Daijiworld Media Network – San Francisco

San Francisco, Aug 10: OpenAI has announced substantial bonus payouts for around 1,000 employees—about one-third of its full-time workforce—just ahead of the GPT-5 launch. CEO Sam Altman sent a surprise message via Slack confirming that researchers and engineers in key areas like applied engineering, scaling, and safety will receive quarterly bonuses over the next two years.

Top researchers are set to receive mid-single-digit million-dollar bonuses, while engineers will get hundreds of thousands. These payouts may be issued in stock, cash, or a combination of both. Altman attributed the increased compensation to competitive market dynamics fueled by soaring demand for AI talent.

Tech giants and startups in Silicon Valley are aggressively competing for AI experts, with recent talent departures from OpenAI to Meta and Elon Musk’s xAI intensifying the race.

Highlighting OpenAI’s global focus, Altman noted that India is the company’s second-largest market after the US and could soon become the biggest. GPT-5 is now accessible to all users, with Plus and Pro subscribers gaining enhanced usage and advanced reasoning capabilities.

“GPT-5 is a unified system featuring a smart model for most questions, a deeper reasoning model for complex problems, and a real-time router to optimize responses based on conversation needs,” OpenAI said.