When Pre-IPO Equity Outbids Actual Money

Description

An X post by verified user “michael hess” (`@mchlhess`), with a blue “Follow” label and X logo, says, “House hunting in SF is going great.” Its embedded iMessage screenshot shows the contact initials “LR,” the name “Lily (Realtor),” a video-call icon, “Today 1:52 PM,” and the gray message, “Update on the Noe Valley house - you didn’t get it.” Under “Today 2:59 PM,” the buyer replies in blue, “we offered $400k over asking??”; Lily answers, “Other buyer paid in pre-IPO OpenAI equity”; and the final blue message says, “that’s not even money.” The post footer reads “4:20 PM · Jul 1, 2026” and shows “83.9K,” “Reply,” and “Copy link”; the exchange satirizes San Francisco’s AI wealth boom and contemporaneous listings that invited payment in illiquid OpenAI or Anthropic shares, whether or not this particular conversation was literal.