[Public] Benefit Corporations¹ are this weird sort of in-between between a non-profit and a regular corporation. My first encounter with this was the benefit corp that was set up for This American Life and Serial (although the latter is now owned by the New York Times) and after reading a whole bunch, it’s still not entirely clear to me what it means. Everything I’ve seen talks about transitioning from a non-benefit corp to a benefit corp, I don’t know if the concept is old enough for the reverse to have ever happened.

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1. Whether it’s called a “benefit corporation” or “public benefit corporation” apparently depends on the state, and not all states have laws to allow them to be established.

The only protection that the "public benefit corporation" status provides is that investors can't sue the company for failing to maximize shareholder value. There's lots of other avenues they can take to make the company do what they want (assuming sufficient share ownership) such as pressuring the board, voting in directors, or converting the company to a regular corporation (it's not like a 501(c)(3) where this isn't possible in most cases).

Remember when open ai was a not for profit?

Yea good point, kind of a commodotize your complement kind of thing , Blockchain Capital needs a new landscape of marks to scam.