OpenAI to Take a Percentage from Customer AI-Assisted R&D Outcomes
news.aibase.com - New candidate drug molecules identified by pharmaceutical companies through AI;
- New alloy formulas discovered by material laboratories;
- Optimized circuit architectures developed by chip design teams;
- Even new products incubated by startups based on AI-generated ideas.
No, for every established company that may be hesitant, there's up and comer with nothing to lose who will jump on the opportunity, and the industry will continue moving forward.
This is not a capability that will go unused.
This sounds like the "idea guy" claiming you owe him money after you do all the work.
It's a step removed from that. It's a guy saying he's one hell of an idea guy and will be rich in the future.
It’s an ex boyfriend saying “you’re nothing without me!” As he demands gas money for his car from the duration of the relationship, during the breakup
Except in reverse: now the idea guy gives prompts and AI does all the work.
Does this mean I get to take a cut for assisting their training data?
> Does this mean I get to take a cut for assisting their training data?
No. You see, the money is supposed to go to Altman.
People are way misinterpreting OpenAI’s intentions here. The idea is that OpenAI could propose to enter into joint ventures with industry partners where each side gets a share of the rewards generated by the joint activity. This is would only happen in the cases where it’s an attractive proposition to both sides.
Why would it ever be attractive to the other side?
From the pharma side, I have heard discussions with other technology companies who insisted on a share of discovery revenue. Nothing has ever killed discussions so quickly.
You're right that its only in rare circumstances that it is attractive to the other side and in fact OpenAI has yet to announce any such deal.
Likely if they sponsor a ton of tokens.
If only someone could come up with a way to make a significant profit with LLMs by doing something useful with them, OpenAI would be saved!
Instead, it's advertising and speculation.
Matt Levine (Dec 2025), https://archive.is/S3MPq
> Your business model might end up being sort of a … startup incubator or private equity firm; you’d spend your time starting or acquiring companies on which the robot could work its magic. Your business model would be “general business, but with AI”.. Either it will sell AI at high margins to lots of businesses, or it will sell AI at lower margins to lucrative businesses that it owns.
Oh boy, I imagine a number of companies would drop Open AI usage altogether if the terms change to say OpenAI now gets a cut of the profit from anything created from using AI. This is crazy and wouldn't need to be possible if they already had a profitable business model. Imagine other companies like Microsoft or Apple charging companies a 'technology empowerment fee' because you used Windows or Mac computers to create something.
Are there credible sources for these claims?
These type of stories are typically attributed to anonymous sources. So it’s impossible for a reader to conclude anything about the sources’ own credibility. So they usually rely on the credibility of the reporter or media org who’s published about it.
The Information is also reporting on this, but paywalled. IMO The Information does solid reporting.
https://www.theinformation.com/newsletters/applied-ai/openai...
Editing to add some of the Information’s reporting: > Speaking at a panel at Davos moderated by The Information CEO Jessica Lessin, Friar suggested that in the field of drug discovery, her company could, for instance, take a “license to the drug that is discovered” using OpenAI’s technology. In other words, OpenAI would take a profit-sharing stake in the financial upside its AI creates for customers.
> Friar is no doubt familiar with older AI drug discovery firms such as Recursion that struck deals with pharmaceutical firms to give them big bounties for successful drugs identified by their tech. There aren’t many, if any, examples of such successes yet, though.
> OpenAI isn’t the only firm eyeing this opportunity. Its rivals Anthropic, Google DeepMind and Isomorphic Labs, an Alphabet subsidiary focusing on using AI for drug discovery, have also held discussions with early-stage biotechnology startups about data licensing or partnerships.
We have the same insight into the sources as we do OpenAI’s finances.
This is like book publishers asking to take a slice of your income due to presenting you with the information you studied to become proficient. Except the book publishers actually helped to create the information that helped you and didn't steal it.
How will they enforce this? The content coming out of the LLM cannot have copyright.
Big if true. There's another article that seems to report more details, but it's paywalled. There's a summary here: https://old.reddit.com/r/LinusTechTips/comments/1qkae55/open...
As non-profits are known to do
Cant wait for the lawsuits on this one. Hoo boy
And just like that, the bubble burst.