OpenAI Eliminates Vesting Cliff, Boosts Equity Spend
Per the Wall Street Journal on Dec. 14, 2025, OpenAI eliminated its one-year equity vesting cliff for new hires and will spend about $6 billion on stock-based compensation in 2025. The change moves to immediate day-one vesting from a prior six-month cliff, aimed at attracting scarce AI researchers amid aggressive competition from Meta, Anthropic and Google. This raises hiring costs and alters workforce incentives across the AI industry.
Key Points
- 1Eliminates vesting cliff for new hires, moving to immediate day-one equity vesting.
- 2Allocates roughly $6 billion in 2025 to stock compensation to win scarce AI researchers.
- 3Raises hiring costs and forces startups to compete on mission, liquidity, or founder equity.
Scoring Rationale
High novelty and industry-wide impact with credible WSJ reporting; offers actionable hiring implications but focuses mainly on compensation dynamics.
Sources
Public references used for this report.
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