OpenAI Completes For-Profit Transition, Pushing Microsoft Above $4T (www.wsj.com)

OpenAI has restructured its business, converting its for-profit arm into a public benefit corporation and formalizing ownership stakes that clear a major hurdle toward a potential IPO. Under the new setup Microsoft will own 27% of the public benefit corporation, a change that helped lift Microsoft’s market value above $4 trillion (shares +2.22%). The conversion also grants OpenAI’s nonprofit parent a stake in the for-profit entity currently valued at about $130 billion, with contractual mechanisms that allow the nonprofit to increase its ownership as the company’s valuation grows. The move is significant for AI/ML because it reshapes incentives, governance and capital access for one of the field’s most influential model-builders. Converting to a public benefit corporation preserves a stated public-interest mandate while making it easier to raise outside capital and pursue an IPO, which would increase transparency and regulatory scrutiny. Microsoft’s 27% position cements its strategic influence—impacting compute access, product integration, and commercial trajectories—while the nonprofit’s convertible stake creates a built-in mechanism to preserve mission alignment as commercial value rises. Investors, competitors and policymakers will be watching how this hybrid structure affects deployment decisions, safety trade-offs and market concentration in large-scale model development.