At the moment OpenAI can’t pay back anything, becuase they’re hemmorhaging money. Losing billions a year. And there’s no path to profitability.

That’s why they make investors confirm that they’re considering their investments a donation. That’s also why it’s unusual.

It’s not unusual for the opening phases of big tech companies to be “operate at a massive loss until the competition has gone out of business”, as companies like Netflix and Uber can attest, but it is unusual for that to be done where the investors aren’t expecting to make a profit.

VCs typically want a return on their investments

Not framed like that. You have to acknowledge that investments can depreciate rather than appreciate and that you may lose your money, sure. That’s very different to saying that you acknowledge that you probably will lose your money and that you consider your investment a donation.

FWIW, part of the OpenAI investment process is signing something to say that you understand that you’re unlikely to get any return on your investment and that you consider it more akin to a donation

This is called the “relative privation fallacy” - where it’s stated or implied that action shouldn’t be taken on one issue because larger issues also exist. It’s like suggesting that the police shouldn’t try to catch pickpockets because unsolved murders exist.

The truth is that it’s possible for organisations to work on multiple fronts at once and that making rules around food labelling doesn’t imply that “the world is[…] burning” isn’t also something that’s being worked on.