💰 How Does OpenAI Pay Its Employees?

💰 OpenAI’s Unique Compensation Model: Flat Salaries, No Bonuses, No Negotiation

OpenAI compensates its roughly 500 workers in a simple salary-plus-equity model that is almost entirely unique to Silicon Valley.

Most employees are paid a flat base salary of about $300,000 alongside a yearly grant of around $500,000 in PPUs, or profit participation units, a form of equity compensation. And that's it.

Signing bonuses are very rare; there is no target performance bonus; and there is also little to no room for negotiation on compensation unlike other tech startups and big firms like Meta, Google, and Microsoft.

Over the course of four years, the vesting period for the PPU grants, most OpenAI workers can expect to take home at least $2 million in equity pay alone.

The potential upside of this pull is a big pull. Although the price an employee can fetch for their grant is capped at 10x the granted value, that still means today's typical OpenAI worker could make up to $20 million on their PPUs.

The company's valuation most recently jumped from $20 billion to $29 billion, and its valuation has doubled since 2021.

💳 Visa and Mastercard to Add a New Fee for Every Card Transaction

Visa and Mastercard are going to charge more money to the retailers who accept your card payments.

And guess who’s going to pay for that in the end? That’s right, you.

Starting in October, Visa will charge more for online transactions, and then in April, they will also increase the fees for commercial credit, debit, and prepaid cards.

Mastercard will also join the party and add a new fee for credit card purchases in October. These changes could mean that retailers will have to pay over $500 million extra every year.

These fees are not visible to you as a consumer, but they affect the prices of the goods and services you buy. Retailers often pass on these costs to you by raising their prices or adding surcharges.

Interchange fees are a big deal, retailers in the US paid a whopping $160.7 billion on them last year, up 16.7% from 2021.

🛠️ Apple's Move Towards 3D Printed Smartwatch Components

Apple is testing the use of 3D printers to produce the steel chassis for its upcoming smartwatches.

This technique would reduce the time it takes to build devices and help the environment by using less material. If successful, Apple plans to expand the process to more products over the next several years.

The new approach uses a type of 3D printing called binder jetting to create the device’s general outline, which is then sintered to create what feels like traditional steel.

The exact design and cutouts are then milled like in the previous process.

Apple and its suppliers have been quietly developing the technique for at least three years.

Over the past several months, they’ve been testing the process with steel cases destined for the Apple Watch Series 9, which is set to be unveiled on September 12.

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