A Lighthouse for Steward-Ownership – or Just Another Silicon Valley Giant?

A lighthouse for Steward-Ownership – or just another Silicon Valley giant?

June 2025

OpenAI has, ever since its inception, been an intriguing case in the context of steward-ownership as it attempted to challenge conventional corporate ownership logic from within Silicon Valley’s high-stakes ecosystem. Founded as a nonprofit to ensure AI development would serve the public interest, it later introduced a capped-profit structure and a for-profit subsidiary to access capital without compromising its mission. In theory, this hybrid setup echoed key principles of steward-ownership: with a non-profit entity controlling the for-profit arm and thus safeguarding purpose-orientation, capped returns for investors and excluding CEO Sam Altman from equity.

But events in more recent months and years have laid bare just how fragile this model was in practice. The leadership crisis of 2023 revealed gaps in governance and accountability and was, for us, the occasion to take a closer look at OpenAI’s structure through the lens of steward-ownership. And now, OpenAI’s ongoing 2025 restructuring – including the conversion of its for-profit arm into a Public Benefit Corporation (PBC), the removal of profit caps, and the introduction of traditional equity for investors and employees – could be seen as significant steps away from its original ideals and also from steward-ownership principles. While the nonprofit will retain majority control and CEO Sam Altman is not receiving direct equity, the shift nonetheless opens the door to more conventional, return-driven dynamics.

Add to that Elon Musk’s $97.4B “takeover bid” and the disbanding of the company’s AI safety team, and OpenAI is facing not just a governance crisis, but an existential one. In this post, we revisit OpenAI’s evolving ownership structure through the lens of steward-ownership: What remains of its original mission safeguards? Is a purpose-first corporate model still viable in the AI arms race? And what does this tell us about the deeper need for new ownership models in technologies that shape our future?

In addition to that, the spotlight on OpenAI has intensified due to the high-stakes legal confrontation with Elon Musk. In February, a Musk-led consortium tabled an unsolicited $97.4 billion takeover offer, which the board unanimously rejected, calling it a “sham” and a “fake takeover bid” designed to disrupt OpenAI’s trajectory. OpenAI recently responded with a countersuit, accusing Musk of “harassment” and launching a disruptive campaign to impede its mission. A federal jury trial is now scheduled for spring 2026.

These developments only underscore how relevant the questions we raised back in late 2023 still are today. In our earlier blog post,we explored whether OpenAI’s structure could be considered a form of steward-ownership — and where it was still unclear or somewhat blurry whether steward-ownership principles had been fully realized. With its ongoing structural transformation and a public legal battle at the center, it’s still worth revisiting those reflections, and we would like to share them here with you. They come in three parts: