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Leaked OpenAI Docs Show Sam Altman Clearly Aware of Silencing Former Employees

OpenAI's Sam Altman claims he didn't know OpenAI was threatening to take back equity from exiting employees. Signed documents say otherwise.

Clawing back vested equity — in short, the amount of company ownership that an employee has gained through their months or years of working there — is a highly unusual practice to begin with. This is especially true in the startup-powered Silicon Valley, where tech workers often forgo high salaries in favor of equity agreements based on the hope that they'll get rich later when a successful startup like OpenAI eventually goes public. "For a company to threaten to claw back already-vested equity is egregious and unusual," Chambord Benton-Hayes, a California employment law attorney, told Vox.

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