OpenAI devotes $25B to healthcare breakthroughs, AI resilience infrastructure

AI is taking another big leap into the healthcare industry with a new commitment by OpenAI, the stewards of ChatGPT. As part of the company’s recapitalization efforts, the newly renamed OpenAI Foundation (the non-profit that controls the for-profit activities of OpenAI) will invest $25 billion into two main areas of focus: fostering healthcare breakthroughs and strengthening technical resistance across industries in the new AI-driven ecosystem. 

“The OpenAI mission—ensuring that AGI benefits all of humanity—will be advanced through both the business and the Foundation,” explained Bret Taylor, Chair of the OpenAI Board of Directors, in a recent blog post.  

“The nonprofit…holds equity in the for-profit currently valued at approximately $130 billion, making it one of the best resourced philanthropic organizations ever. The more OpenAI succeeds as a company, the more the non-profit’s equity stake will be worth, which the non-profit will use to fund its philanthropic work,” he added. 

The OpenAI Foundation will inaugurate this new era with a $25 billion commitment to improving health and curing diseases. The Foundation will “fund work to accelerate health breakthroughs so everyone can benefit from faster diagnostics, better treatments, and cures,” Taylor wrote.  

The funding will support foundational technical work such as the creation of open sourced, responsibly built frontier health datasets. Funding for scientists will also be available. 

At the same time, the healthcare industry will likely benefit from the Foundation’s AI resilience efforts. 

“Just as the internet required a comprehensive cybersecurity ecosystem—protecting power grids, hospitals, banks, governments, companies, and individuals—we now need a parallel resilience layer for AI,” stated Taylor. “The OpenAI Foundation will devote resources to support practical technical solutions for AI resilience, which is about maximizing AI’s benefits and minimizing its risks.” 

The financial infusion follows a $50 billion commitment to the non-profit sector, announced in September, designed to fund community-based activities such as improving AI literacy, expanding economic opportunity for under-resourced communities, and supporting the delivery of essential services, including public health and mental wellbeing services. 

These application window for these unrestricted grants closed at the beginning of the October, and awards will be distributed by the end of the year. 

The news of the new investment follows an overhaul of the Microsoft-OpenAI partnership that has helped ChatGPT’s precipitous rise into one of the most ubiquitous technologies in the world. Under the new agreement, Microsoft retains a large financial stake in OpenAI, as well as exclusivity of intellectual property rights and Azure API exclusivity – for the moment, at least. These rights may be terminated by the declaration that Artificial General Intelligence (AGI) has been achieved. Otherwise, there are end dates in place for the various components of IP and exclusivity in the arrangement.  

Interestingly, both parties can pursue AGI and other AI development partnerships independently, as Microsoft recently announced with its Harvard Medical School partnership to bulk up the medical knowledge in Copilot. 

The relationship between OpenAI and Microsoft remains complicated, but with both entities pursuing a bigger stake in the healthcare AI ecosystem, a little quasi-friendly competition could give healthcare providers and payers a little more leverage to choose best-of-breed AI products and advance the shared goal of improving outcomes for patients. 

Jennifer Bresnick is a journalist and freelance content creator with a decade of experience in the health IT industry.  Her work has focused on leveraging innovative technology tools to create value, improve health equity, and achieve the promises of the learning health system.  She can be reached at [email protected].