For nearly a year, Tyler Johnston has been gathering publicly available information on the operations of OpenAI, culminating in a report aimed at enhancing public understanding of the organization. Over the past month, he has focused on compiling this information into a comprehensive document.
The report, titled The OpenAI Files, was released today as a joint effort between the Midas Project and the Tech Oversight Project, two nonprofit organizations dedicated to monitoring the tech industry. It is being presented as the “most thorough compilation to date of documented issues related to governance, leadership integrity, and organizational culture at OpenAI.”
The interactive platform consists of over 50 pages and more than 10,000 words that trace OpenAI’s transformation from a nonprofit research entity into a commercially successful brand, highlighting the safety issues and potential conflicts of interest that have arisen throughout this transition. It incorporates a range of sources, including corporate disclosures, legal filings, open letters, and news reports, aggregating the information often reported individually by outlets like Technology News. Visual aids and data presentations are employed to clarify key insights into OpenAI’s structure, its original capped-profit model, and its current restructuring proposals.
A significant focus of the report is the potential financial benefits for OpenAI’s executives and board members stemming from the company’s achievements. The organizations speculate on CEO Sam Altman’s investment activities, listing various enterprises—such as Retro Biosciences, Helion Energy, Reddit, and Rain AI—that currently have business ties with OpenAI, which include partnerships or discussions about acquisitions.
Johnston, serving as the executive director of The Midas Project, shared with Technology News that the initiative aims to highlight the discrepancies between OpenAI’s early aspirations from the late 2010s and its present-day conduct in 2025.
The report’s authors clarified that they did not receive financial backing, assistance, editorial oversight, or any form of support from competitors such as Elon Musk, xAI, Anthropic, Meta, Google, or Microsoft, asserting that the report maintains “complete editorial independence.” OpenAI has opted not to provide any comments on the matter.
Johnston remarked to Technology News that “this is an archival project, showcasing what OpenAI was like in the past compared to its current state. We are presenting this information to the audience and inviting them to form their own views about it.”
The complete report is available for review at OpenAIFiles.org.
