OpenAI, the company behind ChatGPT, has announced substantial bonuses for nearly 1,000 employees—about one-third of its full-time staff. The decision comes just before the highly anticipated launch of GPT-5.
CEO Sam Altman surprised staff with the news through a message on the company’s Slack channel. The quarterly bonus, set to last for two years, will go to researchers and software engineers working in applied engineering, scaling, and safety teams, according to The Verge.
The bonus amounts vary depending on job position and seniority. Top researchers will receive bonuses in the “mid-single-digit millions,” while engineers will get payouts in the “hundreds of thousands.” Employees can choose to receive the bonuses in stock, cash, or a mix of both.
Altman explained that the move was influenced by intense competition for AI talent. “As we mentioned a few weeks ago, we have been looking at comp for our technical teams given the movement in the market,” The Verge quoted him as saying.
He further noted, “We very much intend to keep increasing comp as we keep doing better and better as a company. But we wanted to be transparent about this one since it's a new thing for us.”
The race to secure top AI talent is heating up in Silicon Valley, with tech giants and well-funded startups offering lucrative packages. Altman has recently seen several key researchers leave for Meta, while Elon Musk’s xAI is actively recruiting in the same talent pool.
India is now OpenAI’s second-largest market after the United States, reflecting the country’s rapid adoption of AI tools for education, business, and personal use. CEO Sam Altman has hinted that India could soon overtake the US to become the company’s biggest user base, driven by its large English-speaking population, expanding internet penetration, and rising tech-savvy workforce. Industry analysts believe this surge positions India as a key market for future AI innovations and localization efforts by OpenAI.
The company has officially launched GPT-5 for all users. Plus subscribers will enjoy more usage, while Pro subscribers will get access to GPT-5 Pro, a premium version offering extended reasoning for more detailed and accurate responses.
OpenAI describes GPT-5 as “a unified system with a smart, efficient model that answers most questions, a deeper reasoning model (GPT-5 thinking) for harder problems, and a real-time router that quickly decides which to use based on conversation type, complexity, tool needs, and your explicit intent.”
