“Paying” is a relative term here.

Anyone that works for startups knows that it’s not really “compensation” until it’s cash in your bank account. Until then it’s just a theoretical number on paper, which tends to end up being worth a lot less than originally advertised/hoped.

I’ve lost track of the number of times that someone’s startup got acquired for (insert what sounds like a big number) and everyone is like “wow the employees must all be rich” only to find out later that after preferred cap tables and other terms the employees got very little.

A lot could happen here, but history says “watch this space” on this stock-based comp. Some options on the secondary markets but that only works as long as OpenAI can convince more people to dump money on the burning pile of cash they have going at the moment.