Until it’s really liquid it’s still fiction. The salary and other cash compensation is all that matters until you can actually sell the options

Aren't their secondary markets for this? My wife gets offers constantly for her options even though they're not public yet and the offers are higher then what she was awarded them at. Maybe it's scams? we never took any of them up on it.

Want does “really” mean?

If there are enough opportunities to offload stock on the secondary market (which seems to be the case of them), then it’s not fiction.

If you can show me that they can sell without OpenAI approval on the secondary market, I would concede in a heartbeat.

If not, I am to assume this isn’t true, and that they are functionally non liquid possible assets at the discretion of OpenAI to sell

Yes, you might need approval, but if there's regular secondary sale does it matter?

> OpenAI has finalized a secondary share sale totaling $6.6 billion, allowing current and former employees to sell stock at a record $500 billion valuation, according to a person familiar with the transaction.

https://www.cnbc.com/2025/10/02/openai-share-sale-500-billio...

Again, that doesn’t make the assets particularly liquid. They did this and that’s fine, but if they hadn’t done this you’d be stuck with a piece of paper even after the lockup period ends.

Until traditional RSUs that once they are vested you can sell them, with few exceptions

Indeed, it's not guaranteed. But now it seems to be expected for those large private companies to unlock employee equity at regular intervals (I'm not sure it was the case 5-10y ago).