“Lord of the Rings”: Sam Altman Orders 7 Luxury Watches for OpenAI’s Leadership

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman has had seven custom watches made by Swiss watchmaker Vanguart. One is said to be for him, and the other six went to members of the company’s leadership team. The story first surfaced in The Wall Street Journal and has been bouncing around the web since then.

These aren’t ordinary corporate gifts. The watches are based on Vanguart’s titanium Orb model, which the company lists at about $180,000. OpenAI’s version adds the company logo and a set of very on-brand inscriptions: “COMPUTE IS DESTINY” around the rotor, “SCALING” on the crown pusher, and “if AGI.aligned: deploy()” on the caseback. Vanguart says that last line points to deploying AI for peaceful purposes.

The rarity is part of the point. Vanguart says it has built fewer than 200 watches in its entire history, and roughly a third of its 33 employees reportedly worked on this OpenAI commission. The watches come on rubber straps and can be wound automatically or by hand. That’s a lot of effort for a gift that will probably spend more time being photographed than worn.

OpenAI has already gone down this road before. Around 400 Tudor watches with the company logo and the line “Good Research Takes Time” were recently handed to employees, and Boris Power, OpenAI’s head of applied research, showed his on X. Other tech companies, including Uber and Palantir, have also handed out branded Tudors, but seven Vanguarts is a different level of flex.

The internet noticed immediately. The number seven turned into a Lord of the Rings joke machine, with users turning Tolkien’s “Rings of Power” into tech-industry fan fiction. One post got more than a million views on X. Altman, meanwhile, already has a reputation for liking expensive watches, and Mark Zuckerberg, Jensen Huang and Bernard Arnault have all been spotted in serious timepieces too. Silicon Valley has never just told time with its wrists; it has signaled status, taste and tribe.