Wealth management firms are reducing their fees and boosting their presence in Silicon Valley, aiming to capture the business of employees at OpenAI and Anthropic. These two companies are expected to generate a new wave of millionaires once they go public.

Following SpaceX's major public listing, the wealth management division of Morgan Stanley, leveraging its employee stock option plan custody services, absorbed over $74 billion in net new assets from related IPO business in the last quarter. The market anticipates that OpenAI and Anthropic will list within the next 12 months, triggering intense competition in the wealth management industry. Advisory firms affiliated with banks like Morgan Stanley, which also serve as IPO underwriters, hold a particularly strong competitive advantage.

Financial reports show that OpenAI alone distributed nearly $11 billion in stock-based compensation in 2024 and 2025. Even with the company currently employing just 8,000 people, if it were to list today, its total employee stock compensation would rank seventh among all publicly traded U.S. companies.

Key strategies for attracting clients

Jason Van der Loo, CEO of Choreo, a wealth manager with $19 billion in assets under management, noted, "The old approach of showing up from Wall Street in a suit and going through a traditional three-meeting sales process won't work with this client base." Last month, Choreo finalized an agreement with over 100 current and former SpaceX employees through collective negotiation, with management fees set below 0.5%. The industry standard is typically around 1% of assets, though fees are often reduced for larger accounts.

Another firm, Mariner Wealth Advisors, has a policy of uniformly lowering fees once a critical mass of clients from the same company is reached. Other institutions choose to negotiate preferential partnership terms directly with employers. For example, Citigroup announced a partnership with Palantir last month.

Steve Moyer, director of wealth strategy at Mariner, explained another client acquisition method: charging a separate fee for pre-IPO tax planning and stock compensation advisory services, without applying a management fee to illiquid equity. Then, once employees sell some of their shares, the model switches to a standard assets-under-management fee structure. Many advisors have also eliminated minimum account balance requirements for certain clients.

Focusing on future wealth potential

Jessica Caruso, managing partner at Mercer Advisors, stated, "These employees are still in lock-up periods, or like Anthropic and OpenAI staff, they don't have liquid cash right now. We're taking a long-term view. We price based on the size of their future wealth, not their current situation."

This competition for significant potential wealth is also reshaping hiring plans, especially in the San Francisco area. Firms from Citigroup to others are actively recruiting financial advisors and seeking out new clients. Caruso noted, "Our expansion rate across the entire Bay Area is higher than in any other region of the company."

These new AI elites are also demanding high-end services typically offered by family offices, which are private wealth management firms for ultra-high-net-worth individuals. These services include philanthropic planning and venture capital investment advisory. Mercer reports that some AI company employees have access to "family office-level services" even before they meet the standard wealth thresholds.

However, financial advisors note that, compared to traditional family office clients, this new generation of AI wealth creators has a lower demand for lifestyle concierge services. Choreo's Van der Loo remarked, "We haven't seen requests for concierge services, bill paying, private jets, or dog walking yet. I think it has to do with the generation we're serving and the mindset of this type of investor."