On OpenAI’s Support for Rust

June 17, 2026/Lori Lorusso

The Rust Foundation was happy to announce OpenAI as our newest Platinum Member today, as part of a $600,000 total contribution in support of the Rust Project and the broader Rust ecosystem.

Membership in the Rust Foundation is a way for companies to support the maintainers who are building the Rust language itself and the ecosystem around it. The role of the Rust Foundation is to create partnerships with external organizations (companies, NGOs, etc.) that lead to investments in the Rust ecosystem for the benefit of all.

As always, decision-making about the Rust Project remains with the Project, within its own governance structure.

OpenAI is committed to working with the Rust Project’s Funding Team to find the best ways to support the Rust vision, making use of all the avenues the Foundation and Project have set up for distributing funding, such as the Project Goals, the Rust Foundation Maintainers Fund, and the Rust Innovation Lab.

Funding is critical to the success of open-source projects. For Rust, the Foundation’s role is to forge industry partnerships that lead to funding. The Rust Project has, and will continue to have, an independent governance structure that charts a path forward for the continued evolution of Rust.

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Lori Lorusso

(she/her) Lori is the Director of Outreach at the Rust Foundation. She has a passion and enthusiasm for working with developers and the open source community. She is an active member of multiple open source foundations, such as CNCF, CDF, OpenSSF, DoK, and has volunteered as a program committee member for Kubecon, Cloud Native Rejekts, cdCon, SOOCon, and FOSDEM. She has also given talks at conferences around the world, including KubeCon EU, All Things Open, FOSDEM, Devoxx Morocco, SOOCon, Open Source Summit, KCDC, The Linux Foundation Member Summit, SOSS Fusion, and CodeMash. Lori is committed to helping open source and other tech communities grow and adapt in the ever-changing technical landscape.