“I definitely want a cool house,” said a man in his late 20s, who works as a researcher at one of the frontier AI labs. He stands to make tens of millions of dollars when the company he works for goes public—something that may happen as early as this coming winter. “Ideally one on each coast and a pied-à-terre in Paris,” he added. “I love Paris.”
He’s one of a cohort of tech workers gearing up to spend big. Last week, SpaceX floated at a $1.77 trillion valuation, making 4,000 new millionaires out of current and previous employees—and turning its founder, Elon Musk, into the world’s first trillionaire. And earlier in the month, two of the world’s leading AI labs—Anthropic (valued at $965 billion) and OpenAI ($852 billion)—each filed S-1s with the Securities and Exchange Commission, formally signaling their intentions to go public too.
Some say we’re in a stock bubble and that it’s only a matter of time until sky-high tech valuations come crashing down to Earth. Others say the technology unleashed by these juggernauts will transform the economy and trigger a wave of mass unemployment. Either way, the employees—including engineers, researchers, and even some mechanics and welders like Juan Hernandez, who once worked at SpaceX and now works at Blue Origin—are set to cash in.
And so, they’re making big plans.
