Openai Inc
Public records show a registered, tax-exempt organization in good standing.
What it says it does
OpenAIs mission is to ensure that artificial general intelligence benefits all of humanity.
- Income
- $691,271
- Spending
- $7.8 million
- Spent on programs
- 99%
- Reserves
- 21.7 months of spending
- Largest source of income
- investment income, 99%
- Employees
- 1
- Volunteers
- 1
- Highest pay
- $264,189, dir/pres (former)
Source: Form 990 for the year ending December 31, 2024, filed with the Internal Revenue Service. Rating method 2026.2. How we rate
Financial health
Good: 70 out of 100. Higher than 36% of charities in its peer group (science, $250k to $1m).
Reserves
35 of 35Spendable reserves would cover 21.7 months of spending.
Debt
20 of 20It owes 4% of what it owns.
Living within its means
0 of 15Spending exceeded income by 1025% of income.
Income trend
0 of 15Income fell 87% on the year before.
Spending floor
15 of 1599% of spending went to programs and raising each dollar of donations cost 0 cents.
Source: Form 990 for the year ending December 31, 2024, filed with the Internal Revenue Service. Rating method 2026.2. How we rate
Governance
Strong: 97 out of 100. Higher than 93% of charities in its peer group (science, $250k to $1m).
Independent board
25 of 258 of 9 voting board members are independent.
Conflict of interest policy
15 of 15Has a written conflict of interest policy.
Whistleblower policy
8 of 8Has a written whistleblower policy.
Record keeping policy
7 of 7Has a written policy on keeping and destroying records.
Board minutes
5 of 5Keeps minutes of board meetings.
Board sees the tax return
10 of 10Gave the board a copy of this return before filing it.
Pay set independently
5 of 5Sets its chief executive's pay through independent review and comparison.
Independent check of accounts
12 of 15Its accounts were reviewed or compiled by an independent accountant, but not audited.
No reported misuse
10 of 10Reports no diversion of assets, excess benefits or loans to insiders.
Source: Form 990 for the year ending December 31, 2024, filed with the Internal Revenue Service. Rating method 2026.2. How we rate
Impact evidence
Describes programs. Its tax return describes what it does but we have found no measurable results in it.
Programs described in its return (1)
- $7.7 million spent. Since its founding, the Organization has undertaken a wide range of charitable initiatives, such as sponsoring a comprehensive basic income study, supporting economic impact research, and experimenting with education-centered programs like OpenAI Foundation Scholars. The Organizations efforts also included supporting a number of other public charities focused on AI research, safety, and economic impact. In 2024, among other grant initiatives, the Organization supported a number of AI alignment research, AI safety research, and economic empowerment initiatives. The Organization is the governing body for all of OpenAI Foundation and holds an interest in OpenAI Foundations operating entities. Each of the Organizations related organizations is legally bound to pursue the Organizations mission. Through its control of the OpenAI for-profit entities, additional milestones were accomplished in 2024 including: 1. In furtherance of its research initiatives and taking steps towards safe deployment of powerful model capabilities, OpenAI shared early research progress for Soraa long-duration, high-fidelity text-to-video model. In parallel, the model was made available to domain experts in areas like misinformation, hateful content, and bias to provide valuable testing, and OpenAI engaged with policymakers, educators and artists around the world to understand their concerns and to identify positive use cases for this new technology.2. Recognizing the importance of building general-purpose artificial intelligence that safely benefits humanity as AI models reach new levels of capabilities, the Organization formed the independent Safety and Security Committee (SSC) in May, 2024, currently chaired by director Zico Kolter, to oversee critical safety and security measures related to model development and deployment. Over a period of 90 days, the SSC developed recommendations across five key areas ranging from independent governance, security enhancement, transparency, collaboration, and unifying safety frameworks, which the Organization and its related entities adopted. 3. Continuing its commitment to make the benefit of artificial intelligence widely available and broadly beneficial, OpenAI made available for free the OpenAI o1-mini model, a faster, cheaper reasoning model that is particularly effective at coding, making it a powerful, cost-effective model for developers around the world.4. As part of exploring how AI benefits the scientific community, OpenAI and Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL) one of the United States leading national laboratories announced a partnership to study how artificial intelligence can be used safely by scientists in laboratory settings to advance bioscientific research.5. As part of ongoing alignment and safety research, OpenAI introduced deliberative alignmenta training paradigm that directly teaches reasoning LLMs the text of human-written and interpretable safety specifications. In addition, OpenAI shared two papers on red teaminga white paper detailing how we engage external red teamers to test our frontier models, and a research study that introduces a new method for automated red teaming.These contributions to the advancement of AI technology, along with the continuous study on the broader benefits and impacts of AI, are critical steps in moving the Organization towards the development of safe, effective, and productive general-purpose artificial intelligence that benefits all humanity.
Source: Form 990 for the year ending December 31, 2024, filed with the Internal Revenue Service. Rating method 2026.2. How we rate
Legitimacy checks
Is it registered with the IRS? Passed.
Listed in the IRS master file of tax-exempt organizations as a 501(c)(3) charitable organization.
Source: Exempt Organizations Business Master File, Internal Revenue Service, file dated September 7, 2026.
Has the IRS revoked its tax-exempt status? Passed.
Not on the IRS automatic revocation list.
Source: Automatic revocation of exemption list, Internal Revenue Service, file dated September 30, 2026.
Are donations tax-deductible? Passed.
On the IRS list of organizations eligible to receive tax-deductible contributions.
Source: Publication 78 data: organizations eligible for tax-deductible contributions, Internal Revenue Service, file dated September 10, 2026.
Is it keeping up with its IRS filings? Passed.
Most recent return on file covers the year ending December 2024.
Source: Exempt Organizations Business Master File, Internal Revenue Service, file dated September 7, 2026.
How long has it been tax-exempt? Passed.
Recognized by the IRS since November 2016.
Source: Exempt Organizations Business Master File, Internal Revenue Service, file dated September 7, 2026.
Is it in good standing with state regulators? Passed.
Not on California's list of charities barred from soliciting. Other states are not yet checked.
Source: May Not Operate or Solicit for Charitable Purposes list, California Attorney General, Registry of Charities and Fundraisers, file dated October 7, 2026.
Ratings and checks are our reading of public records, using the published method. They are not a statement about anyone's honesty. If you work for this organization, you can send corrections or results, confirm you want gifts through Veridonate, or ask to be removed from giving.