Inside OpenAI: The "quasi-religious" tech giant where everyone wants to work

A few years ago, fintech was the darling of the startup world, and companies like Stripe and Revolut were attracting all the top tier technologists. The tide, however, is turning. The generative AI boom has made AI startups the hottest new CV stuffer, and there's no name more sought after than OpenAI. Bloomberg reported in June that OpenAI's annual revenue is on track to double this year to $3.4bn, and it's on the cusp of a fundraising round that will raise its valuation from $86bn to over $100bn

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Who is OpenAI hiring?

OpenAI doesn't usually hire from financial services firms, but when it does, it hires from fintechs. Most of all, it hires from Stripe.

By our count, over 110 ex-Stripe employees are now at OpenAi. This month's movers include Mick Jermsurawong, who joined OpenAI after 6 years at Stripe, and Stripe's former head of platform solutions architecture Jenny Sha. There are also around 90 Stripe alums at rival Anthropic, which accounts for around 10% of total headcount.

Bank staff are comparatively much less popular. Less than 50 former employees of Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan, Bank of America, Citi, and Morgan Stanley combined work for OpenAI. Many were only junior. Nonetheless, some senior names are still making moves; Sarah Friar, OpenAI's new CFO as of June, is a former Goldman Sachs MD. She did, however, spend six years as CFO of payments fintech Square, too.

Others are joining from electronic trading firms. Bernard Bergeron, for example, joined in July after three years working as a researcher for Jump Trading, with previous stints at Hudson River Trading and Citadel. However, like with banking, many hires seem to have only interned in the space.

Why are people joining OpenAI?

For some, leaving financial services is more important than joining OpenAI. Stripe employees on jobs forum Blind called the fintech's culture a "s*** show through and through," and that there's been a "huge brain drain of talent to shiny opportunities" like OpenAI. Multiple employees say Stripe "used to be great," but not anymore. 

One fintech alum who left for OpenAI told us he moved for passion: "my firm treated me well, but on a personal level, I just am not intrinsically passionate about the space or the technical problems within." It's a different story with OpenAI; he said "AI is the next major frontier of human invention... it was a no-brainer" to join.

A former employee of an electronic trading firm working at OpenAI there tells us the company is "filled with literally the smartest people I have ever encountered," and everyone "works like crazy." He said, "there is no work-life balance, but that's because nobody wants a life outside of deep learning."

OpenAI staff also have a lot of freedom as to how they work. The same employee said, "people more or less come and go from the office as they please, but they work non-stop from the home or from the office." If you prefer the former, OpenAI also has a "beautiful office" with "amazing food - 3x high quality meals daily." 

There's a lot of division in OpenAI, both by department and by belief. OpenAI is split into product and research teams; they don't interact too extensively, "but there is some competition." Researchers who joined OpenAI early apparently "don't respect the product side as much." The product side seems to be where most of the hires from Stripe have joined.

The more severe and potentially dangerous division is in ideology. Some OpenAI staff are more concerned with ensuring its products are safe, others are "'true believers' in AGI (artificial general intelligence), to the extent that their motivations are quasi-religious." There has been a "struggle between the two factions."

It looks like one side has come out victorious, as a swathe of senior OpenAI staff have been streaming out.

Co-founder and chief scientist Ilya Sutskever announced he was leaving in May. Sutskever was part of the coup that briefly ousted Sam Altman from his role as CEO, but the OpenAI employee says "he's clearly lost the struggle" of putting safety first. His replacement, Jakub Pachocki, has expressed admiration for Sutskever, but ultimately backed Altman during the coup.

More recently, a trio of leaders departed, including co-founder and president Greg Brockman. Brockman may have been a big reason why Stripe staff were so popular at OpenAI, given he was one of Stripe's first four employees and its former CTO.

How much does OpenAI pay?

Then, of course, there's the pay. We've noted that OpenAI's vaguely titled 'members of technical staff' earn $320k on average in salary alone, and it's safe to assume staff are eager to include stock options as part of their compensation. Employees joining from Stripe might be doing so because of dwindling pay; total compensation (TC) trended down from 2022 to 2023, according to Levels.fyi, and average TC fell below $400k for software engineers. Stripe has also recently cashed out a large amount of its employees stock units, so many may see it as an opportunity to leave without golden handcuffs.

Stock pay, contrastingly, is a big reason people want to join OpenAI, given its impending funding round and potential valuation increase. OpenAI's most senior engineers earn $440k in stock on average according to Levels.fyi, 

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