>What matters is that they wanted the public (and likely, their talent) to _think_ that they weren't even interested in making a profit as this would be a philosophical threat to the notion of any sort of impartial or even hopefully benevolent originator of AGI (a goal which is laid plainly in their mission statement)
And now they want to cast off any pretense of that former altruistic yolk now that they have a new, better raison d'etre to attract talent: making absolutely unparalleled stacks of cash.
It sort of remains to be seen whether they can actually make that cash - they're no longer the only game in town, and while they have an obvious adoption and brand name recognition advantage in their industry, they've also been running real hot on investor funding on the assumption that more processing power is what it's gonna take for them to stay competitive and continue improving. But they're gonna have to fight Google and Microsoft on that front. If there is a general plateau coming up in all of these models, or they fail to keep pace with their extremely well-supplied competition, it might not be so easy to convert their position into money.
Note Elon made a significant "donation" early into OpenAI given their non-profit designation and intentions, in return receiving zero equity. The donation was also received tax free
And now they want to cast off any pretense of that former altruistic yolk now that they have a new, better raison d'etre to attract talent: making absolutely unparalleled stacks of cash.