This is the general rule, but not for ones the size of OpenAI. There’s always a secondary market for prominent enough companies.

Dont all private companies require approval for secondary sales, which I assume are not ever approved?

They do, but you sell forward contracts instead. This is perfectly legal, and the approach I've seen. There are a few companies, and even funds that will engage in this, in an effort to attain future upside.

Its pretty common, Ive personally done this.

Typically. I’d be shocked if OpenAI let employees sell their options like this without requiring approval

They don't but you effectively do it under the table

Do they sell at full value?

Whatever they sell them for is the value.

How do you define value without an IPO?

OpenAI has regular tender offers for their employees, so while this advice is reasonable in general it is less true for this case.

Less true isn’t the same as not true. Simply put we don’t know because it’s not what they are disclosing

This article feels more like paid publicity than it does journalism

The various valuations you see for OpenAI are overwhelmingly based on the prices offered for shares in their employee tender offers so I’d say for OpenAI and SpaceX at a minimum (which has a similar setup for its employees) we have a pretty good idea of what employees are getting for their equity compensation if they so choose.

Dont worry...there is always an acquisition by Meta, on the horizon for any company with nowhere to go.

I am sure you can make OpenAI stock liquid pretty easily.

Only if you're allowed to which is not always the case.

It’s allowed pretty easily.

They had had tender events (where you can sell your private stock super easily)

They've changed the laws recently which makes it far easier - I believe you'd still need to be accredited but for most of HN, that's a low bar. For OpenAI specifically, they've allowed employees to participate in the funding rounds and they did a separate tender offer with Softbank to provide liquidity to early employees as well;

https://fortune.com/2024/12/17/hundreds-openai-employees-10-...