OpenAI's largest internal wealth creation: 600 people collectively cashed out 6.6 billion dollars, with 75 individuals taking home 30 million at the maximum

Author: Claude, Deep Tide TechFlow

Deep Tide Introduction: The Wall Street Journal exposed the scale of wealth creation within OpenAI. In an employee stock sale last October, the company raised the individual cash-out limit from $10 million to $30 million, with over 600 current and former employees participating, totaling $6.6 billion in cash-outs, and about 75 people directly took the maximum amount. President Brockman confirmed in court this week that his stock holdings are worth approximately $30 billion. No private company in Silicon Valley has ever created such a dense group of millionaires before an IPO.

Image source: The Wall Street Journal

In the past Silicon Valley, ordinary employees typically had only one way to get rich: wait for the company to go public. OpenAI is rewriting this rule.

According to The Wall Street Journal, in an internal stock transaction completed last October, OpenAI allowed employees to sell up to $30 million in shares each, with over 600 current and former employees participating, totaling approximately $6.6 billion in cash-outs. Insiders revealed that about 75 people directly took the maximum limit of $30 million. This is the largest single employee stock sale event in the tech industry to date.

Cash-out limit tripled, external investor demand raised the cap

OpenAI originally set a cash-out limit of $10 million per employee. However, due to external investor demand far exceeding expectations, the company tripled the limit to $30 million last fall.

This transaction was completed at a valuation of $500 billion, with investors including Thrive Capital, SoftBank, Dragoneer Investment Group, Abu Dhabi MGX, and T. Rowe Price. According to previous reports by CNBC, OpenAI initially planned a sale scale of about $6 billion, which was later expanded to $10.3 billion, but the final actual transaction was approximately $6.6 billion. Internally, the company interpreted the lower participation rate as a vote of confidence from employees regarding long-term prospects.

According to OpenAI's regulations, employees who have been with the company for two years can sell their shares. This means that many employees who joined after the release of ChatGPT at the end of 2022 had the opportunity to cash out their options for the first time in this round of transactions. The value of OpenAI's stock has increased more than 100 times over the past seven years.

Brockman confirms $30 billion in stock holdings in court, Musk's lawyer relentlessly questions

The wealth held by executives is even more astonishing. According to NBC, OpenAI President and co-founder Greg Brockman confirmed in court testimony on May 4 that his current holdings in OpenAI are worth approximately $30 billion.

This figure was disclosed on the fourth day of the trial in the case of Musk vs. OpenAI. Musk's lawyer Steven Molo repeatedly mentioned this figure during more than two hours of questioning, asking Brockman why he had not fulfilled his earlier promise of a $100,000 donation while holding $30 billion in wealth. According to CNBC, Brockman admitted, "I did not ultimately make the donation, that is a fact."

According to Fortune, Musk's legal team also revealed the multi-layered financial connections between Brockman and CEO Sam Altman: Altman had provided Brockman with approximately $10 million in equity from his family office as early as 2017; Brockman also holds shares in AI chip startup Cerebras and fusion company Helion Energy, while OpenAI had discussed acquiring Cerebras, and Altman had invested hundreds of millions in Helion. Musk's side claims that these cross-holdings undermine Brockman's independence as a trustee.

Employees hold 26%, average paper wealth exceeds total returns of most VC funds

After the company restructuring completed last October, OpenAI employees collectively hold about 26% of the company's equity.

According to analysis by StartupHub, approximately 165 current and former employees hold equity worth about $164.9 billion, averaging about $1 billion in paper wealth per person, exceeding the total returns of most venture capital funds over their entire lifecycle.

According to analyses by The Wall Street Journal and data agency Equilar, OpenAI's per capita stock compensation in 2025 is expected to be about $1.5 million, more than seven times that of Google before its IPO in 2004, and 34 times the average level of 18 large tech companies in the year prior to their IPO over the past 25 years.

The company's equity incentive spending accounts for nearly half of its projected revenue, far exceeding peers like Palantir, Meta, and Salesforce.

$852 billion valuation, trillion-dollar IPO on the horizon, wealth creation machine still in motion

OpenAI completed a $122 billion financing at a valuation of $852 billion on March 31 this year, setting a record for the largest single round of private equity in Silicon Valley history. Amazon led the investment with $50 billion, while Nvidia and SoftBank each invested $30 billion. The company currently has a monthly revenue of $2 billion, with over 900 million weekly active users for ChatGPT and more than 50 million paid subscribers.

According to multiple media reports, OpenAI is preparing to launch an IPO in the fourth quarter of 2026, with a target valuation potentially reaching $1 trillion. If successful, this would become one of the largest tech company IPOs in history. CFO Sarah Friar previously stated in Davos that the company plans to allocate a portion of the IPO shares to retail investors.