Chapter 1: What is OpenAI's current strategy in 2026?
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Welcome to the podcast. issues and repercussions that the company will have since they converted their nonprofit to a for-profit and a lot of the fallout that has happened. Before we get into that, I wanted to mention if you want to try all of the AI models I talked about on the show, all of the latest models from OpenAI, whether that's their image model, their audio model, or their text model,
or literally 40 of the top models from Google, Meta, and everyone else, go check out my own startup, which is AIbox.ai. I'll leave a link in the description, but it's $20 a month.
Chapter 2: What are the implications of OpenAI's aggressive talent acquisition?
You can try all of the different models side by side, compare them, get the results, save money by not having to have subscriptions to 100 different AI platforms. The link is in the show notes to AIbox.ai. All right, let's get into the episode about OpenAI.
The first thing I wanted to say is that it's 2026, and I think OpenAI is starting the year off with some momentum in two completely different directions, but still important for the company.
Number one, they are continuing their really aggressive talent acquisition strategy, but at the same time, they're preparing to defend themselves in court against one of their original founders, aka Elon Musk. So on Thursday, OpenAI confirmed that they were hiring the team behind
It's an AI-powered platform used by executive coaches, consultants, and HR leaders to essentially automate a lot of the leadership assessments and feedback reports. So the whole deal is essentially structured as an acqui-hire.
I think OpenAI is bringing on the three co-founders, but they're also winding down the product itself, which is interesting because you can see, obviously, there's some very talented people at the company. Maybe it wasn't just, you know, a massively successful company.
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Chapter 3: How is OpenAI handling its recent acqui-hire of Convogo?
And when I see a platform like this, it doesn't seem like it has some insane venture scale perhaps, but the team that has built it is obviously very talented and very knowledgeable. So this is an incredible acqui-hire as far as getting talent for OpenAI. A spokesperson talking about this said that they are not purchasing Convogo's technology or intellectual property.
Instead, the team is going to join OpenAI to contribute to its broader AI cloud efforts. According to a source that was familiar with the deal, the acquisition was completed entirely in stock. So essentially, They, you know, they went to these people, they said, hey, we'd love to have you join the team. We don't really want your platform or your technology. Just wind that down, let it die.
We'll pay you an opening eye stock, aka they're going to pay them.
Chapter 4: What challenges does OpenAI face with its lawsuit from Elon Musk?
Probably they're going to be very well compensated for the acquisition, but basically come over and work for us. We'll give you a salary and you'll have a lot of great stock in the company, which is kind of prepping to go and go public and IPO in the near future. So it seems like that was probably an attractive offer for them.
What I will say is that the Convogo was founded by Matt Cooper, Evan Kater, and Mike Gillette. after what the team had described as a weekend hackathon. So they kind of put this thing together. I think the original idea came from basically just a simple question from one of their mothers, from Cooper's mother, who's an executive coach.
She wondered whether AI could handle the repetitive work of writing evaluation reports, and she could then focus more on human-centered coaching. I think basically all of us have had a similar experience with whatever we do, and we realize OpenAI, ChatGPT could really help us automate something that was painful and just redundant.
Chapter 5: How did OpenAI's structure change from nonprofit to for-profit?
Over the last two years, the platform, they said, worked with thousands of coaches and partnered with a bunch of major leadership development firms. In an email announcing the acquisition, the founders said that their biggest takeaway was not just what modern AI models can do, but how difficult it is to translate new capabilities into practical professional workflows.
They also wrote that closing that gap requires purpose built tools designed around real users. And they said that joining OpenAI would allow them to continue that mission at a much larger scale. It's always so rough when you find a good software tool and then it winds down or it gets acquired and it gets shut down. And they send the email like, hey, thanks everyone for being a loyal customer.
We're shutting down. Good luck. And they're like, we're going to continue our mission elsewhere. But, you know, it's kind of in a rough spot for the customers.
Chapter 6: What are the details surrounding Elon Musk's involvement with OpenAI?
But in any case. This is the ninth acquihire that OpenAI has made in roughly a year, if you're looking at the data from PitchBook. In most cases, OpenAI has just shut down the acquired product entirely, or they have absorbed pieces of it into their own ecosystem. A couple previous examples were Sky, Statsig, Roy, Context.ai, and CrossingMinds.
I think right now this deal kind of shows just how much OpenAI, like a lot of their competitors, is increasingly using mergers and acquisitions as basically a shortcut to talent and execution speed. I think the most notable exception is OpenAI's acquisition of Johnny Ives IO product, which is still operating independently, but they're working with OpenAI on a new AI hardware initiative.
That is going to be exciting and coming out, I don't know, not super soon, but hopefully it'll be an interesting product when it does arrive. So while OpenAI is continuing to expand internally, grabbing all of this incredible talent, it is also facing some new legal pressure from the outside. Earlier on Thursday, a U.S.
judge ruled that Elon Musk's lawsuit against OpenAI is going to proceed to a jury trial.
Chapter 7: What are the potential outcomes of the ongoing lawsuit for OpenAI?
It's going to be scheduled for March. Musk sued OpenAI and also its co-founder, Sam Altman, Greg Brockman, And this lawsuit came in 2024, but essentially he said that they abandoned the organization's original nonprofit mission, and they're basically favoring a profit-driven approach to the business, trying to make a lot of money.
Elon Musk was an early backer, and he was also a co-founder of OpenAI, but he stepped away from the board in 2018. There was a whole bunch of drama, and I think he tried to become the CEO. They didn't want him to be. Then he wanted to, like... I think he... At one time, he... proposed merging it with Tesla for some of the self-driving work that they were doing. They didn't want to do that.
And since then, he has been a critic of the company.
Chapter 8: How does OpenAI's journey reflect broader trends in the AI industry?
I think mostly, I think mostly we start hearing him being critical of the company once the Maltman started making insane amounts of money. And originally, it was a non-profit that Elon Musk gave $100 million to. Then it switched to a for-profit. So essentially... $100 million for a company that was supposed to be opening eyes, supposed to give back and be free or useful to everyone.
Everyone was supposed to get access to it. And then it became a for profit. Now, I think Sam Altman argues that it's fulfilling its mission today by, you know, being super useful for everyone. I mean, we all use it for everything. And so it's fulfilling its mission, even if he charges everyone for it, because it, you know, it needs money. And so anyways, there's just drama around all of this.
OpenAI was actually founded back in 2015. And And so, you know, it's over 10 years old. And in October 2025, they completed a formal restructuring that converted it to a for-profit. Well, essentially, it's also very convoluted structure with tons of like LLCs and business entities that own other entities. But the long short is that in October last year, they completed a formal restructuring.
They converted their for-profit arm into a public benefit corporation. Um, the original nonprofit has 26% ownership stake in that Elon Musk's claim in this particular lawsuit is that he invested about $38 million into opening. I think originally it was like a hundred million, but then when he stepped away, he had like, uh, you know, guaranteed money or said he was going to give the rest of it.
And he like pulled back the funding on some. So I think like actual cash in was about $38 million, uh, And he did that all based on the assurance that the organization was going to remain a nonprofit. So now he's seeking monetary damages tied to what he describes as an ill-gotten gain.
In February of last year, he also made an unsolicited bid of $97 billion to acquire OpenAI, which Sam Altman publicly rejected. So there's more drama with all of that. An OpenAI spokesperson called Elon Musk's lawsuit baseless and described it as part of an ongoing pattern of harassment. Of course, there's There's a whole lot of drama between these two parties. The U.S.
District Judge Yvonne Gonzalez-Rogers said that her decision to allow the case to proceed was based on evidence suggesting that OpenAI's leadership may have made commitments about preserving its nonprofit structure that, you know, essentially as Elon Musk is alleging. I think a jury is now going to decide whether those assurances were violated.
Right now, I think as OpenAI is trying to, you know, basically absorb all these new startups, all this new talent at a huge pace, I think the trial could become... basically a huge test of how they're going to reconcile their original mission with the present day, the scale and all of the ambitions that they have now.
So I think at the end of the day, what probably will happen is that Elon Musk will win to some degree. He will be paid some sort of compensation, which is probably a large compensation.
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