Wealth Creation Myth: Over 600 OpenAI Employees Cash Out $6.6 Billion, with 75 Maximizing Payouts at $30 Million Each

According to BotSeer Beating monitoring, The Wall Street Journal has exposed the wealth creation scale within OpenAI. In an internal stock transaction last October, OpenAI allowed employees to sell up to $30 million worth of shares each. In the end, over 600 current and former employees participated, cashing out a total of $6.6 billion.

Sources familiar with the matter revealed that around 75 individuals maximized their $30 million limit. OpenAI's original cash-out limit was $10 million, but due to high demand from external investors, the company tripled the limit last fall.

As per OpenAI's policy, employees are eligible to sell shares after two full years of employment. This allowed many employees who joined after the release of ChatGPT to have their first opportunity to exercise their stock options. In contrast, OpenAI's stock has grown over 100 times in value over the past seven years. The wealth held by executives is even more staggering, with CEO Greg Brockman confirming in Monday's court testimony that his current stake is valued at around $30 billion.

In the past Silicon Valley, ordinary employees would typically have to wait for a company to go public to become wealthy. However, leveraging a sky-high valuation and an internal trading mechanism, OpenAI has directly turned a large number of employees into multi-millionaires before an IPO.