OpenAi and Microsoft at the table to review the contract in view of the listing

MILAN – OpenAI and Microsoft are rewriting the terms of their partnership to allow the startup to go public in the future, the Financial Times reports, citing sources. Microsoft is essential to OpenAI’s corporate reorganization plan, and one of the issues to be resolved in the negotiations is what share Redmond will have in a restructured OpenAI, in which it has invested more than $13 billion so far.

Microsoft and OpenAI are bound by the contract signed in 2019, when Redmond invested 10 billion in OpenAI, and which expires in 2030.

Microsoft is offering to give up a portion of its equity stake in Openai’s new for-profit business in exchange for access to new technologies developed beyond the 2030 deadline, three people familiar with the talks told the British newspaper. OpenAi last week abandoned a plan that would have taken ultimate control of the group away from its nonprofit board.

However, it has maintained plans to transform its corporate division into a public benefit corporation (PBC), an entity focused on social good as well as profit. This type of business model, adopted by rivals such as Anthropic and Elon Musk’s xAi, would still allow Openai to offer investors shares in the company. The paper’s sources said the change was a key investor demand and would ensure the possibility of a future stock market listing.