OpenAI has evolved a lot since being founded a decade ago, and so have its official mission statements.
A review of the company’s Form 990 filings — the annual tax documents nonprofits are required to submit to the IRS — reveals a striking evolution in how OpenAI describes its purpose and priorities to regulators. From a sprawling, community-minded pledge in 2016 to a single, terse sentence in 2024, the trajectory of OpenAI’s stated mission tells a story about a company that has grown dramatically in size, ambition, and commercial reach — and one that has quietly dropped explicit references to building “safe AI” along the way.
2016–2017: An Idealistic, Open-Source Ethos
In its earliest filings, OpenAI presented itself as a mission-driven research lab committed to transparency and broad human benefit. The language was expansive and notably community-oriented:
“OpenAI’s goal is to advance digital intelligence in the way that is most likely to benefit humanity as a whole, unconstrained by a need to generate financial return. We think that artificial intelligence technology will help shape the 21st century, and we want to help the world build safe AI technology and ensure that AI’s benefits are as widely and evenly distributed as possible. We’re trying to build AI as part of a larger community, and we want to openly share our plans and capabilities along the way.”
Several phrases stand out here. The explicit disavowal of financial motives — “unconstrained by a need to generate financial return” — reflected OpenAI’s origins as a nonprofit. The commitment to “openly share our plans and capabilities” aligned with the open-source spirit that characterized the lab in its early years. And crucially, the goal of helping “the world build safe AI technology” was front and center.
2018–2020: Trimming the Community Language
By 2018, OpenAI’s mission statement had been quietly shortened. The core language about advancing digital intelligence and distributing AI’s benefits remained intact, but the final sentence — the one about building AI “as part of a larger community” and openly sharing plans — was removed:
“OpenAI’s goal is to advance digital intelligence in the way that is most likely to benefit humanity as a whole, unconstrained by a need to generate financial return. We think that artificial intelligence technology will help shape the 21st century, and we want to help the world build safe AI technology and ensure that AI’s benefits are as widely and evenly distributed as possible.”
The trimming was subtle, but meaningful in retrospect. The collaborative, open framing was gone. This period also coincided with OpenAI’s increasing shift toward proprietary research and, in 2019, the creation of its “capped-profit” structure — a new hybrid model that allowed the company to accept outside investment while theoretically keeping its nonprofit mission intact.
2021–2023: “Responsibly Deploy” Enters the Picture
The next evolution in OpenAI’s mission statement arrived in its 2021 filing and persisted through 2023. The language shifted noticeably — from a goal-oriented framing to a mission-oriented one, and from building AI for the world to developing and deploying it internally:
“OpenAI’s mission is to build general purpose artificial intelligence that benefits humanity, unconstrained by a need to generate financial return. OpenAI believes that artificial intelligence technology has the potential to have a profound, positive impact on the world, so the company’s goal is to develop and responsibly deploy safe AI technology, ensuring that its benefits are as widely and evenly distributed as possible.”
This version introduced two notable additions: “general purpose artificial intelligence” — an early hint at OpenAI’s growing focus on AGI — and the phrase “responsibly deploy.” The latter signaled that OpenAI was no longer just a research lab publishing papers; it was now a company shipping products to the world, and wanted to characterize that deployment as a responsible act. The word “safe” remained, but it had shifted from a community-facing aspiration (“help the world build safe AI”) to an internal operational descriptor (“develop and responsibly deploy safe AI technology”).
2024: Four Words Disappear, One Sentence Remains
The most dramatic change came in OpenAI’s 2024 filing, which reduced the mission statement to a single, stark sentence:
“OpenAI’s mission is to ensure that artificial general intelligence benefits all of humanity.”
Gone entirely are the references to safety. Gone is the disavowal of financial return. Gone is any mention of responsible deployment, wide distribution of benefits, or the process by which OpenAI intends to achieve its goals. What remains is a statement focused almost entirely on outcome — and specifically, on AGI.
The timing is notable. The 2024 filing came as OpenAI was pursuing a major structural transformation, moving to convert its for-profit arm into a fully independent public benefit corporation — a change that would significantly loosen the restrictions of its original nonprofit charter. Critics, including some of OpenAI’s own co-founders, argued the restructuring would dilute the nonprofit’s control and prioritize commercial interests. OpenAI has maintained that the changes would allow it to better pursue its mission.
What the Changes Reveal
Reading these mission statements in sequence, a few trends emerge clearly. Safety language, once explicit and prominent, has been gradually de-emphasized and ultimately removed. The original communal and open-source ethos — sharing plans, building with the broader community — disappeared early in the company’s life. And the financial disclaimer that anchored OpenAI’s nonprofit identity for years has quietly vanished from its official regulatory filings.
At the same time, AGI has moved from subtext to the entire point. In 2016, the word “artificial general intelligence” appeared nowhere in OpenAI’s mission. By 2024, it was the only thing the mission was about.
Whether these shifts represent a pragmatic adaptation to OpenAI’s explosive growth, a fundamental departure from its founding principles, or simply a more honest articulation of what the company has always been building toward — that debate is unlikely to be settled by a Form 990. But the paper trail offers a rare, unfiltered window into how one of the world’s most consequential technology companies has quietly rewritten its own story.