Author: Claude, Deep潮 TechFlow
DeepInsight Summary: The Wall Street Journal revealed the staggering 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; over 600 current and former employees participated, collectively cashing out $66 billion, with approximately 75 individuals reaching the maximum cap. CEO Brockman confirmed in court this week that his stake is worth around $30 billion. Never before in Silicon Valley history has a private company created such a concentrated group of multi-millionaires prior to an IPO.
Image source: The Wall Street Journal
In the past Silicon Valley, ordinary employees had only one path to wealth: waiting 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 up to $30 million in shares each, with more than 600 current and former employees participating and collectively cashing out approximately $6.6 billion. People familiar with the matter said that around 75 individuals maximized their allocation at the full $30 million cap. This represents the largest single employee stock sale in tech industry history to date.
Cash-out limits tripled as demand from external investors pushes higher limits.
OpenAI originally set a single cash-out limit of $10 million for employees. However, due to external investor demand far exceeding expectations, the company tripled the limit to $30 million last fall.
The transaction was completed at a $500 billion valuation, with investors including Thrive Capital, SoftBank, Dragoneer Investment Group, Abu Dhabi’s MGX, and T. Rowe Price. According to prior reporting by CNBC, OpenAI initially planned to raise approximately $6 billion, later expanding the target to $10.3 billion, but ultimately raised about $6.6 billion. The company interpreted the lower participation rate as a vote of confidence from employees in its long-term prospects.
According to OpenAI’s policy, employees are eligible to sell their shares after two years of employment. This means many staff who joined after the December 2022 launch of ChatGPT are, for the first time, able to exercise their options in this round of trading. OpenAI’s stock value has increased more than 100-fold over the past seven years.
Brockman's court filing confirms $30 billion stake; Musk's lawyer presses further.
The wealth held by executives is even more staggering. According to NBC, OpenAI President and Co-founder Greg Brockman confirmed in court testimony on May 4 that his current stake in OpenAI is worth approximately $30 billion.
This figure was disclosed on the fourth day of the trial in Musk v. OpenAI. During more than two hours of cross-examination, Musk’s attorney, Steven Molo, repeatedly referenced this number, pressing Brockman on why he never fulfilled his promised $100,000 donation despite possessing a net worth of $30 billion. According to CNBC, Brockman admitted, “I did not ultimately make the donation—that’s true.”
According to Fortune, Musk’s legal team also revealed multiple layers of financial ties between Brockman and CEO Sam Altman: Altman provided Brockman with approximately $10 million in equity from his family office as early as 2017; Brockman also holds stakes in the AI chip startup Cerebras and the fusion company Helion Energy, while OpenAI had discussed acquiring Cerebras and Altman has invested hundreds of millions of dollars in Helion. Musk’s team argues that these overlapping ownership interests undermine Brockman’s independence as a fiduciary.
Employees hold 26% equity, with average paper wealth exceeding the total returns of most VC funds.
After the company restructuring completed in October last year, OpenAI employees collectively held approximately 26% of the company’s equity.
According to StartupHub's analysis, approximately 165 current and former employees collectively hold equity worth about $164.9 billion, averaging about $1 billion in paper wealth per person—exceeding the total lifetime returns of most venture capital funds.
According to an analysis by The Wall Street Journal and data firm Equilar, OpenAI’s per-employee stock compensation in 2025 was approximately $1.5 million—more than seven times that of Google before its 2004 IPO and 34 times the average of 18 major tech companies in the year prior to their listings over the past 25 years.
The company’s stock-based compensation expenses account for nearly half of its projected revenue, far exceeding those of peers such as Palantir, Meta, and Salesforce.
Valued at $85.2 billion, on the brink of a trillion-dollar IPO, the wealth-creation machine is far from stopping.
In March 2024, OpenAI raised $122 billion at an $852 billion valuation, setting a new record for the largest single private funding round in Silicon Valley history. Amazon led the round with a $50 billion investment, while NVIDIA and SoftBank each invested $30 billion. The company currently generates $2 billion in monthly revenue, with over 900 million weekly active users on ChatGPT and more than 50 million paid subscribers.
According to multiple media reports, OpenAI is preparing for an IPO in the fourth quarter of 2026, with a potential valuation of up to $1 trillion. If realized, this would rank as one of the largest tech IPOs in history. CFO Sarah Friar previously stated at Davos that the company plans to allocate a portion of its IPO shares to retail investors.