What is OpenAI? Things you need to know about OpenAI.

What is OpenAI?

OpenAI is a leading AI research company with cutting-edge technologies such as ChatGPT. The company later transitioned to a for-profit model (OpenAI LP) in 2019 to secure funding for large-scale AI development. Headquartered in San Francisco, California, the company has played a significant role in advancing AI technologies.

OpenAI's main AI models

OpenAI is renowned for its GPT AI model family. Google introduced the groundbreaking Transformer architecture in 2017, and shortly thereafter, OpenAI launched the GPT-1 model, leveraging the Transformer architecture. GPT-1 was trained on 117 million parameters. Subsequently, in 2019, OpenAI launched GPT-2 with 1.5 billion parameters.

By 2020, OpenAI had released GPT-3 and scaled it up to 175 billion parameters. It could generate human-like text across a wide range of fields. In 2022, GPT-3.5 was launched, powering the first version of ChatGPT. This marked a turning point in AI history.

Following that, in 2023, OpenAI launched the even more powerful GPT-4. Then, we saw the launch of the multimodal GPT-4o, along with OpenAI's inference models including o1, o3, and o4. Finally, in 2025, OpenAI launched GPT-4.5, GPT-5, and then GPT-5.1. The latest GPT-5 series integrated both thinking and non-thinking AI models.

OpenAI has also released the powerful ChatGPT Agent, Deep Research AI agent, and Shopping Research agent. In addition, OpenAI launched Dall-E in 2021 for AI image generation. The company followed up with Dall-E 2 in 2022 and Dall-E 3 in 2023. For image generation, OpenAI has stopped training Diffusion models and is now utilizing the multimodal capabilities of GPT stream models to generate AI images.

Regarding video, OpenAI launched Sora in 2024, its first text-to-video model. And finally, in 2025, Sora 2 was announced with improved physics simulation capabilities and synchronized audio.

How did OpenAI train ChatGPT?

ChatGPT was initially based on a single big language model. It was an AI system trained on large datasets to understand and generate human language. The latest GPT model, GPT-4o, is multimodal, meaning it also understands images, audio, and video.

OpenAI states that its large language models (LLMs) use publicly available information on the internet; information licensed by the company from third parties; and data from OpenAI users and trainers. However, the training data is only updated up to a specific date. In the case of GPT-4o and GPT-4o Mini, that date is October 2023.

Furthermore, OpenAI states that it filters out data it doesn't want its models to learn from, such as hate speech, adult content, and spam. The information fed into the LLM is called training data, and OpenAI, like other generative AI producers, has not shared exactly what information is included in its training data.

The future of OpenAI

OpenAI is continuing its research to achieve its original mission—to develop safe general artificial intelligence (AGI). However, previously, the company seemed more focused on building profitable products for consumers and businesses. Recently, OpenAI acquired IO, an AI hardware startup founded by Jony Ive, Apple's chief design officer. The company aims to launch an AI device by 2026, but without a screen.

Furthermore, critics argue that OpenAI is no longer 'open' because the company has stopped sharing its research with the open-source community. They also seem to be prioritizing commercial success over safety and non-profit ideals. While OpenAI remains at the forefront of AI development, the company must not forget its original principle of building safe and profitable AGI.