OpenAI Employees Just Walked Away With $30 Million Each — And the IPO Hasn’t Even Happened Yet

TLDR

• More than 600 current and former OpenAI employees sold shares in October 2025, raising $6.6 billion total
• Around 75 employees sold the maximum allowed amount of $30 million each
• OpenAI raised the per-employee sale cap from $10 million to $30 million due to investor demand
• Staff who received shares seven years ago have seen their value grow more than 100 times
• OpenAI and Anthropic are expected to be among the largest IPOs in tech history

More than 600 current and former OpenAI employees sold shares last October in a single tender offer, collectively raising $6.6 billion. Around 75 of those workers sold the full $30 million cap allowed. It was the first time many employees who joined after ChatGPT launched in late 2022 were able to cash out, due to a two-year waiting rule.

OpenAI had previously capped employee share sales at $10 million per person. The company raised that limit to $30 million last fall, citing strong demand from outside investors who wanted to buy in. The buyers were not named in the Wall Street Journal report that first broke the story.

The tender offer is a way for employees at private companies to sell their shares to outside investors without waiting for an IPO. OpenAI has run several of these in recent years, but the October sale was the largest in scale.

Some employees chose not to keep all the money. A number of them moved their remaining shares into donor-advised funds, which are charitable accounts that allow tax deductions while committing money to future donations.

The Scale of the AI Pay Boom

Employees who received shares when OpenAI first issued them seven years ago have seen the value of those shares grow more than 100 times. Over the same period, the Nasdaq composite roughly tripled.

No previous tech boom produced this level of wealth for rank-and-file employees before a company went public. During the dot-com era, workers often had to wait through an IPO lockup period to sell, and some never got the chance before the market crashed.

The AI talent market is also pushing salaries higher across the industry. OpenAI lists some technical roles with base salaries above $500,000 per year. Meta has reportedly offered pay packages worth up to $300 million to attract top AI researchers.

OpenAI President Greg Brockman said during court testimony on Monday that his equity is worth around $30 billion. CEO Sam Altman has said he holds no shares in the company, though that could change depending on the outcome of a legal dispute with Elon Musk over OpenAI’s shift from a nonprofit to a for-profit structure.

What Comes Next

OpenAI is currently the most valuable private tech company in the world. Its last financing round valued the company at $852 billion. Both OpenAI and Anthropic are expected to go public, which would allow thousands more employees to sell their shares.

The wave of new wealth is already having real-world effects. Reports have linked the influx of high-earning tech workers to rising rental prices in San Francisco.

For now, the October share sale stands as one of the largest pre-IPO employee paydays in tech history.

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