Ask HN: How do non-profit science/tech groups make money (e.g. SRI)?
More specifically what is the business model for SRI [1]? SRI is a leading nonprofit scientific research institute, with $100M to $1B in annual revenues, and with a long list of for-profit spin-offs [2]. What is the organizational structure of SRI? Do executives (and the initial founders) have equity? What about employees? How do they qualify as a non-profit (enjoying tax benefits) while having commercialization directions?
Now consider OpenAI's pivot to a "capped profit" company [3]. How does this compare/differ with the SRI model? What does OpenAI's ownership (captable) look like?
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SRI_International
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_SRI_International_spin-offs
[3] https://openai.com/blog/openai-lp/
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