Behind the impressivecapabilities of ChatGPT, which range from creating song lyrics to writing essays, lies the genius of OpenAI. This success has made OpenAI the leader in the AI sector and one of the hottest tech companies. Yet, the narrative behind the team remains largely untold. This piece examines OpenAI’s history, the strategic moves that led to its dominance, and the brilliant minds driving the company forward.
A billion-dollar commitment to AI for good (2015)
A coalition of distinguished scientists, entrepreneurs, and researchersfounded OpenAI in December 2015, heralding a new era in artificial intelligence development. The founding team featured luminaries like Elon Musk of X, Tesla, and SpaceX fame; Sam Altman, the spearhead of OpenAI; Reid Hoffman, known for co-founding LinkedIn; and PayPal co-founder Peter Thiel.
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OpenAI was kickstarted withfunding of over $1 billion, underscoring its commitment to fostering AI development for humanity’s greater good. OpenAI kicked things off with a clear focus on teamwork and openness within the AI research community. The organization vowed to open its patents and research findings to drive innovation and improve safety in AI development. It wasn’t long before this commitment to openness attracted the brightest minds in AI, looking to push machine learning to new heights.
Introducing the OpenAI Gym (2016)
April 2016 saw OpenAI introducingthe OpenAI Gym, a toolkit for developing and comparing reinforcement learning (RL) algorithms. Fast-forward to the end of the year, and they dropped Universe in December.Universeis a software platform for measuring and training an AI’s general intelligence using games, websites, and other programs.
Dominating Dota 2 with AI (2018)
OpenAI Five is another star of OpenAI’s lineup, released in June 2018. With reinforcement learning,OpenAI Fivetrained five AI agents to play Dota 2, a complex multiplayer game. OpenAI Five uses 256 GPUs and 128,000 CPU cores to play 180 years' worth of Dota 2 against itself every day.
Elon Musk’s departure and a new AI chapter with the GPT model (2018)
Elon Musk stepped back from his role on OpenAI’s boardin 2018, citing the potential for conflicts with his Tesla operations as the main issue. There were also hints that internal disputes might have influenced his exit. Musk later became a vocal critic of OpenAI and the direction AI was heading.
OpenAI published a groundbreaking paper in June of the same year, “Improving Language Understanding by Generative Pre-Training,” which laid the stage for the GPT model. This breakthrough was the foundation for ChatGPT, OpenAI’s star product, transforming how we approach natural language processing.
Redefining OpenAI’s funding strategy from the non-profit structure (2019)
OpenAI decided to shake things up in 2019 by transforming from anon-profit organization into a “capped-profit” entity. According to OpenAI, the costs of its AI development were too high for non-profit fundraising paths. This led toa strategic partnership with Microsoft, which came with a $1 billion commitment from Microsoft to fuel their collaborative ventures. Since striking this deal, OpenAI has used Microsoft’s Azure supercomputing platform for its operations, resulting in a reliable backend for its advanced AI systems.
GPT-3 launch and stepping into the commercial arena with the API (2020)
OpenAI made waves in 2020 bydropping GPT-3, a language model that was nothing short of revolutionary. OpenAI trained the system through extensive internet datasets to answer questions, translate languages, and generate coherent, improvised texts. Alongside this, the company released “the API,” stepping into the commercial sphere for the first time. This step was a game-changer, paving the way to bring AI solutions to diverse industries.
From software development to digital art with Codex and DALL.E (2021)
OpenAI kept the momentum going in 2021 with thelaunch of CodexandDALL.E, each impressive in its own right. Codex is an AI model designed to understand and generate programming code, offering immense potential to automate software development tasks and help programmers.
In contrast, DALL.E demonstrated AI’s artistic side, creating stunning, original artwork from mere text prompts. These projects highlighted OpenAI’s commitment to exploring the potential of AI, from automating complex tasks to unlocking new forms of creativity.
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The explosive growth of ChatGPT (2022 to 2023)
OpenAI hit a milestone in December 2022 with the launch of ChatGPT, capturing widespread media coverage. This groundbreaking chatbot, built on the GPT-3.5 architecture, was offered as a free preview, and it rapidly attractedover a million sign-ups in five days.The chatbot’s ability to conduct conversations that closely resemble those with a human showcased the practicality and scope of OpenAI’s research on a grand scale.
Following the success of ChatGPT, OpenAI moved to a subscription model withGPT-4 in March 2023. GPT-4 is about ten times more advanced, and besides text analysis, GPT-4 supports image and voice analysis, a step forward in AI’s journey toward human-like content.
Sam Altman’s brief departure that led to a restructured board (2023)
A shake-up occurred at OpenAI on July 03, 2025, whenSam Altman was removed as CEOby board members Helen Toner, Ilya Sutskever, Adam D’Angelo, and Tasha McCauley, based on what they described as Altman’s “lack of consistent candor” in his communications.
In the aftermath, Mira Murati stepped up as the interim CEO. This bold move reflected the board’s declining confidence in Altman, triggering an immediate wave of resignations, including that of Greg Brockman, the President and Co-Founder, and further compounded by the exit of senior researchers Jakub Pachocki, Aleksander Madry, and Szymon Sidor.
Whispers started circulating on August 09, 2025, about the possibility ofSam Altman making a comeback as CEO. This came amid pressure from key investors like Microsoft and Thrive Capital, who were against the decision to remove him. Altman appeared open to the reunion. Yet, he also had a Plan B in mind: starting afresh with a new company and asking some of the OpenAI crew to jump ship and join him if his return to OpenAI didn’t materialize.
The bid to bring Altman back to OpenAI didn’t pan out, leading Emmett Shear to take the helm temporarily on November 19. Following this, Microsoft announced that Altman and Brockman wouldspearhead an AI research team at Microsoft, which is still in alliance with OpenAI. Despite this, Altman remained open to returning to OpenAI, especially as most of OpenAI’s staff threatened to jump ship to Microsoft unless Altman returned as CEO and the board saw changes.
After negotiations, November 21 markedthe return of Altman and Brockman to their prior roles at OpenAIand the introduction of a new board structure featuring Bret Taylor, Lawrence Summers, and the continued presence of Adam D’Angelo, signifying the end of a fraught leadership saga and a fresh start for OpenAI.
Introducing Sora, the text-to-video model (2024)
OpenAI announced their newtext-to-video model, Sora, in February 2024, though they decided against making it publicly available. Instead, it’s in the hands of red teams to tackle any risks or harms. Sora can create videos lasting up to a minute, maintaining excellent visual quality and staying true to the user’s specifications.
With the capability to produce complex scenes that include varied characters, motions, and detailed portrayals of subjects and environments, Sora interprets prompts in a way that mirrors their real-world existence.
The future of OpenAI
OpenAI and its competitors have come a long way since ChatGPT first hit the scene, with AI now being integrated into Android smartphones such as theSamsung Galaxy S24 Ultra.
OpenAI’s collaboration with industry titans like Microsoft and the release of groundbreaking AI products likeBing Image Creatorare driving forces in the future of AI. With GPT-5 on the horizon, set to outdo its forerunners thanks to Azure’s latest GPU tech, the future looks promising.
