OpenAI’s $50 Billion Employee Stock Grant Pool: 26% Employee Ownership After Restructuring

OpenAI set aside a $50 billion employee stock grant pool last fall—10 percent of the company at its $500 billion valuation. Combined with $80 billion in already-vested equity, employees now hold 26 percent of OpenAI following the corporate restructuring.

The Scale Is Unprecedented

For context, this $50 billion pool for future rewards equals three-quarters of what Meta spent on stock compensation from 2020 to late 2025, despite Meta generating 15 times OpenAI’s revenue.

• Employees sold roughly $10 billion worth of shares to other investors last year alone
• Ilya Sutskever held $4 billion in vested equity in late 2023 when the company employed 800 people
• Headcount has since grown to 4,000

Stock Compensation Projections

The Cost of the AI Talent War

Meta lured OpenAI researchers with hundreds of millions in signing bonuses, salaries, and equity. Former employees left to form rivals like Anthropic and SSI. The $50 billion pool is OpenAI’s defensive response—making departure economically painful.

The Trade-Off

Dilution is what investors accept. Public companies offset this through buybacks; OpenAI cannot afford buybacks while burning billions in cash annually. Investors betting on the AI race accept dilution as the price of winning.

The pool may deplete faster than planned. Executives say privately they do not expect to allocate the full pool. But some investors expect three-year depletion rather than five—suggesting competitive pressure may force faster distribution.

OpenAI is financializing talent retention at a scale that treats human capital as the binding constraint on AI progress.

Source: The Information