT, OpenAI’s valuation has skyrocketed to $500 billion, boasting over 800 million weekly users for the world’s most popular chatbot. Meanwhile, Musk’s competitor, xAI, has a market capitalization of $230 billion. The two companies are leading the AI race alongside Google, Anthropic, and Meta in building AI models. The AI market is expanding beyond text-generating robots to include video generation and AI agents that perform complex tasks autonomously on behalf of users, benefiting large enterprises and boosting productivity.
OpenAI is preparing to spend up to $1.4 trillion to build a massive infrastructure, including giant data centers and advanced chips, to meet the growing demand for its services. However, there are significant doubts about the viability of this investment and its financial returns. It remains to be seen whether the company itself will continue to grow and compete with established tech giants, or whether it will suffer the same fate as other internet companies that faded away after short-lived growth spurts.
Anthropic: A New Competitor. Dorio and Daniela Amudai, early OpenAI employees, left the company in 2020 to found Anthropic, which recently announced new investments from Microsoft and Nvidia, valuing it at $350 billion. Anthropic’s cloud models are a direct competitor to OpenAI’s GPT series and Google’s Gemini models.
Anthropic has committed to spending around $100 billion on advanced computing infrastructure, while Altman is betting on unprecedented spending exceeding $1 trillion.
Altman promises huge profits.
Sam Altman asserts that the current demand for OpenAI services justifies the massive investments. He expects the company’s annual revenue to reach $20 billion by the end of the year and hundreds of billions by 2030.
Major technology companies are also benefiting from this growth. Oracle has signed a $500 billion contract to provide OpenAI with infrastructure over the next five years, in addition to other contracts with Nvidia, AMD, Broadcom, and others.
The race for cutting-edge models continues.
Following Google’s strong comeback with its new Gemini 3 model, Altman declared a “state of emergency” within his company to refocus efforts on making ChatGPT faster, more reliable, and more user-friendly, while postponing some other projects for the time being.
This “state of emergency” resulted in the release of GPT-5.2, which the company describes as “the best model for everyday business tasks,” as well as the announcement of a three-year, $1 billion deal with Disney supporting the Sora video generation model, with a promise to reveal more new developments in January.
As the AI race continues to escalate at an unprecedented pace, OpenAI appears to be at the heart of a major commercial and technological battle that is reshaping the global tech industry.
With investments ballooning and competition intensifying, the question remains whether the company can maintain its leading position or succumb to competitive pressure and the coming wave of innovation. The next decade will be a crucial turning point in the future of AI and the fate of the major companies currently shaping it.