OpenAI's Mission to Benefit Humanity Now Includes Seeking Profit

OpenAI, an artificial intelligence research group created by Silicon Valley investors as a non-profit, will now be seeking "capped" profit, according to a blog post on the OpenAI website published Monday. SpaceX and Tesla CEO Elon Musk, startup accelerator Y Combinator president Sam Altman, and several other Silicon Valley figures launched OpenAI in late 2015 with $1 billion in seed funding and the stated goal of ensuring that AI "benefits all of humanity." Musk stepped down from OpenAI in February 2018. Since its founding, the group has conducted research with reinforcement learning, robotics, and language. According to OpenAI, the original nonprofit entity will own a limited partnership called OpenAI LP that's designed to give a "capped return" to investors and employees and funnel excess funds back to the nonprofit.