Who owns OpenAI

The OpenAI Foundation. The original nonprofit held about 26% of OpenAI Group PBC after the recapitalization, a stake valued at about $130 billion at the time, plus a warrant for more shares if the company's value rises far enough. It also appoints every member of the company's board.

Microsoft. Microsoft held about 27%, valued at about $135 billion, the result of roughly $13 billion invested from 2019 to 2023 and its share of later rounds. It is the largest single shareholder by percentage.

Employees and investors. The remaining 47% or so belonged to current and former employees and to investors from earlier rounds. The $122 billion round in March 2026 then added SoftBank, Amazon, Nvidia and dozens of funds; SoftBank is reported to own about 13% once its final payment arrives, which will dilute everyone else.

Microsoft's bet on OpenAI began with $1 billion in 2019, when OpenAI was a nonprofit with a capped-profit arm, and grew to about $13 billion by 2023. In return Microsoft became OpenAI's exclusive cloud provider, built its Copilot products on OpenAI's models and received a share of OpenAI's revenue.

The relationship has been loosened step by step. The October 2025 recapitalization gave Microsoft its 27% stake and rights to OpenAI's technology through 2032, while OpenAI committed to buy $250 billion more of Azure and Microsoft gave up its first claim on OpenAI's computing. In April 2026 a further deal ended Microsoft's exclusive licence, let OpenAI sell on any cloud, and ended Microsoft's revenue-share payments to OpenAI; OpenAI keeps paying Microsoft a share of its revenue through 2030, now capped.

For investors, Microsoft is the closest public proxy by ownership, and it benefits from OpenAI's growth even on sales made through Amazon. But OpenAI is a small part of a company Microsoft's size, and Microsoft also sells its own AI models in competition with OpenAI's.

Elon Musk, Sam Altman, Reid Hoffman, Peter Thiel and others pledged $1 billion to the nonprofit at its launch in December 2015, though only about $133 million had arrived by 2021. Needing far more for computing, OpenAI created a capped-profit company in 2019, which let Microsoft invest. ChatGPT's launch in November 2022 changed the scale: Microsoft committed $10 billion two months later.

From 2024 the rounds grew quickly. Thrive Capital led $6.6 billion at a $157 billion valuation in October 2024. SoftBank led $40 billion at $300 billion in March 2025. An employee share sale in October 2025 valued OpenAI at about $500 billion, alongside the recapitalization. Then in March 2026 OpenAI closed $122 billion at $852 billion, with Amazon putting in $50 billion and Nvidia and SoftBank $30 billion each. For the first time it also raised more than $3 billion from individual investors through banks.

The full round-by-round history, with amounts and valuations, is on the valuation page.

The OpenAI Foundation appoints and can remove every director of OpenAI Group PBC, despite owning only about a quarter of the shares. As a public benefit corporation, the company is also required to weigh its stated mission, to ensure that artificial general intelligence benefits all of humanity, alongside shareholder returns. A safety committee answering to the foundation can oversee model releases.

That structure survived a legal challenge. Elon Musk sued to undo the shift away from a pure nonprofit, and a jury rejected his main claims in May 2026 because he had waited too long to sue. Any IPO will therefore sell shares in a company whose board answers to a nonprofit, and the S-1 will have to spell out what that means for public shareholders.

More on the structure in how OpenAI is governed.