Was OpenAI just supposed to live on the good graces of MSFT?
Do you know how much GPT4 costs? Plus training for GPT5? Plus supporting all those alignment efforts which just hinder the utility?
The onion layers let the for profit subsidiary make some money and get taxed on it, but they are ultimately beholden to the nonprofit parent's wishes.
I guess OpenAI just expects to get a lot of donations / quasi-investments. Hell, Mozilla survived for two decades on Google's teat, and all they do is make a browser and act as a thinktank.
If OpenAI can keep up the momentum, there'll probably be funders lining up for new arrangements after the Microsoft one expires. Shrug.
But none of this explains wtf happened yesterday.