The Slow Erosion: Tracing OpenAI’s Mission Through Tax Filings
What can you learn about an AI company from its IRS filings? More than you’d think.
The Core Insight
Simon Willison did something clever: he dug through OpenAI’s nonprofit tax filings from 2016 to 2024, extracting the required mission statement field from each year’s return. What he found is a fascinating chronicle of how a company evolves from idealistic startup to commercial powerhouse—told through the gradual disappearance of words.
The trajectory is striking: in 2016, OpenAI was “unconstrained by a need to generate financial return” and wanted to “openly share our plans and capabilities along the way.” By 2024, that mission had been reduced to 13 words: “ensure that artificial general intelligence benefits all of humanity.”
The words “safely,” “openly,” and especially “financial return” tell quite a story.
Why This Matters
Nonprofit mission statements aren’t just PR fluff—they have legal weight. The IRS can revoke tax-exempt status if an organization strays from its stated mission. Which makes what OpenAI did even more interesting: they systematically edited their mission to match their evolving business priorities, year by year.
The erosion follows a clear pattern:
- 2016: Grand ambitions, community focus, commitment to openness
- 2018: Dropped “building AI as part of a larger community”
- 2020: “Benefit humanity as a whole” → just “benefits humanity” (they’re more confident now)
- 2022: Added “safely”—the last safety mention
- 2024: Everything else gone. Just “benefits all of humanity.”
Notice what’s missing: any reference to safety (after 2022), openness (gone since 2018), and especially any constraint against generating financial returns.
Key Takeaways
- Mission statements are living documents – How companies evolve their stated purpose reveals real priorities
- The “safety” word disappeared – After 2022, safety is no longer part of OpenAI’s legally binding mission
- “Benefits all of humanity” is dangerously vague – It’s hard to fail at a mission that vague
- 501(c)(3) filings are public records – This is a gold mine for tracking nonprofit evolution
Looking Ahead
Willison helpfully notes that similar documents from Anthropic exist—it’s worth watching whether their mission statements follow a similar erosion pattern as they scale. The broader question is whether the nonprofit structure constrains commercial behavior or merely provides a convenient starting point that’s later abandoned.
The deletion of “unconstrained by a need to generate financial return” speaks louder than any press release ever could.
Based on analysis of “The evolution of OpenAI’s mission statement” by Simon Willison