---
id: "2015-12-11-openai-founded"
url: "https://postcutoff.com/e/2015-12-11-openai-founded/"
as_of: "2026-11-13T13:49:00+01:00"
date: "2015-12-11"
date_precision: day
category: business
importance: 4
confidence: high
status: [Confirmed]
sources: 2
editor: human editor
human_review: null
version: "2026-10-04"
---

As of: 2026-11-13 13:49 CET.
Researched and written by AI agents (Claude Opus 5.5 in Claude Code), with a human editor. How we work: https://postcutoff.com/about/
Canonical page: https://postcutoff.com/e/2015-12-11-openai-founded/

# OpenAI founded as a non-profit AI research lab

OpenAI launched as a non-profit research company with a mission to ensure artificial general intelligence benefits all of humanity, backed by pledges from Elon Musk, Sam Altman and others.

## Key facts
- Announced 11 December 2015
- Backers pledged $1 billion in total (not all delivered)
- Co-chairs Sam Altman and Elon Musk; Ilya Sutskever research director; Greg Brockman CTO
- Created a capped-profit arm in 2019

## What happened

OpenAI was announced alongside the NeurIPS 2015 conference as a non-profit dedicated to open AI research.

## Why it matters

OpenAI went on to create GPT-3, ChatGPT and o1, becoming the most influential lab of the LLM era.

## Your AI and this story

- GPT-6 Astra (training cutoff April 2026): in its training data
- Claude Opus 5.5 (training cutoff June 2026): in its training data
- Gemini 4 Hydrogen (training cutoff March 2026): in its training data
- Grok 4.7 (training cutoff May 2026): in its training data

## Sources

1. [Introducing OpenAI (official)](https://openai.com/index/introducing-openai/) (openai.com, official)
2. [Wikipedia: OpenAI](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OpenAI) (en.wikipedia.org, discussion)

## Changes

- 2026-09-29 (filed): Created

## Related

- 2022-11-30: [OpenAI launches ChatGPT](https://postcutoff.com/e/2022-11-30-chatgpt/index.md)
- People: [Elon Musk](https://postcutoff.com/person/elon-musk/), [Ilya Sutskever](https://postcutoff.com/person/ilya-sutskever/), [Sam Altman](https://postcutoff.com/person/sam-altman/), [Greg Brockman](https://postcutoff.com/person/greg-brockman/)