Over the past several years, a growing sense of frustration has taken root among both current and former employees of OpenAI, stemming from the company’s persistent refusal to allow them to donate their equity holdings to charitable organizations—a right that had been unavailable for years despite repeated requests. This issue, long a source of internal tension, has finally reached a turning point. After mounting pressure from employees and mounting public attention, OpenAI appears to have relented. According to an internal email distributed by the company’s equity management team and verified by The Verge, individuals holding eligible shares—both current staff and alumni—will now be given the opportunity to take part in a long-awaited philanthropic initiative enabling them to channel their vested equity into charitable donations.
The scale of what is at stake is significant: given the immense valuation growth of the company, employees whose equity grants were initially worth six figures when awarded in 2019 could now transform their holdings into multi‑million‑dollar charitable contributions. The Verge, citing a source familiar with internal discussions, reported that OpenAI is roughly eighteen months behind schedule on fulfilling this commitment. The delay, according to the source, is especially troubling because the company has frequently promoted the possibility of equity donations as an integral part of its talent recruitment strategy—an incentive designed to attract top researchers and engineers amid the ongoing, highly competitive struggle for artificial intelligence expertise. Rival firm Anthropic, for instance, has sought to differentiate itself through a philanthropy‑oriented policy that allows employees to match equity donations one‑to‑one for up to a quarter of their total allocation.
However, OpenAI’s renewed generosity is accompanied by a pressing logistical complication. Participants are required to make their donation decisions within a sharply truncated timeframe, significantly shorter than the customary and SEC‑mandated minimums that govern similar types of corporate liquidity events. Where a standard tender offer typically allows at least twenty business days for deliberation, this opportunity provides employees far less time to organize, assess their holdings, and consult professional advisors. As a result, according to internal sources, many potential donors find themselves struggling to finalize contributions quickly enough—particularly since the company’s email explicitly urges them to seek the guidance of financial or tax specialists. The challenge is compounded for those who, due to the indefinite hiatus in previous donation rounds and lack of prior notice, now hold fewer units available for donation. When questioned about the situation, OpenAI declined to provide immediate comment.
This belated policy shift occurs against a backdrop of escalating employee concern over the company’s increasingly centralized control of equity and its broader transformation from a nonprofit research lab into a powerful, profit‑driven enterprise. As OpenAI’s valuation has soared, its approach to handling internal equity has drawn scrutiny. Past practices were viewed by some staff as restrictive, even punitive, with anxieties that the company might seek to reclaim vested shares—potentially invoking non‑disparagement clauses as justification. Over the past year, these concerns have surfaced in visible ways, often discussed on internal communication channels such as Slack or voiced during company‑wide all‑hands meetings, where employees expressed disappointment about the inability to direct part of their wealth toward philanthropic causes.
Historically, OpenAI did permit limited equity‑donation rounds in 2021 and 2022, but no such opportunity has materialized since then, leaving many who hoped to engage in charitable giving increasingly disillusioned. In 2023, following the high‑profile sale of approximately $1.5 billion in employee shares to SoftBank through a tender offer, staff were told that a renewed chance to donate equity would emerge shortly thereafter. Yet the plan was subsequently suspended without clarification. Only now—after the completion of a major funding round and a formal restructuring process—does the company appear to be relaxing these stringent constraints.
That restructuring, finalized late last month, marked the end of more than a year of negotiation with state attorneys general in California and Delaware. OpenAI, founded in 2015 as a nonprofit research institution dedicated to advancing artificial intelligence for the benefit of humanity, has since evolved into a complex hybrid model that intertwines nonprofit oversight with an aggressively expanding for‑profit arm. One of the most closely watched and philosophically charged questions remains how much authority the nonprofit parent will retain over OpenAI’s most groundbreaking technologies, including the potential development of artificial general intelligence—systems capable of reasoning and learning at or beyond human cognitive capacities.
Coinciding with these organizational developments, OpenAI’s internal share valuation has risen dramatically. During the recent tender offer, employees were able to sell their shares for roughly $430 apiece; by contrast, the fair‑market value is now estimated at around $483 per share. According to an insider familiar with the company’s finances, this notable spike partly reflects a recalibration of obligations between OpenAI’s for‑profit and nonprofit entities—specifically, a reduction in the proportion of future profits owed to the original nonprofit. In this new context, the company’s decision to permit charitable donations of equity not only fulfills a long‑delayed promise but also signals a subtle shift toward acknowledging employee demands for agency over their financial rewards and ethical commitments. By combining corporate success with a renewed avenue for generosity, OpenAI is, at least in this moment, allowing its people to translate technological achievement into tangible social impact.
Sourse: https://www.theverge.com/ai-artificial-intelligence/822496/openai-employee-equity-donation-charity-rounds-share-valuation
