OpenAI CEO Sam Altman has announced a special one-time award for select employees, citing movement in the market for AI talent, ahead of the anticipated launch of GPT-5.
The bonuses, announced via Slack, are designed to vary based on an employee’s role and seniority, targeting researchers and software engineers within the applied engineering, scaling, and safety organizations. Top researchers could receive payouts in the mid-single-digit millions, while engineers are expected to average hundreds of thousands of dollars. These awards will be disbursed quarterly over a two-year period, with employees having the flexibility to choose payment in OpenAI stock, cash, or a combination of both.
Approximately 1,000 employees, constituting about one-third of OpenAI’s total workforce, are eligible for this special compensation. Altman’s message expressed the company’s intent to “keep increasing comp as we keep doing better and better as a company,” acknowledging the unique nature of this particular bonus. He also extended gratitude to employees for their “excellent work towards building AGI.”
Concurrently, OpenAI is preparing to allow more employees to cash out their vested stock. Altman has indicated private expectations for these shares to sell at a significantly higher price than the $274 per share valuation from the company’s earlier funding round this year, which valued OpenAI at $300 billion.
