Yes I get that but did OpenAI ever take any public donations from society? I don't think they did. It thought it was only funded by wealthy private donors. The

Yes I get that but did OpenAI ever take any public donations from society? I don't think they did. It thought it was only funded by wealthy private donors. They received benefits by dint of their status. If there were no such benefits they wouldn’t have incorporated that way. In any case, would creating a new company (i.e. ClosedAI) that recruits OpenAI's employees and buys the intellectual property such that it leaves a "shell" of OpenAI be acceptable? There’s no problem with recruiting employees. The intellectual property purchase is problematic. If it’s for sale, it should be for sale to anyone and no one connected to a bidder should be involved in evaluating offers. The existing laws allow for non-profit 501c3 organizations to "convert" (scare quotes) to for-profit status by re-incorporating to a (new) for-profit company. That seems to be Sam's legal roadmap. Legal and honorable are not synonyms.