Silicon Valley Idealism
“Silicon Valley Idealism” – A cartoon that illustrates OpenAI’s metamorphosis from a non-profit to now making plans to go IPO.
OpenAI’s journey is often told as a story of noble ideals giving way to financial reality. But it’s more interesting as a series of calculated trade-offs with an eye for upside.
The company began as a non-profit to build “safe AI for humanity,” but by 2018, training costs were running into tens of millions per model. GPT-4 reportedly cost over $100 million to train. Staying non-profit wasn’t moral restraint, it became structural paralysis. To keep pace, OpenAI created a capped-profit subsidiary, a legal workaround that allowed investors up to 100x returns while preserving the original mission on paper.
Then came Microsoft’s $13 billion partnership, which effectively turned compute into equity. In exchange for capital and Azure infrastructure, Microsoft received exclusive commercial rights and a large minority stake, reported at roughly 49%, in the for-profit arm. OpenAI gained scale, Microsoft gained control of the rails.
Recently, OpenAI re-designated itself as a “capped-profit public benefit corporation,” a hybrid that legally balances mission with fiduciary duty. Last week, Sam Altman said OpenAI isn’t planning an IPO soon, but market chatter points to a potential 2027 listing near a $1 trillion valuation. The public rationale is that training GPT-5 and building new data centers could cost more than $50 billion. Public capital would reduce dependency on Microsoft and help retain talent being courted by Meta, Anthropic, and xAI with unrestricted equity.
There’s also a personal upside. An IPO converts paper ethics into liquid wealth. For Sam and his team, it marks the final turn of the flywheel, from mission to market. Is this just another Silicon Valley narrative where initial idealism often serves as the down payment on capitalism?
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“Ian—great cartoon as always. How much of this reflects Sam’s idealism versus investors like Khosla and Hoffman seeing a tech inflection point that’s hard to leave in a nonprofit? Call it greed without any checks – its literally their only business to find these once in a lifetime developments and get on the cap table.”
“Some say NPO some say IPO
What’s the difference 🤷♂️🤣”
“Image missed Altman stealing everyone’s intellectual property.
If we’re going to train AI on data there’s an ethical and moral responsibility to ensure that original authors are paid for their IP and content.
If that isn’t going to scale then they have no business model. That’s the reality.”
“If Elon Musk were still involved in this, there would be calls for boycott, people would be breaking windows and burning offices and vandalizing Teslas across the world. But he’s not involved, it’s Sam Altman – and somehow he gets a pass.
Obviously, I’m NOT calling for aggression against Sam or anyone’s property. I’m pointing out a very strange but undeniable hypocrisy.”
“Ian Foley I don’t get it: why would Sam Altman be the only entrepreneur (in our known galaxy and far, far beyond) not allowed to make a lot of money? Please elaborate.”
“This is classic. Thanks for giving me a nice laugh.”
“I don’t think this fairy represents the history of Sam’s journey, and will leave it at that.”
“The story got even better with Sam Allman floating the idea yesterday that openAI should get a bailout from the government for all of the $1.4 trillion commitments that it has made. Turning out to be one of the biggest scams in history!”
“Scammers, all of them.”
“Ian Foley good one, captures the cycle perfectly.
But honestly, has there ever been a true non-profit in Silicon Valley once real money got involved? Even Google started with “don’t be evil.”
Did you ever believe OpenAI would be the exception?”“And he also loves porn”
“You used AI to make a cartoon about AI. That’s pretty funny.”
“These charismatic do-gooders may in fact be instrumental in the destruction of civilization.”
“Another way to help with the money circle and get a higher valuation, to get more investment and have others raise in value … and on and on…”
“Frankly, it’s the right idea being done the right way. Without a for-profit driver there is no AI. Without the oversite of the non-profit there is no ethics. The question is, is an OpenAI non-profit really doing what it should or what the world needs for AI? That I doubt.”
“He should have started a new company. The idealist could have stayed at Open AI and the mercenaries could have gone to the new company. I don’t see how what he did can possibly be legal. But the US is so influenced by money there is no telling what the courts will decide.”
“There’s a far simpler word to describe all of that.
LYING.”“Money has always ruled the world and always will”
“If I ask AI to write me a proposal for a government grant to design a fusion reactor what are my odds of winning the grant?”
“A nonprofit IPO is humanity’s golden Unicorn dream. Plus Ms. Friar will extricate promise of government succour (COMMUNIST) to guarantee its operational infrastructure success!”
“Grifters gotta grift.”
“One more Silicon Valley scam. I’m longing for Theranos at this point”
“Without money, no mission realized.
Misleading company name? Shure.
OpenAI fan? Meh, prefer Claude.
Should their AI ethical board be public? 100%”
“Sam Altman does not have any ownership in OpenAI and would not directly financially gain from an IPO.”
