OpenAI reportedly paying $1.5m per employee in equity

OpenAI is offering employees stock-based compensation packages worth US$1.5 million each in 2025, according to financial projections cited by The Wall Street Journal.

The figure is significantly higher than stock awards given by previous tech giants before they went public.

Intense competition for AI talent is driving up pay, with OpenAI and other firms offering larger equity deals to attract and retain researchers and engineers.

OpenAI has made changes to its equity rules, including removing a six-month waiting period for stock vesting, to better compete in the job market.

🔗 Source: Quartz

🧠 Food for thought

Implications, context, and why it matters.

OpenAI pay strategy echoes bubble-era excess and increases dilution risk (reducing existing investors’ ownership share)

OpenAI now spends about half its revenue on pay. The company burned $5 billion in 2024 1 and projects $143 billion in cumulative negative cash flow through 2029 2.
The roughly $1.5 million per employee stock package in 2025 lands during a “code red” internal priority 3 (an urgent, company-wide push).
Removing a six-month vesting waiting period (vesting is the schedule over which equity becomes owned) accelerates dilution for investors who valued OpenAI at $500 billion 4. It echoes late-1990s warning signs where startups prioritized headcount growth over unit economics (profitability per customer or product unit).
CEO Sam Altman said the AI sector has reached “bubble territory” 5. OpenAI’s pay approach undercuts its claim of a “healthy path to profitability” 5.

Financial advisors and wealth managers can focus on OpenAI employees with tax-loss harvesting (selling investments at a loss to offset taxable gains) and liquidity planning (timing sales to meet cash needs)

OpenAI expanded its employee secondary sale (a company-arranged tender offer that lets employees sell equity) to about $10.3 billion 4, though some reports say the October 2025 tender closed near $6.6 billion 6. Employees holding profit participation units (an equity-like instrument that shares in profits) can face about one-third effective taxes on realized gains in a California example 6, so a hypothetical $10 million sale nets about $7 million after taxes 6.
Tax-aware long-short strategies (portfolios that go long some securities and short others to hedge risk and realize offsetting losses) can offset these gains and boost net worth by 30-50% 6. That makes OpenAI employees strong candidates for sophisticated tax mitigation services.
Faster vesting and eliminated waiting periods will trigger recurring liquidity needs. Steady tax bills follow. That creates ongoing advisory opportunities beyond one-time secondary sales.
The company has 3,000+ employees 1 with packages worth around $1.5 million per employee in 2025. The potential client pool for financial services targeting this cohort exceeds billions in assets under management (client assets that advisors manage).