OpenAI

55 major milestones

American AI research organization focused on safe and beneficial AGI; creator of the GPT family, DALL·E, ChatGPT and multimodal models. Hybrid nonprofit / capped-profit corporate structure; major partner/investor: Microsoft.

Latest Valuation

$300,000,000,000

8 Funding Rounds

Company Timeline

Years 0-4

Initial funding pledge announced (~$1B)

Founders and supporters (Altman, Brockman, Musk, Reid Hoffman, Peter Thiel, Jessica Livingston, AWS, Infosys, YC Research) pledged ~$1 billion in commitments to support OpenAI's mission (actual collected amounts were smaller initially).

Year 0 • 2015

OpenAI founded

OpenAI launched as a nonprofit research organization in San Francisco. Founders/co-chairs included Sam Altman and Elon Musk; founding team included Greg Brockman, Ilya Sutskever, John Schulman, Wojciech Zaremba, Trevor Blackwell, Vicki Cheung, Pamela Vagata and others.

Year 0 • 2015

OpenAI Gym released (public beta)

Open-source toolkit for reinforcement learning research and benchmarking; one of OpenAI's first public software products.

Year 1 • 2016

NVIDIA DGX-1 donated

NVIDIA gifted an early DGX-1 supercomputer to OpenAI to accelerate model training and reduce processing time for experiments.

Year 1 • 2016

Universe platform released

OpenAI released Universe, a platform for measuring and training general intelligence across games, websites and other applications.

Year 1 • 2016

Large cloud compute spend reported

OpenAI disclosed spending $7.9 million on cloud computing in 2017 (about a quarter of functional expenses), highlighting compute intensity compared with peers.

Year 2 • 2017

GPT-1 / early GPT research published

OpenAI published foundational work on generative pre-trained transformers (GPT), marking the start of the GPT family.

Year 3 • 2018

OpenAI Five (Dota 2) large-scale training

OpenAI trained Dota 2 agents at cloud scale (rented very large compute stacks from Google) and demonstrated advanced team play; later beat top human teams in public demos.

Year 3 • 2018

Dactyl robotic hand research announced

Released results on Dactyl, a robotic hand trained in simulation via reinforcement learning to manipulate arbitrary objects.

Year 3 • 2018

Elon Musk resigns from board

Musk stepped down from OpenAI's board citing potential conflict of interest with Tesla's AI work; he remained a donor.

Year 3 • 2018

GPT-2 (announced, initially withheld)

OpenAI announced GPT-2, a 1.5B-parameter language model and initially restricted the full release citing misuse concerns.

Year 4 • 2019

OpenAI LP / capped-profit structure created

OpenAI restructured to form OpenAI LP, a 'capped-profit' entity allowing outside investment and employee equity while capping investor returns (100x cap).

Year 4 • 2019

Microsoft invests $1B partnership announced

Microsoft announced a $1 billion investment and a partnership providing Azure compute and a commercial licensing relationship.

Year 4 • 2019

Full GPT-2 model released

After staged releases and safety assessments, OpenAI published the final full GPT-2 model and detection tools.

Year 4 • 2019

Years 5-9

OpenAI API commercial launch

OpenAI launched a paid API product built around GPT-3, marking a major commercialization step.

Year 5 • 2020

GPT-3 announced

OpenAI introduced GPT-3 (≈175 billion parameters) and made model access available by API, enabling broad developer adoption.

Year 5 • 2020

DALL·E release (image generation)

OpenAI released DALL·E, a model that generates images from text prompts, expanding OpenAI into multimodal generation.

Year 6 • 2021

Codex and GitHub Copilot (technology)

OpenAI released Codex, a code-generation model that powers GitHub Copilot; private beta of Codex API followed.

Year 6 • 2021

OpenAI Startup Fund announced

OpenAI announced a $100M startup fund (OpenAI Startup Fund) to invest in companies building on OpenAI tech.

Year 6 • 2021

ChatGPT monetization: ChatGPT Plus subscription launched (early 2023)

OpenAI introduced ChatGPT Plus (premium subscription) in early 2023 ($20/month initially) to monetize large-scale consumer usage.

Year 7 • 2022

2022 financial snapshot (loss & revenue)

Reported loss of about $540M in 2022 and ~$28M in revenue (public disclosures and reporting on early monetization).

Year 7 • 2022

ChatGPT preview launched

OpenAI launched ChatGPT (based on GPT-3.5) as a public preview/chatbot; it attracted over 1M signups in ~5 days and rapidly viral adoption.

Year 7 • 2022

ChatGPT reaches 100M users (fastest-growing app)

By January 2023 ChatGPT had crossed ~100 million users, becoming one of the fastest-growing consumer applications in history.

Year 8 • 2023

Microsoft announces new multiyear $10B investment (reporting)

Microsoft announced a multiyear investment (widely reported as $10B) into OpenAI Global, LLC to expand Azure-based supercomputing and product integration.

Year 8 • 2023Valuation: $29,000,000,000

Revenue projection reports and growth (2023–2024)

Media reports and internal projections in late 2022/2023 indicated projected revenue of ~$200M for 2023 and ~$1B for 2024; by late 2023 annualized revenue reports reached ~$1.6B.

Year 8 • 2023

Copyright / training-data lawsuits begin

Multiple lawsuits and legal challenges began (and continued into 2024) alleging copyright infringement from authors and media companies over training data used by models.

Year 8 • 2023

Reid Hoffman resigns from board

Board member Reid Hoffman resigned citing potential conflicts of interest with investments and other AI ventures.

Year 8 • 2023

GPT-4 released

OpenAI launched GPT-4 as an API and in ChatGPT Plus, introducing more capable multimodal reasoning and commercial API access with waitlist.

Year 8 • 2023

Public governance recommendations for superintelligence

Sam Altman, Greg Brockman and Ilya Sutskever published policy recommendations calling for international oversight and more safety research for advanced AI systems.

Year 8 • 2023

Acquisition: Global Illumination

OpenAI acquired Global Illumination, a New York-based startup focused on AI-driven creative tools; reported price ~$100M.

Year 8 • 2023

OpenAI DevDay and major product launches

Hosted first developer conference; announced GPT-4 Turbo, GPTs (custom GPT builder), GPT Store, Assistants API, DALL·E 3 API, new TTS APIs, Copyright Shield program, Whisper v3 and other developer-focused releases.

Year 8 • 2023

Board ousts Sam Altman as CEO

OpenAI's board announced Sam Altman's departure as CEO citing loss of confidence; Mira Murati named interim CEO.

Year 8 • 2023

Sam Altman reinstated as CEO

Following employee revolt, investor pressure and board reconstitution, Sam Altman was reinstated as CEO of OpenAI five days after his removal.

Year 8 • 2023

Partnership: Arizona State University educational collaboration

OpenAI partnered with Arizona State University to provide access to ChatGPT Enterprise in an educational collaboration.

Year 9 • 2024

Sora (text-to-video) unveiled to red teams

OpenAI revealed Sora, a text-to-video model, initially made available to internal red teams for risk management and evaluation.

Year 9 • 2024

Elon Musk sues OpenAI and Sam Altman

Elon Musk filed a lawsuit accusing OpenAI and Altman of moving away from public-benefit objectives toward profit maximization — the suit was later revived in amended form.

Year 9 • 2024

Leadership departures and reorg (Ilya Sutskever & Jan Leike)

Chief Scientist Ilya Sutskever resigned (succeeded by Jakub Pachocki) and senior safety leader Jan Leike departed amid internal concerns; many safety researchers left across 2024.

Year 9 • 2024

Partnerships and publisher deals

OpenAI formed a partnership with Reddit and signed content/licensing deals with News Corp and publishers (e.g., Axios, Vox) for inclusion/licensing of content.

Year 9 • 2024

Paul Nakasone joins board; acquisition of Multi

Former NSA head Paul Nakasone added to OpenAI board; OpenAI acquired startup Multi (remote-collaboration tooling) to bolster product integration.

Year 9 • 2024

Apple partnership announced

OpenAI and Apple announced collaboration to integrate ChatGPT features into Apple's AI initiatives and iPhone experiences.

Year 9 • 2024

o1 reasoning model released (from 'Strawberry' effort)

Project 'Strawberry' (announced earlier) culminated in the o1 reasoning model release focused on improved reasoning for science, math and coding tasks.

Year 9 • 2024

Major funding: $6.6B raised (Oct 2024)

OpenAI raised approximately $6.6B in funding in October 2024 from investors including Microsoft, Nvidia and SoftBank; reported post-money valuation ~$157B.

Year 9 • 2024Valuation: $157,000,000,000

12 Days of OpenAI: Sora & o1 general availability; ChatGPT Pro launch

During December event, OpenAI launched Sora in ChatGPT, released the o1 model more broadly, and introduced ChatGPT Pro ($200/month) with unlimited o1 access and enhanced voice features.

Year 9 • 2024

Years 10-14

Microsoft cumulative investment milestone (public reporting)

By 2025 Microsoft had committed and invested roughly $13B into OpenAI and is entitled to significant profit sharing from OpenAI Global under agreement terms.

Year 10 • 2025

Stargate Project JV announced (Oracle, SoftBank, MGX)

OpenAI, Oracle, SoftBank and MGX announced 'The Stargate Project' a multi-year AI infrastructure JV estimated at $500B (announced funding/partnership plan).

Year 10 • 2025

Operator released

OpenAI released Operator, an AI agent and web automation tool that can access websites to execute user-defined goals (initially US Pro users).

Year 10 • 2025

Brand refresh and product roadmap announcements

OpenAI announced a rebrand (new typeface, word mark and symbol) and signaled roadmap milestones: GPT-4.5 'Orion' and plans for GPT-5 to unify model lines.

Year 10 • 2025

CoreWeave strategic agreement (~$11.9B)

OpenAI signed an agreement with CoreWeave for cloud/AI infrastructure access; deal reported at $11.9B and included ~$350M of CoreWeave shares to OpenAI.

Year 10 • 2025

Massive financing: $40B raised at $300B valuation

OpenAI raised ~$40B in private financing led by SoftBank (and participation from Microsoft, Coatue, Altimeter, Thrive), reported post-money valuation ~$300B.

Year 10 • 2025Valuation: $300,000,000,000

OpenAI files countersuit vs Elon Musk

OpenAI countersued Elon Musk alleging bad-faith tactics to slow the company's progress and seize innovations; suit seeks damages and injunctive relief.

Year 10 • 2025

Planned acquisition: Windsurf (Codeium) ~ $3B reported

Reports indicated OpenAI agreed to acquire Windsurf (formerly Codeium), an AI coding assistant, for about $3B (deal reported May 2025).

Year 10 • 2025

OpenAI acquires io (Jony Ive) for $6.5B

OpenAI announced a $6.5B acquisition of io, an AI hardware startup founded by Jony Ive (2024), to integrate hardware and design capabilities.

Year 10 • 2025

Begins renting Google Cloud TPUs

OpenAI started using Google Cloud TPUs at scale to support ChatGPT inference workloads, marking diversification away from exclusive Nvidia/Azure dependency.

Year 10 • 2025

US DoD awards AI contract (report)

U.S. Department of Defense announced that OpenAI (among other AI providers) received a contract for AI work totalling about $200M (report July 2025).

Year 10 • 2025

OpenAI $50M nonprofit/community fund announced

OpenAI announced a $50M fund to support nonprofit and community organizations, informed by the OpenAI Nonprofit Commission report.

Year 10 • 2025