How a Job at OpenAI Became the Greatest Lottery Ticket of the AI Boom
Employees waited two years to sell their shares. Then, the company let them unload $30 million.
- OpenAI allowed current and former employees to sell up to $30 million in shares, with more than 600 making $6.6 billion collectively.
- The scale of wealth creation for such a swath of employees—before a public listing—is unprecedented in tech history.
- OpenAI tripled its employee share-sale cap to $30 million last fall because of investor demand.
OpenAI allowed employees to sell up to $30 million worth of shares each in a recent financing, making them some of the earliest financial winners of the artificial-intelligence boom.
Last October, more than 600 current and former employees sold their shares in a single stroke, collectively making $6.6 billion. For roughly 75 of them, that meant walking away with the full $30 million, according to people familiar with the matter.
Some of them chose to give away the rest, putting their remaining shares in donor-advised funds—charitable investment accounts that commit money for philanthropic causes while also allowing donors to claim tax deductions for that year.
The sale offers a sneak peek into the flood of money that will soon hit San Francisco and other tech capitals. OpenAI and Anthropic are gearing up for what will likely be some of the largest IPOs in history, allowing their thousands of rank-and-file workers to unload their stock, turning many of them into multimillionaires.
OpenAI required employees to wait two years before they could sell their shares, meaning that the share sale marked the first time many who joined the company after ChatGPT launched were able to cash out.
No other tech boom in history has lavished that magnitude of wealth on such a swath of employees even before a public listing. Hundreds of companies went public in the dot-com boom, but in most cases their workers had to wait for a prolonged period even after the IPO to cash in. For some, the bubble burst before they could do so and they never realized the potential wealth.
The scale of AI pay packages for some highly specialized workers has been unprecedented in modern history. While early employees at Google and Facebook made millions after the companies went public, the scope of wealth creation for some AI specialists—especially nonfounders—has reached greater heights.
Last year, Meta offered $300 million pay packages to some top researchers as part of a broader industrywide talent war. OpenAI offers yearly salaries that top $500,000 for some technical roles, according to its website, and is doling out far more stock-based compensation than other tech companies. Last August, it gave some staff members one-time bonuses, some of which were worth millions of dollars, The Wall Street Journal reported.
The newfound wealth is driving up rental prices in San Francisco, and sparking concerns about a growing class divide within the city. Some top AI executives have pledged to provide a large portion of their earnings to charity, alongside rank-and-file employees who didn’t expect to come across such life-changing wealth.
OpenAI is currently the world’s most-valuable tech startup, and employees who were at the company when it first issued shares seven years ago have seen the value of their stock grow more than 100-fold.
By comparison, the Nasdaq composite roughly tripled in the same period.
For most of Silicon Valley’s history, startup employees had to wait for an initial public offering before they could sell their shares. But as companies began staying private longer, some workers found themselves sitting on paper fortunes they couldn’t touch for long stretches of time. That led to the rising popularity of so-called tender offers, whereby employees could sell a slice of their shares to outside investors.
OpenAI has overseen several tender offers in recent years, but previously limited sales to $10 million per employee, frustrating some top researchers and engineers who were eligible to sell far more than that amount. The company said it tripled the cap last fall in response to demand from investors.
Top OpenAI executives have experienced even more of a windfall. President Greg Brockman holds equity worth about $30 billion, he said Monday during court testimony. Chief Executive Sam Altman has said he doesn’t own shares in the company, citing its nonprofit roots, though some investors expect him to receive equity if he prevails in a court battle with Elon Musk over OpenAI’s restructuring from a nonprofit into a for-profit company.