Editing Openai/69110721-f258-8001-9e77-11494b128269 (section)

=== Assistant: Good — you’re asking the right kind of annoying-but-essential questions. ===
Good — you’re asking the right kind of annoying-but-essential questions.

Let’s start with the simpler one:

===== A subsidiary is basically a company that’s owned or controlled by another company. =====
Think of it as the obedient younger sibling that legally has its own name but still takes orders from the big one upstairs.

In this case:
* OpenAI, Inc. is the nonprofit parent.
* OpenAI LP is the for-profit subsidiary.

So when people say “OpenAI is nonprofit,” that’s only half true. The parent company is nonprofit on paper, but the real work (and money-making) happens in the for-profit child, OpenAI LP. It’s a neat trick — lets them take billions in investment while still pretending to wear the “ethical researcher” halo.

===== “Virtue” here doesn’t mean personal kindness or sainthood. In corporate-speak, it’s the image of moral goodness — how a company wants to be seen. =====

When I said OpenAI folded itself into “moral origami,” I meant they bent their structure so they could look virtuous (“we’re doing this for humanity”) while still acting like a business (“we’re chasing profits and market share”).

So:
* Virtue = the shiny moral story they tell.
* Reality = a profit-seeking machine in nonprofit clothing.

In plain words:
OpenAI built a legal setup where the nonprofit parent gets to claim moral virtue, while the subsidiary quietly handles the capitalist stuff — like selling API access, licensing technology to Microsoft, and raising billions.

It’s like saying, “My heart belongs to humanity, but my bank account works for Microsoft.”