OpenAI Terminates Employee for Engaging in Insider Trading in Prediction Market

OpenAI has terminated an employee following an inquiry into their activities on prediction market platforms, including Polymarket, according to WIRED.

In an internal message to employees earlier this year, OpenAI’s CEO of Applications, Fidji Simo, revealed the termination. She stated that the employee “utilized confidential OpenAI information in relation to external prediction markets (e.g. Polymarket).”

“Our policies prohibit employees from leveraging confidential OpenAI information for personal benefit, including in prediction markets,” said spokesperson Kayla Wood. OpenAI has not disclosed the identity of the employee or the details of their trades.

Evidence indicates this was not an isolated incident. Polymarket operates on the Polygon blockchain network, which allows its trading ledger to remain pseudonymous yet traceable. An analysis by the financial data platform Unusual Whales identified clusters of activity they marked as questionable surrounding OpenAI-related events since March 2023.

Unusual Whales identified 77 positions across 60 wallet addresses as suspected insider trades, assessing account age, trading history, and significant investments among other criteria. The questionable trades were linked to the release dates of products like Sora, GPT-5, and the ChatGPT Browser, as well as CEO Sam Altman’s employment status. In November 2023, two days after Altman was unexpectedly ousted from the company, a new wallet made a significant wager on his return, yielding over $16,000 in profit. That account never placed another bet.

Such behavior aligns with patterns typical of insider trading. “The indicator is the clustering. In the 40 hours preceding OpenAI’s browser launch, 13 brand-new wallets with no trading history emerged on the site to jointly bet $309,486 on the desired outcome,” explained Unusual Whales CEO Matt Saincome. “When you observe that many fresh wallets making identical bets simultaneously, it raises serious questions about whether the inside information is leaking out.”

Prediction markets have surged in popularity in recent years. These platforms enable users to purchase “event contracts” regarding the outcomes of various events, including the Super Bowl winner, daily Bitcoin prices, or the potential for the United States to engage in conflict with Iran. A diverse range of markets exist within the tech sector; traders can speculate on Nvidia’s quarterly earnings, Tesla’s new car launch timeline, or which AI companies will go public in 2026.

As these platforms have expanded, so have worries that they might allow traders to capitalize on insider information. “This prediction market realm makes the Wild West seem peaceful by comparison,” remarked Jeff Edelstein, a senior analyst at the betting news site InGame. “If a market exists where the outcome is already known, someone will trade on it.”

Earlier this week, Kalshi announced it had reported multiple suspicious insider trading cases to the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, the agency that oversees these markets. In one case, an employee of popular YouTuber Mr. Beast faced a two-year suspension and a $20,000 fine for making trades linked to the streamer’s activities; in another, far-right political candidate Kyle Langford was banned from the platform for trading in his own campaign. The company also revealed several initiatives aimed at curbing insider trading and market manipulation.

While Kalshi has actively promoted its efforts against insider trading, Polymarket has remained silent on the issue. The company did not respond to requests for comments.

Historically, major trades on technology-themed markets have raised speculation that employees from Big Tech might be leveraging their insider knowledge for profit. One infamous instance is the so-called “Google whale,” a pseudonymous account on Polymarket that profited over $1 million trading on events related to Google, including a market predicting who would be the most-searched person of the year in 2025. (That turned out to be the singer D4vd, known for his connection to a current murder investigation following the discovery of a young fan’s remains in a vehicle registered to him.)