OpenAI Showers Workers With Record $1.5M Stock Packages

OpenAI isn't just racing ahead in AI—it's rewriting the playbook on Silicon Valley pay. Internal financial data seen by investors indicates the company is handing out an average of $1.5 million in stock-based compensation per employee, for a workforce of about 4,000, according to a Wall Street Journal analysis. Adjusted to 2025 dollars, that's more than seven times what Google disclosed ahead of its 2004 IPO, and about 34 times the average stock-based pay at 18 other major tech firms in the year before their own IPOs. An OpenAI spokesperson declined to comment.

The equity packages are enormous not just in size, but in impact: OpenAI's stock-based compensation is projected to equal roughly 46% of its 2025 revenue, the analysis found—by far the highest among the companies reviewed, except for electric-vehicle maker Rivian, which had no revenue pre-IPO. By comparison, Palantir's stock-based compensation ran at 33% of revenue the year before its 2020 IPO, while Google's was at 15% and Facebook's at 6%. Across the set of companies studied, the average was about 6%.

The spending spree is tied directly to the AI talent wars. After Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg started dangling pay packages reportedly reaching into the hundreds of millions—up to $1 billion, in some cases—for elite researchers and execs, OpenAI and other "frontier labs" felt the squeeze to match or beat those offers. (Check out the high compensation for this admittedly "stressful" position at OpenAI, per Business Insider.) Zuckerberg's push lured more than 20 OpenAI staffers, including ChatGPT co-creator Shengjia Zhao, prompting OpenAI to respond with one-time bonuses worth millions for some research and engineering employees, per previous Journal reporting.

TipRanks calls OpenAI's latest move not "just a generous benefit," but a "survival tactic." OpenAI's own projections show stock-based compensation rising by roughly $3 billion annually through 2030, per the Journal. The company has also dropped a policy that required employees to stay at least six months before their equity began to vest, a shift that could drive compensation even higher as it works to keep its most sought-after people from walking out the door.