Here’s what’s on our plate today:

• 💰 Inside OpenAI’s trillion-dollar pivot, and the power plays shaping AI’s future.

• 🧠 Teachers adapt, Google eyes space, research warns of AI “scroll rot”.

• 💬 Prompt of the day: How would you code AI control?

• 📊 Who should really control AI’s future?

Let’s dive in. No floaties needed…

The Laboratory

Who controls the code controls the future: Inside OpenAI’s trillion-dollar turn

Across the world, George Orwell’s novel 1984 is taught as a means to introduce students to the ideas of propaganda, authoritarianism, and media control, allowing them to connect historical totalitarian regimes with contemporary debates about technology, privacy, and state power. A powerful quote, “Who controls the past controls the future: who controls the present controls the past”, serves as a reminder that is fickle and dynamic.

In the post-information age, artificial intelligence is fast replacing traditional internet use with chatbots powered by AI models. At the helm of this transformation is a company that is poised to join the trillion-dollar club within decades of its inception.

Recently, Reuters reported that OpenAI is laying the groundwork for an initial public offering that could value the company at up to $1 trillion. The ChatGPT-maker is expected to raise around $60 billion at the low end, and is reported to be aiming for a 2027 filing.

The news comes days after OpenAI finalized its restructuring, which reads like the script of a movie. It had shifting economic goals, lawsuits, the ouster of a CEO, only to be reinstated within days, and a promise of changing the world.

From non-profit to for-profit, OpenAI’s shifting focus

OpenAI was started as a non-profit in 2015 to “build value for everyone rather than shareholders”. At the time, research in AI was yet to yield consistent results. Despite the risks, the company chose to pursue a path to advance digital intelligence unencumbered by the need to generate financial returns.

The non-profit was headed by co-chairs Sam Altman and Elon Musk, while its research wing was led by Ilya Sutskever⁠, one of the leading experts in machine learning.

Within years of its establishment, the non-profit announced it would be restructuring as a capped-profit. A move that did not sit well with some.

Under the new structure, the company decided to cap the profits of cutting returns from investments past a certain point. At the time, OpenAI explained that it needed to raise capital, which couldn’t realistically be done while functioning as a nonprofit, since investors typically expect some financial return. To address this, it created OpenAI LP, a capped-profit hybrid structure designed to balance its mission-driven goals with the ability to attract investment capital.

The reasoning has solid grounds. The restructuring allowed outside investment; however, it also created a rift between the management. According to OpenAI, Musk, who had earlier warned against the potential dangers of AI, wanted a majority equity, initial board control, and the position of CEO. When this did not happen, Musk chose to leave the company, paving the way for future drama.

In 2024, Musk sued OpenAI, claiming the company was abandoning its original mission of developing AI for the benefit of humanity and not for profit. However, it must be noted that just a few months before the lawsuit, Musk launched his own AI startup called xAI.

Later, Musk dropped the lawsuit without giving any concrete reason. However, it must be noted that it was around this time that OpenAI openly talked about Musk’s earlier exit from the company and his bid to control the board of OpenAI back in 2019.

Musk was not the only investor looking to control OpenAI. As the company grew, it encountered new problems and found novel ways to resolve them.

OpenAI’s Microsoft era

Following the restructuring in 2019, Microsoft, which had been working on its Azure supercomputer, invested $1 billion in OpenAI. The investment allowed OpenAI to leverage supercomputing technologies on Microsoft's Azure cloud computing service.

The initial investment was followed by a deepening of their relationship with further investment in 2019 of an undisclosed amount. Then, in 2021 and 2023, Microsoft pumped more money into OpenAI, culminating in investments of up to $10 billion.

The deal between OpenAI and Microsoft was a win-win for both companies. Under the deal, Microsoft became the exclusive cloud partner for OpenAI, and its cloud services became the base for all OpenAI workloads across products, API services, and research.

However, OpenAI’s ambitions soon outgrew Microsoft’s investment.

Fine-tuning the restructuring

In November 2023, internal disagreements in OpenAI resulted in the ouster of CEO Sam Altman. A move that reportedly did not sit well with Microsoft and countless employees.

Publicly, OpenAI’s board accused Sam Altman of lacking candor, while Altman defended transparency and denied conflicts of interest. Privately, the clash stemmed from tensions over safety concerns, critical research, and his push to accelerate product launches.

Microsoft intervened in the crisis by offering to start a new AI wing headed by Altman and the rest of the team that chose to follow him. However, within days of the announcement, Altman was reinstated as the CEO at OpenAI, and Microsoft was granted an observer seat on the new board.

Microsoft, however, did not hold on to the observer seat for long. In 2024, it withdrew. The official line was that OpenAI’s new board had made strong progress since Altman’s brief ouster, praising its renewed focus on safety and a positive internal culture.

However, reports noted that Microsoft believed its observer seat on OpenAI’s board was raising antitrust concerns, as regulators in the UK and the U.S were reviewing whether the partnership gave it undue control.

The AGI debate

Once Microsoft left its observer seat, OpenAI decided to move ahead with restructuring that would allow new investors. However, Microsoft and OpenAI did not see eye-to-eye on one key issue: what is AGI?

The tension between Microsoft and OpenAI surfaced prominently during OpenAI’s internal restructuring in late 2024 and early 2025, when disagreements emerged over how to define and govern the pursuit of artificial general intelligence.

The tensions stemmed from disagreements over how much control external stakeholders should have in determining when OpenAI’s technology might be considered AGI. This was important because Microsoft, as OpenAI’s largest investor and infrastructure partner, reportedly pushed for clearer oversight and access to model evaluations, while some OpenAI insiders feared this would give Microsoft disproportionate influence over how and when AGI milestones were declared.

The dispute became public when reports revealed that OpenAI had paused its restructuring amid concerns that Microsoft was exerting too much influence. Though both firms publicly insisted their partnership remained strong, the AGI debate revealed that the race to develop more powerful AI models was as much about control as it was about innovation.

Following negotiations with Microsoft and regulatory authorities, OpenAI has transitioned its for-profit arm from a limited partnership (LP) to a Public Benefit Corporation (PBC), marking a major shift in its governance structure.

With the restructuring complete, OpenAI’s nonprofit board continues to provide oversight, and Microsoft retains a roughly 27% stake in the company. The revised terms also include the formation of an AGI-verification panel to ensure transparency and accountability in the development of advanced AI systems.

Now that OpenAI can function as a for-profit organization just like its competitors, it can continue to define the path of AI development.

The road to a trillion-dollar valuation

In its transition from a non-profit to a for-profit company, OpenAI reshaped the technological landscape, igniting the race for AI supremacy between companies as well as nations. The need for chips, power, data centers, and top talent, all of which are required to train the powerful models, guided OpenAI to shift away from its original structure.

Now, OpenAI has a more simplified ownership structure, allowing it to introduce standard shares and open a clearer path toward a potential public offering. Going forward, OpenAI is expected to work with more than one cloud provider to avoid overdependence on Microsoft and maintain its focus on safety and transparency at the board level. A shift has already been witnessed in its deals with Google and Oracle.

Changing definitions of power and control

The rise of OpenAI from a non-profit to its current avatar is not just the story of one company; it is the story of control, and how even startups as powerful as OpenAI struggle to stand their ground when it comes to dealing with more established investors, in this case, Elon Musk and Microsoft.

Orwell’s warning echoes quietly here: those who control the present may yet decide what the past and the future are allowed to mean. What he envisioned as the logic of totalitarian states has, in a different form, become the logic of data empires. The past is no longer rewritten through propaganda but through the datasets that train machines; the future, not through decrees, but through the systems that decide what we see, search, and believe. In that sense, OpenAI’s trillion-dollar rise is not just a story of innovation or ambition; it is a reminder that every technological revolution also redefines power itself. The future of OpenAI, then, may decide what the future of control over data, information, and technology will look like.

Bite-Sized Brains

• AI in schools = chaos or catalyst? Teachers are rewriting syllabi, grading rubrics, and even classroom roles as AI floods education.

• Google wants space-based datacenters: To keep up with AI’s appetite, Google is looking up. The tech giant plans to launch orbital datacenters.

• Your brain on AI: fried or fine? Research says AI-powered feeds may be rewiring how we think. The rise of ‘scroll rot’ and whether we’re trading cognition for convenience.

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