ChatGPT is owned by OpenAI, an artificial intelligence research organization founded in December 2015 by tech leaders including Sam Altman, Elon Musk, Greg Brockman, Ilya Sutskever, and others. OpenAI started as a non-profit but transitioned to a "capped-profit" company in 2019 to attract investment while maintaining its mission to benefit humanity. Microsoft is the largest investor in OpenAI, having invested approximately $13 billion, but it does not own the company. Elon Musk, although a co-founder, no longer holds any ownership stake and left the board in 2018. OpenAI remains the entity that owns and operates ChatGPT technology.