What is OpenAI? The Company Behind ChatGPT Explained (2026)

Beginner

TLDR

OpenAI is an AI research and deployment company that created ChatGPT, GPT-4, DALL-E, and Sora. It is one of the most influential AI labs in the world.

OpenAI was founded in 2015 as a nonprofit AI research lab with the goal of ensuring that artificial general intelligence benefits all of humanity. Its early backers included Elon Musk and Peter Thiel. Sam Altman became CEO in 2019.

OpenAI transitioned to a capped-profit model to attract investment. It has since received billions of dollars from Microsoft, which integrated OpenAI models into Bing, Office, Azure, and other products.

OpenAI's most important products include ChatGPT (their AI chatbot), GPT-4o (their flagship language model), DALL-E (image generation), Sora (video generation), and the OpenAI API, which powers thousands of third-party applications.

OpenAI operates at the center of ongoing debates about AI safety, regulation, and the pace of development. Its relationship with Elon Musk deteriorated publicly, and several founding researchers left to start rival labs including Anthropic.

In practice

ChatGPT

The most widely used AI chatbot in the world, built on OpenAI's GPT models and available at chat.openai.com.

The OpenAI API

The API lets developers build applications using GPT-4o, Whisper (speech recognition), DALL-E, and other OpenAI models. Thousands of products run on it.

Sora

OpenAI's video generation model, capable of producing realistic short videos from text prompts.

Frequently asked questions

Is OpenAI a nonprofit?+

OpenAI started as a nonprofit but restructured into a "capped-profit" company to raise investment. As of 2025, it is in the process of transitioning to a full for-profit structure.

Does Microsoft own OpenAI?+

No, but Microsoft has invested over $13 billion in OpenAI and has exclusive rights to integrate OpenAI technology into its products. OpenAI remains independent.

What is the relationship between OpenAI and Anthropic?+

Anthropic was founded in 2021 by Dario Amodei and others who left OpenAI. They are now direct competitors, with Anthropic making Claude and OpenAI making ChatGPT.

Bottom line

OpenAI is an AI research and deployment company that created ChatGPT, GPT-4, DALL-E, and Sora. It is one of the most influential AI labs in the world.