Shulou(Shulou.com)11/24 Report--

CTOnews.com, June 27-despite frequent public appearances by OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, the company's internal structure and operations are notoriously opaque. But Levels.fyi, a startup, has unveiled a key aspect of OpenAI's strategy: the company's compensation package to attract engineers.

OpenAI offers an annual salary of up to $925000 (CTOnews.com Note: currently about 6.697 million yuan) to attract software engineers, according to Levels.fyi. The salary includes a base salary of $300000 and a profit participation unit (PPU) of $625000. PPU is an original incentive mechanism created by OpenAI to allow employees to share the company's future profit space. Because OpenAI is not an ordinary company and cannot sell shares, it uses PPU to compete with large technology companies for talent.

Unlike stock options or restricted stock units, PPU is a profit-based equity that is valuable only when the company's earnings exceed a certain threshold. Employees have two options to turn PPU into banknotes. The first option is to hold PPU until the company makes a substantial profit-which can take years for an organization that aims to spend billions to develop general artificial intelligence. A second, more direct option is to sell them to other buyers. Because OpenAI is structured as a "profit cap" company, PPU can only sell for up to 10 times its original value. In addition, OpenAI's PPU has a two-year lock-up period, which means new employees must hold it for two years before they can be sold. According to Zuheir Moussa, chief executive of Levels.fyi, OpenAI conducted a buyback in January to allow employees to sell the PPU.

PPU mechanism has been widely used in the field of private equity, but it is the first time in the technology industry. Moussa believes that this is caused by the special structure of OpenAI and will not cause other startups to follow suit. But it does keep OpenAI competitive in an increasingly tight labour market in artificial intelligence.

Levels.fyi is a start-up company that collects and provides information on compensation, benefits and career development in a variety of industries. OpenAI has not commented on its compensation package as of CTOnews.com.

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