The math behind Silicon Valley's millionaire factory

A SpaceX rocket firing SpaceX A version of this story originally appeared in the BI Tech Memo newsletter. Sign up for the weekly BI Tech Memo newsletter here . New Levels.fyi analyses show how equity grants at frontier tech companies have turned into life-changing sums. A SpaceX Software Engineer II offer from August 2022 included a $155,000 salary and a $365,000 equity grant that vested over five years. At SpaceX's IPO valuation, that grant is estimated to be worth more than $4 million, assuming it was held. At Anthropic , engineers who joined in 2023 may now be sitting on equity worth tens of millions of dollars after the AI company's valuation surge. OpenAI shows a similar pattern, with some 2022 and 2023 equity grants to engineers now valued at over $50 million. These are not guaranteed windfalls: variables such as vesting, dilution, and lockups mean employees may end up with less. And don't forget those huge tax bills . Still, these estimates give a real taste of the wealth that Silicon Valley has created — and spread among workers . Sign up for BI's Tech Memo newsletter here . Reach out to me via email at abarr@businessinsider.com . Read the original article on Business Insider