Tech belongs to the world vs startup compensation
OpenAI Founding Press Release — founding announcement, OpenAI Announcement Post
“OpenAI is a non-profit artificial intelligence research company. 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.”
Sam Altman to Elon Musk — private email exchange, Founding correspondence released in Musk v. Altman
“We need to structure a startup-like equity compensation plan or researchers will simply take the $2M offers at DeepMind. The non-profit structure is great for optics and mission, but we need equity upside to retain talent.”
The Split:The founding charter promised a pure non-profit unconstrained by financial return. In founding emails, Altman was already planning startup equity upside to compete with Google, describing the non-profit model as great for 'optics'.
When an ambitious tech venture announces a non-profit structure 'for humanity', check whether the term sheet contains convertible equity promises.