---
title: 'OpenAI — company profile'
canonical: 'https://feeny.ai/companies/openai'
type: 'company'
updated: '2026-07-02'
---

# OpenAI

> Builds frontier AI models and ships them as consumer, developer, and enterprise products — ChatGPT, the API platform, and Codex.

- **Website:** https://openai.com/
- **Type:** Private public-benefit corporation (OpenAI Group) governed by a nonprofit parent (OpenAI Foundation); draft S-1 confidentially filed with the SEC. Legal operating entity for consumer services: OpenAI OpCo, LLC (Delaware).
- **Headquarters:** San Francisco, California, USA
- **Founded:** 2015
- **Founders:** Sam Altman, Greg Brockman, Ilya Sutskever, John Schulman, Wojciech Zaremba
- **Total raised:** ~$180B
- **Latest round:** $122B round at an $852B valuation (2026)
- **Investors:** Microsoft, Amazon, NVIDIA, SoftBank, Andreessen Horowitz, Sequoia Capital, Thrive Capital, T. Rowe Price, BlackRock, Fidelity, Coatue, Temasek
- **Business model:** Two engines: consumer/team subscriptions (free → Go → Plus → Pro → Business → Enterprise) and usage-based, per-token API pricing for developers. Free tier is the top of the funnel; revenue scales with paid seats and API consumption.
- **Industries:** Artificial Intelligence
- **Open roles:** 710
- **Profile:** https://feeny.ai/companies/openai

## What they do

Builds frontier AI models and ships them as consumer, developer, and enterprise products (ChatGPT, the OpenAI API platform, Codex, and an agent layer).

## Overview

**The lab that made everyone believe in AGI, now racing to fund it**

OpenAI started in 2015 as a nonprofit research lab with a mission that sounded almost quaint at the time: make sure artificial general intelligence benefits all of humanity. Then ChatGPT happened, became the fastest-growing consumer app in history, and turned a research outfit into the company that defines an industry.

The structure it grew into is unusual on purpose. A nonprofit parent, the OpenAI Foundation, governs a for-profit public benefit corporation, the OpenAI Group, so the mission has legal teeth over the money. And there is now a great deal of money: a $122 billion round in early 2026 valued the company at $852 billion, and it has confidentially filed a draft S-1, signaling a public offering ahead.

## What They Do

**Frontier models, wrapped in products people actually use**

OpenAI builds the frontier AI models and then ships them in forms ordinary people and businesses can pick up and use. ChatGPT is the front door for hundreds of millions of consumers; the API platform is the back door for developers embedding GPT into their own products; and a growing agent layer, built on the Agents SDK, Responses API, and Realtime API, is the bet on what comes after the chat box.

The throughline is deployment, not just research. The company publishes cutting-edge work, but its center of gravity is turning frontier capability into products that resolve support tickets, write and refactor code, generate images and voice, and increasingly take actions across a business's systems.

## Products

**One frontier model, many front doors**

The lineup spans consumer, developer, and enterprise. ChatGPT is the flagship assistant across web and mobile; the API Platform exposes the GPT-5.5 family and tooling for developers; Codex is the coding agent that reads and writes files, runs shell commands, and handles GitHub PRs; and the platform's voice, image, and realtime capabilities power everything from support bots to creative tools. The common engine underneath is OpenAI's frontier model family.

## Business Model

**A free front door, a paid ladder, and usage-based API pricing**

OpenAI makes money two ways. Consumers and teams climb a subscription ladder, from a free tier through Go, Plus, Pro, and Business, up to custom Enterprise contracts. Developers pay per token on the API, metered by model and context length.

The free tier is the top of the funnel, not the product: it is deliberately limited to push heavy users toward paid plans, while the API's pay-as-you-go pricing scales with how much intelligence a customer actually consumes.

### Plans

ChatGPT runs a freemium subscription ladder while the API is pure pay-as-you-go per token. Consumers start free and climb through Go, Plus, and Pro as they need more usage and stronger models; teams and enterprises pay per seat (or custom) for admin, security, and data controls. Developers pay per million tokens, metered by model tier and context length.

- **Free** — $0/month · Everyday individual use
  Limited access to GPT-5.5 Instant
  - Limited GPT-5.5 Instant access
  - Limited messages and uploads
  - Limited image generation
  - Limited deep research
  - Limited memory and context
  - Limited Codex access
- **Go** — $8/month · Casual users who hit free limits
  Expanded access; may include ads
  - More GPT-5.5 Instant access
  - More messages and uploads
  - More image creation
  - Longer memory
  - May include ads
- **Plus** — $20/month · Power individual users
  Advanced reasoning with GPT-5.5 Thinking
  - GPT-5.5 Thinking (advanced reasoning)
  - Expanded deep research and agent mode
  - Expanded memory and context
  - Projects, tasks, and custom GPTs
  - Expanded Codex usage
  - Early access to new features
- **Pro** — From $100/month · Heaviest individual/prosumer users
  GPT-5.5 Pro reasoning + maximum usage
  - 5x–20x more usage
  - GPT-5.5 Pro reasoning
  - Maximum Codex tasks
  - Unlimited image creation
  - Maximum deep research and agent mode
  - Maximum memory and context
- **Business** — $20/user/month (annual; $25 monthly) · Teams and growing companies (2+ users)
  Secure workspace with company context
  - ChatGPT + Codex across desktop and mobile
  - Connectors (Microsoft 365, Google Drive, Slack, GitHub, Linear, Figma)
  - Custom team agent plugins
  - Centralized billing and admin
  - Usage analytics, budgeting, spend controls
  - SAML SSO and MFA
  - No training on business data by default
- **Enterprise** — Custom · Large organizations at scale
  Enterprise security, residency, and support
  - Expanded context window
  - SCIM, EKM, domain verification, RBAC
  - Custom data retention + encryption
  - Data residency in ten regions
  - 24/7 priority support and SLAs
  - Custom legal terms and AI advisors
  - Volume discounts and invoicing

Good to know: API is billed separately, pay-as-you-go per 1M tokens, priced by model tier and context length; Business billed annually at $20/user/mo, or $25/user/mo monthly (2+ users); Go plan may include ads; 'Unlimited' plans are subject to abuse guardrails

## Who It's For

**From a curious individual to a Fortune 500 rollout**

OpenAI sells to three audiences at once: consumers who want a capable everyday assistant, developers who build AI features on the API, and enterprises standardizing on ChatGPT across whole workforces. The enterprise motion is now the fastest-growing part of the business, crossing a million business customers, with real deployments spanning finance, sales, operations, IT, and marketing teams.

### Ideal customer profiles

- **Consumers & prosumers** — Want a capable everyday assistant for writing, learning, and tasks; Need it fast, personalized, and available on every device
- **Developers** — Need frontier models and agent tooling (Agents SDK, Responses/Realtime API) via a stable API; Want predictable pay-as-you-go pricing and great docs
- **Enterprise IT & functional leaders** — Must roll out AI org-wide without training on company data; Need SSO/MFA, RBAC, audit, data residency, and admin controls; Want measurable productivity gains across finance, sales, ops, IT, and marketing

## Proof

**A million businesses and a roster of household names**

The adoption is not hypothetical. OpenAI has named enterprise customers including Morgan Stanley, Cisco, Target, Lowe's, T-Mobile, Amgen, Booking.com, and Commonwealth Bank, plus early ChatGPT Enterprise adopters like Canva, PwC, Zapier, Estée Lauder, and Block. Samsung, Uber, and a wave of Korean firms have since signed on. The through-line: these are standardization decisions, not pilots.

## What People Say

**Still the default, no longer the automatic choice**

OpenAI's reputation in 2026 is more contested than it was at ChatGPT's peak. Fans still praise the polish, the mobile apps, the generous free tier, and a memory-plus-custom-instructions setup that few rivals match for personalization, all wrapped in the deepest ecosystem of custom GPTs and integrations.

The criticism is just as real. Power users complain about quality regressions and more frequent refusals, its assistant market share has slipped from its early dominance, and the move from nonprofit ideals toward aggressive commercialization and defense partnerships has cost it goodwill with part of its original base.

## Funding

**$180B raised, an $852B valuation, and an IPO on deck**

OpenAI has raised roughly $180 billion across its history, and its early-2026 round alone brought in $122 billion at an $852 billion valuation, one of the largest private financings ever assembled. Microsoft remains a strategic backer, but the latest round widened the tent dramatically, with Amazon, NVIDIA, and SoftBank anchoring it alongside a16z, Sequoia, Thrive, T. Rowe Price, BlackRock, Fidelity, and a long list of global institutions.

The confidential draft S-1 on file with the SEC points to where this is heading: a public company, with the financial transparency and governance that entails.

## Team & Culture

**Humanity first, feel the AGI, and ship joy**

OpenAI hires curious people from a wide range of disciplines and runs on four stated values, Humanity first, Act with humility, Feel the AGI, and Ship joy, backed by operating principles that prize agency (Find a way), creative problem-solving over control, fast updating on new information, and intense focus. Ideas are supposed to come from anywhere regardless of title.

The benefits back the intensity: competitive health and mental-health coverage, 24-week paid birth-parent leave (20 weeks for other parents) with a work-from-home ramp, fertility and family-planning support, a learning stipend, daily meals, and coaching sessions. A six-month Residency offers a path in for engineers and researchers moving into AI. It is a San Francisco-headquartered, in-person-leaning shop hiring across engineering, research, product, and go-to-market.

## Security & Legal

**Enterprise-grade controls under a Delaware operating company**

For business customers, OpenAI leans hard on trust: no training on customer data by default, zero-data-retention by request, HIPAA Business Associate Agreements, SOC 2 Type 2, AES-256 at rest and TLS 1.2+ in transit, SSO/MFA, IP allowlisting and mTLS, and data-residency controls across multiple regions. The consumer terms are entered into with OpenAI OpCo, LLC, a Delaware company, and the privacy policy was last updated in May 2026.

## Outlook

**Betting the lead on agents and an IPO**

OpenAI's next chapter is about extending a lead under real pressure. The product bet is agentic: systems that don't just answer but act, from Codex in the developer world to Operator-style browser agents. The corporate bet is the public markets, with the draft S-1 signaling an IPO that would force new transparency on a company used to operating on its own terms. Both play out while rivals close the model gap and part of the user base questions the mission drift.

## In the News

**The headlines: a record raise and a land-grab for the enterprise**

Two storylines dominate OpenAI's recent coverage. The first is money, its $122 billion round at an $852 billion valuation drew wall-to-wall attention as one of the largest private financings ever, with the confidential S-1 keeping IPO speculation alive. The second is enterprise traction, from crossing a million business customers to landing marquee names like Samsung, the press is tracking how fast ChatGPT is becoming default infrastructure inside big companies.

### Coverage

- [OpenAI closes funding round at an $852 billion valuation](https://www.cnbc.com/2026/03/31/openai-funding-round-ipo.html) — CNBC (2026-03-31)
- [OpenAI Valued at $852 Billion After Completing $122 Billion Round](https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2026-03-31/openai-valued-at-852-billion-after-completing-122-billion-round) — Bloomberg (2026-03-31)
- [1 million business customers: the fastest-growing business platform in history](https://openai.com/index/1-million-businesses-putting-ai-to-work/) — OpenAI (2025-11-01)
- [OpenAI lands Samsung as major ChatGPT Enterprise customer](https://www.koreatimes.co.kr/business/tech-science/20260622/openai-lands-samsung-as-major-chatgpt-enterprise-customer) — The Korea Times (2026-06-22)

## Competition

**The one to beat, in a field that's caught up**

OpenAI still sets the pace, but the gap it once enjoyed has narrowed. Anthropic's Claude, Google's Gemini, Meta's Llama, Mistral, and xAI all now ship models that trade blows on real work, and enterprise buyers increasingly run more than one.

What keeps OpenAI ahead is less any single benchmark than its position: ChatGPT is the default consumer AI and the distribution lead that comes with it, a mission-locked governance structure rivals don't have, and the capital and compute, an $852B valuation and roughly $180B raised, to fund frontier-scale training few can match. Its bet now is agents and enterprise depth, not just a bigger model.

### Their edge

- **Brand and distribution** — ChatGPT is the default consumer AI, giving OpenAI a distribution lead rivals spend heavily to close.
- **Mission-locked governance** — A nonprofit parent governs the for-profit PBC, a structure competitors don't have.
- **Capital and compute** — An $852B valuation and $180B raised fund frontier-scale training few can match.

### Where they're betting

- Agentic products (Codex, Operator-style agents)
- Enterprise expansion
- IPO readiness

## Problems

**The bottlenecks OpenAI is aiming its models at**

Underneath the consumer sheen, OpenAI sells a fix for a handful of expensive, universal bottlenecks. Software teams are slow and code is costly to ship. Support queues don't scale. Knowledge work stalls on turning messy data into decisions. And every company that wants AI leverage runs into the same wall: they can't hand sensitive data to a model or give up governance to get it.

The products map cleanly onto those pains, coding and refactoring, autonomous support, research and synthesis, content at volume, and an enterprise control plane that makes all of it safe to deploy at work.

### Problems addressed

- Development is slow and expensive: teams need to write, review, debug, and migrate code faster
- Customer support can't scale: high volumes of repetitive queries need autonomous resolution
- Knowledge work is bottlenecked on synthesis: turning complex data into clear insights takes too long
- Content production doesn't scale to demand across text, image, and voice
- Enterprises want AI leverage but can't expose sensitive data or lose governance control
- Building AI products from scratch is hard: developers need frontier models and agent tooling off the shelf

## Compensation

**Frontier pay, and profit-participation units instead of stock**

OpenAI discloses salary bands on a large share of its US roles, and the numbers are frontier-lab high. Engineering base spans roughly $86K to $585K depending on level, research tracks close behind, and even non-technical functions clear $150K at the low end. The twist is equity: instead of conventional stock options, OpenAI grants Profit Participation Units, a share of future profits that has become a signature and much-debated part of its offer. Sales roles carry on-target commission on top of base.

## Company details

- **Mission:** To ensure that artificial general intelligence (AGI) benefits all of humanity.
- **Products:** ChatGPT, OpenAI API Platform, Codex, Realtime & Voice, Image generation
- **Notable customers:** Morgan Stanley, Cisco, Target, Lowe's, T-Mobile, Amgen, Booking.com, Commonwealth Bank, Canva, PwC, Zapier, Estée Lauder, Block, Samsung, Uber
- **Customer segments:** Consumers (ChatGPT), Developers (API), Enterprises standardizing AI across the workforce
- **Buyers / users:** Individual consumers and prosumers, Software developers building AI features, Enterprise IT and functional leaders rolling out AI org-wide
- **Competitors:** Anthropic (Claude), Google DeepMind (Gemini), Meta (Llama), Mistral, xAI
- **What sets them apart:** First-mover brand: ChatGPT is the household name in generative AI; Frontier research leadership and top AI talent; Massive compute/infrastructure backing; Mission-locked governance (nonprofit parent over a PBC); Deepest ecosystem of custom GPTs and integrations

## Open roles (710)

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- [Sales Strategy & Operations, India & South East Asia](https://jobs.ashbyhq.com/openai/a38926a6-a514-4ee0-bfe1-408922a2790c) — Singapore
- [Creative Director, Growth](https://jobs.ashbyhq.com/openai/2f2b5980-71c3-49dd-829d-d7d39563741a) — New York, NY
- [EU Policy & Partnerships Manager](https://jobs.ashbyhq.com/openai/aed9985a-21ff-437d-9e0a-f82e5e420331) — Remote
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- [Growth Lead, SMB Ads](https://jobs.ashbyhq.com/openai/b74dd90d-0b05-46e6-b30b-5ba9e8f33288) — San Francisco, CA
- [Compensation Operations Manager](https://jobs.ashbyhq.com/openai/759f6544-53c0-4435-a52a-f69659ce0d4d) — Remote
- [AI Deployment Engineer, Cyber](https://jobs.ashbyhq.com/openai/7ad26793-3f0d-4336-91e8-1aaf800cfdae) — Dublin, Ireland
- [Brand Partner Marketing Manager](https://jobs.ashbyhq.com/openai/7a4efcc4-ccc6-46ed-bbfb-77ad2096b12b) — Remote
- [Partner Director, Data Partners](https://jobs.ashbyhq.com/openai/8d57859a-6580-47d1-a0f5-43822c9d5da8) — San Francisco, CA
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- [Integrated Marketing Manager](https://jobs.ashbyhq.com/openai/6f3d4c2e-68be-43d5-af13-7122201c94aa) — New York, NY
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- [Research Engineer / Research Scientist - Personal AGI, Personality and Model Behavior](https://jobs.ashbyhq.com/openai/a86d9477-0277-498c-9647-02a257747607) — San Francisco, CA
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- [Manager, AI Deployment Engineering — Enterprise (ProServe, Media, Telco, Private Equity)](https://jobs.ashbyhq.com/openai/0a24703f-6108-4422-807e-78831dd98ed1) — San Francisco, CA
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- [Customer Success Manager - Ads Solutions](https://jobs.ashbyhq.com/openai/e2a538e9-70ce-4596-9e1c-5ad578040c61) — Paris, France
- [Regional Client Partner, Ads Solutions](https://jobs.ashbyhq.com/openai/f56ab5d8-9f0c-4622-906b-554ca28bd0ff) — Munich, Germany
- [Customer Success Manager - Ads Solutions](https://jobs.ashbyhq.com/openai/30e2445d-561e-4e10-8a30-1f5baa611596) — Munich, Germany
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- [Forward Deployed Software Engineer - Dublin](https://jobs.ashbyhq.com/openai/63003bd5-05c8-408a-8d5a-8f5deb16113f) — Dublin, Ireland
- [Customer Success Manager, Ads Solutions](https://jobs.ashbyhq.com/openai/8c68932c-8c1d-42b4-bfa6-c50f8bdf933a) — Tokyo, Japan
- [AI Systems Engineer, Codex Agents](https://jobs.ashbyhq.com/openai/de06790a-7243-4e33-a6f1-e7bd34009588) — San Francisco, CA
- [Forward Deployed Software Engineer - NYC](https://jobs.ashbyhq.com/openai/533c0fc9-b773-476d-9f96-a0528efbab0e) — New York, NY
- [SOC Architect](https://jobs.ashbyhq.com/openai/71508273-13e5-4b77-a675-953ff3d73ca5) — San Francisco, CA
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_…and 660 more at https://feeny.ai/companies/openai/jobs_

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_Source: https://feeny.ai/companies/openai · profile updated 2026-07-02_