In September 2024, reports that OpenAI was considering a major restructuring raised an unusually personal financial question: could CEO Sam Altman, who had long said he held no equity in the company, receive a multibillion-dollar ownership stake?
The answer was far less certain than some headlines suggested. Reuters reported that OpenAI was working on plans to restructure its core business as a for-profit benefit corporation and that Altman could receive equity for the first time. Separately, Bloomberg reported that the company had discussed granting Altman a stake of about 7%.
At the roughly $150 billion valuation being discussed for OpenAI at the time, a 7% stake would have represented about $10.5 billion on paper. But that arithmetic described the theoretical value of a reported proposal, not a confirmed cash payment or finalized compensation package.
Why OpenAI was considering a new corporate structure
The debate reflected a larger challenge for OpenAI: financing increasingly expensive artificial-intelligence development while operating under an unusual corporate structure.
OpenAI began as a nonprofit in 2015. In 2019, it created a for-profit subsidiary under nonprofit control, using a capped-profit model intended to attract investment while preserving the organization's broader mission. OpenAI said at the time that the arrangement was designed to give investors and employees financial incentives without making conventional profit maximization the organization's overriding objective.
By September 2024, the capital requirements of frontier AI had increased dramatically. Reuters reported that OpenAI was raising financing that could value the company at $150 billion and that investors were seeking changes to the company's capped-return structure.
A public benefit corporation was one option under discussion. Unlike an ordinary corporation focused principally on shareholder returns, a benefit corporation can formally incorporate broader public-benefit objectives into its governance.
Reuters also reported that the nonprofit organization would continue to exist. The precise balance of control, ownership and economic rights was still under discussion at the time, making it important to distinguish the reported restructuring proposals from a completed transaction.
What a 7% stake would have meant for Sam Altman
The reported 7% figure attracted attention because Altman had historically held no ownership stake in OpenAI. According to a June story in The Wall Street Journal, Altman received a comparatively modest salary from OpenAI and had previously said that he was not concerned about lacking equity.
That did not mean Altman lacked substantial personal wealth. His investment portfolio included stakes in technology companies such as Stripe, Airbnb and Reddit. The Journal reported in 2024 that those interests were worth billions of dollars.
Still, an OpenAI equity award would have been different. A 7% stake at a $150 billion valuation produces the often-cited $10.5 billion figure:
$150 billion × 7% = $10.5 billion.
That number, however, should not be interpreted as $10.5 billion of immediately spendable wealth. The value of private-company equity depends on the terms of the award, dilution, future financing, restrictions on selling shares and the valuation investors are ultimately willing to support.
The restructuring was not settled in September 2024
Reports at the time described negotiations and proposals rather than a completed restructuring. OpenAI said its nonprofit remained central to its mission, and the eventual legal and governance arrangements were still being developed.
The distinction became more important with hindsight. OpenAI continued refining its restructuring plans after 2024 rather than simply implementing every element discussed in the initial reports.
Later context: OpenAI ultimately kept nonprofit control
Later developments show why the original 2024 reports should be read as a snapshot of negotiations rather than a description of the company's final structure.
In May 2025, OpenAI announced that its nonprofit would continue to oversee and control the organization while its for-profit business would transition to a public benefit corporation. The company said the nonprofit would also become a significant shareholder in the new structure.
OpenAI completed a broader recapitalization in October 2025. Under the resulting structure, the nonprofit—renamed the OpenAI Foundation—continued to control OpenAI Group PBC while holding conventional equity in the business.
Those later announcements confirmed the move toward a public-benefit-corporation model, but they did not validate the September 2024 speculation that Altman would necessarily receive the reported 7% stake. The $10.5 billion figure therefore remains best understood as the implied value of one reported proposal at the valuation discussed at that time.
Leadership turmoil added to the uncertainty
The restructuring reports emerged during a period of significant leadership turnover at OpenAI.
Altman had been removed as CEO by OpenAI's board in November 2023 before returning only days later following pressure from employees and investors. The board said at the time that Altman had not been consistently candid in his communications with directors.
Several prominent executives and researchers subsequently left. Co-founder and former chief scientist Ilya Sutskever departed in May 2024. Jan Leike, who had co-led OpenAI's Superalignment team, also left that month. President Greg Brockman later announced an extended leave of absence.
On September 25, 2024, Chief Technology Officer Mira Murati announced that she was leaving the company, saying she wanted time and space for her own exploration. Her departure came on the same day that reports about OpenAI's proposed restructuring intensified.
For investors, those developments made the corporate-governance question particularly significant. A conventional equity structure could make future fundraising and employee compensation easier, but changing the relationship between OpenAI's commercial business and its nonprofit mission also carried governance implications.
What the proposed changes meant for investors
The central business issue was not simply Altman's potential wealth. It was whether OpenAI could develop a structure capable of attracting the enormous amounts of capital required for advanced AI infrastructure.
Training and operating frontier AI models requires large investments in computing hardware, data centers, energy and highly specialized employees. Conventional equity can be easier for investors to value and trade than OpenAI's original capped-profit interests.
That helps explain why the 2024 financing discussions and restructuring proposals were closely connected. At the time, Reuters reported that the $150 billion valuation being discussed with investors depended in part on OpenAI changing aspects of its corporate structure and removing limits on investor returns.
The eventual outcome also demonstrated that fundraising considerations did not automatically eliminate nonprofit governance. OpenAI's later structure retained nonprofit control while giving investors conventional equity exposure through the public benefit corporation.
The bottom line
In September 2024, OpenAI was considering far-reaching changes to its corporate structure, and Bloomberg reported that a roughly 7% equity stake for Sam Altman was among the ideas under discussion. At the company's then-discussed $150 billion valuation, such a stake would have been worth approximately $10.5 billion on paper.
But the proposal was not the same thing as a completed award. OpenAI's structure continued evolving over the following year, ultimately becoming a public benefit corporation controlled by its nonprofit foundation.
For that reason, the most accurate reading of the original story is that Altman was potentially in line for a huge equity position—not that he had already received or realized a $10.5 billion payout.
Original update: September 25, 2024. This upgraded version preserves the historical reporting while adding later context about OpenAI's finalized corporate structure.
0 Comments