OpenAI to reportedly reward 1,000 research & engineering employees, totalling $1.5 billion in bonuses

OpenAI is making an unusually bold move to keep its best people from walking away. According to The Information, the company is handing out $1.5 million retention bonuses to around 1,000 research and engineering employees. That adds up to more than $1.5 billion, one of the biggest talent-protection spends the industry has seen.

The payouts come at a time when its rival company, Meta, has been on a hiring spree. Zuckerberg’s company is aggressively targeting AI researchers from rival companies.

Its “buy or poach” approach, reportedly driven by CEO Mark Zuckerberg, has intensified after the company’s internal AI projects hit setbacks. OpenAI’s bonus plan appears designed to cut that recruitment drive off at the knees.

Initially, the details of the offer surfaced when Hyperbolic Labs co-founder Yuchen Jin shared news of the internal announcement on X. He said the deal even covers new hires, instantly putting them in the millionaire bracket.

Jin compared it to the wealth effect seen at Nvidia, where a large percentage of employees hold significant equity. The news comes as OpenAI just announced GPT-5, its latest flagship model. But this time, it’s not a product launch grabbing the spotlight; it’s the scale of the company’s investment in its workforce.

The bonuses add to a growing list of moves by tech giants to lock down scarce AI expertise. In an industry where the supply of elite engineers is limited, the thinking is simple: whoever secures the talent controls the future.