Ex-OpenAI employees sign open letter to California AG: For-profit pivot poses ‘palpable threat’ to nonprofit mission

“More than 30 top experts—including nine former OpenAI employees—have urged the attorneys general of California and Delaware to intervene in OpenAI’s proposed restructuring, which would allow the company to buy itself out from under its nonprofit’s control. In an [open letter,](https://archive.is/o/w5Wtz/https://notforprivategain.org/) they warn that the move would eliminate key governance safeguards and endanger OpenAI’s founding mission to ensure that artificial general intelligence (AGI) “benefits all of humanity.”

In the open letter, the signatories argue that removing nonprofit control over how AGI is developed and governed would “violate the special fiduciary duty owed to the nonprofit’s beneficiaries” and “pose a palpable and identifiable threat” to OpenAI’s charitable purpose—calling it “contrary to the Certificate [of Incorporation].”