Elon musk was a founding member, a board member (resigned in 2018), and a donor, but not an owner (it's a non-profit so there aren't owners exactly).

I admit I don't really understand how nonprofits (especially in US) work ownership-wise, but I do know that OpenAI has a for-profit subsidiary.

Microsoft invested ~10B into OpenAI, so apparently there is a way to own something. Also Raison claims they have purchased some pre-IPO shares: https://raison.ai/assets/openai (They even claim - perhaps wrongly - that Elon is one of the lead investors.)

It’s a bit more like a capitalist shoggoth mask on a non profit.

Microsoft’s investment return is capped at 100x then they have no more claim. (Curious if they even have search engine exclusivity then!)

So for now OpenAI acts capitalist, the for profit controls a lot. But we see the influence of the owning non profit, eg in the red teaming which presumably wouldn’t be as good otherwise

Whether this wild new structure works when it comes to it is but one of the huge gambles this organisation is making!

It WAS a non-profit. I am not sure if it still is one today.

Elon donated money back when they were pretending to be a charity. He has no stake in them.

He was furious because they didn't make CEO and withdrew his funding/left: https://www.semafor.com/article/03/24/2023/the-secret-histor...