If OpenAI Is a Charity... Why Is It Worth $852 Billion?

In 2015, a group of Silicon Valley's richest people founded a charity, so that no single company would own the future of AI. Ten years later, that charity controls one of the most valuable companies on Earth. Here is how a non-profit lab became an $852 billion company: the dinner that started it, the billionaire who walked out, the app nobody planned, the weekend the board fired Sam Altman, and the company it was built to stop. 0:00 What happened to the charity? 0:48 The Charity That Wanted to Save the World 2:33 The Billionaire Who Walked Out 4:42 The App Nobody Planned 6:54 The Weekend They Fired Sam 9:20 The Company It Was Built to Stop Dialogue scenes are dramatizations: the words are paraphrased or quoted from public reporting, and the voices are designed voices, not the real people. On-screen quotes from documents use the published wording. Figures reported but not officially confirmed are labelled "reportedly". Sources (selection): OpenAI, "Introducing OpenAI" (2015) and the Elon Musk emails OpenAI published (2024): https://openai.com/index/openai-elon-... OpenAI, "Sam Altman returns as CEO, OpenAI has a new initial board": https://openai.com/index/sam-altman-r... The Verge, Altman fired (Nov 17, 2023): https://www.theverge.com/2023/11/17/2... The Verge, employee letter (Nov 20, 2023): https://www.theverge.com/2023/11/20/2... Microsoft, extended partnership (Jan 2023): https://blogs.microsoft.com/blog/2023... MIT Technology Review, Microsoft's exclusive GPT-3 licence: https://www.technologyreview.com/2020... Al Jazeera, restructuring into a public benefit corporation (Oct 2025): https://www.aljazeera.com/economy/202... DatacenterDynamics, $122B raise at an $852B valuation: https://www.datacenterdynamics.com/en... CNBC, Musk v. Altman verdict (May 2026): https://www.cnbc.com/2026/05/18/musk-... TechCrunch, OpenAI's confidential IPO filing (June 2026): https://techcrunch.com/2026/06/08/fol... TechCrunch, a new raise reportedly at about $1.25T (Oct 2026): https://techcrunch.com/2026/10/22/ope... TechCrunch, Anthropic founded by former OpenAI researchers (2021): https://techcrunch.com/2021/05/28/ant... Drawnomics: hand-drawn stories about money, companies and power. #OpenAI #SamAltman #ChatGPT