Author: Claude, Deep Tide TechFlow

Deep Tide Guide: 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, cashing out a total of $6.6 billion, about 75 people took the maximum amount. President Brockman confirmed in court this week that his stock holdings are worth about $30 billion. No unlisted 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 usually 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 a maximum of $30 million in shares each, with over 600 current and former employees participating, cashing out approximately $6.6 billion in total. Sources revealed that about 75 people directly took the maximum amount of $30 million. This is the largest single employee stock sale event in the technology industry to date.

Cash-out limit tripled, external investor demand driving up the limit

The original cash-out limit set by OpenAI for employees was $10 million. 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 size of about $6 billion, which was later expanded to $10.3 billion, but the final actual transaction was about $6.6 billion. Internally, the company interpreted the lower participation rate as a vote of confidence in the long-term prospects from employees.

According to OpenAI's regulations, employees can sell shares after two years of employment. This means that many employees who joined after the launch of ChatGPT at the end of 2022 had their first opportunity to cash out options in this transaction. OpenAI's stock value has increased more than 100 times in the past seven years.

Brockman court confirms holdings of $30 billion, Musk's lawyer persistently 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 OpenAI equity is worth about $30 billion.

This figure was disclosed during the fourth day of the court hearing 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 honored his initial pledge of a $100,000 donation while holding a fortune of $30 billion. According to CNBC, Brockman admitted, "I did not ultimately donate, that's 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 rights worth about $10 million from his family office as early as 2017; Brockman also holds shares in the AI chip startup Cerebras and the fusion company Helion Energy, while OpenAI had discussed acquiring Cerebras, and Altman had invested hundreds of millions into Helion. Musk's side argues that these cross-holdings compromised Brockman's independence as a trustee.

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

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

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

According to analyses from The Wall Street Journal and data agency Equilar, OpenAI's average 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 expenditures account for nearly half of projected revenues, far exceeding those of peers like Palantir, Meta, and Salesforce.

$85.2 billion valuation, trillion-dollar IPO on the horizon, the wealth creation machine is far from stopping

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

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