OpenAI is paying its employees at levels that have little precedent in Silicon Valley history — $1.5 million in stock-based compensation per employee in 2025. That’s according to financial projections shared with investors and first reported by the Wall Street Journal.

Such compensation dwarfs what earlier generations of tech giants paid their workforces before going public. Adjusted for inflation, OpenAI's equity payouts are multiples above the norm for large tech firms over the past two decades, and even several times higher than what Alphabet or Meta disclosed ahead of their IPOs. READ MORE