OpenAI is making sure its employees have serious skin in the game. The company behind ChatGPT has reportedly set aside an employee stock pool worth about $50 billion, according to The Information. That's a clean 10% slice of OpenAI's $500 billion valuation from October.
But here's where it gets interesting: Sam Altman's company has already handed out $80 billion in vested equity to employees. Add that to the new stock pool, and you're looking at employees collectively owning roughly 26% of one of the hottest companies in tech. That's not exactly small change.
Billion-Dollar Ambitions
This news arrives amid chatter that OpenAI is considering a massive $100 billion fundraising round at a $750 billion valuation. If that happens, it would mark a major milestone on the road to what some are calling an inevitable $1 trillion IPO.
Speaking of going public, Reuters previously reported that OpenAI is mulling an IPO as early as late 2026, with a starting valuation around $60 billion. The timeline remains fuzzy—some insiders are pointing to 2027 instead, and OpenAI itself says an IPO isn't currently a priority. But when you're handing out this much equity, it's hard not to wonder about eventual liquidity events.
Maybe Still Too Cheap?
Believe it or not, some market watchers think OpenAI is undervalued even at these stratospheric numbers. Gene Munster of Deepwater Asset Management has argued that the company's rumored $830 billion valuation might actually be too conservative. That's the kind of statement that makes you wonder what assumptions people are baking into their models.
And if you thought things couldn't get more speculative, there's active betting happening on whether OpenAI will acquire Pinterest (PINS) by January 1, 2027. The speculation heated up after The Information included the potential acquisition of a digital pinboard platform among its predictions for 2026. Whether that's serious analysis or just fun speculation is anyone's guess, but it shows how much attention OpenAI commands in the market right now.
