OpenAI has made another Fast Company lists.
In 2021, the San Francisco startup was named by the publication as one of the top 10 artificial intelligence companies. And on Thursday, Fast Company named OpenAI as the No. 1 "most innovative" company of 2023 across all sectors.
OpenAI was founded in 2015 by Sam Altman and Elon Musk as a nonprofit AI research organization. Their aim was "to advance digital intelligence in the way that is most likely to benefit humanity as a whole, unconstrained by a need to generate financial return," according to an announcement at the time.
Then last year, the organization started publicly releasing its image and text generating software known as DALL-E 2 and ChatGPT. These products use "generative AI" to create content from simple text prompts in plain English, and in some cases are capable of engaging in back-and-forth conversations with users.
The results have captured the world's imagination, in addition to sparking questions around copyright, misinformation and ethics.
Although he co-founded the company, Musk has more recently criticized OpenAI for being "woke" and is reportedly trying to launch a new company to compete.
Microsoft had invested more than $3 billion into OpenAI since 2019, according to the NYT, before the companies announced a new multiyear agreement in January that was reportedly worth $10 billion and cemented Microsoft as OpenAI's exclusive cloud services provider.
Here are all 12 Bay Area companies that landed in the top 50 of Fast Company's annual list, according to their ranking.
- #1 OpenAI (S.F.)
- #3 Airbnb (S.F.)
- #7 Roblox (San Mateo)
- #11 Hoka (Richmond)
- #14 Armis Security (S.F.)
- #26 E.l.f. Beauty (Oakland)
- #31 Hazel Health (S.F.)
- #33 Ultima Genomics (Newark)
- #40 Airtable (S.F.)
- #42 Eventbrite (S.F.)
- #45 Loom (S.F.)
- #48 Robust Intelligence (S.F.)
