$250K in 2022 startup equity: ElevenLabs returned 820x, Cursor 725x vs S&P's 2.2x
FinanceYF5 · x · 2026-10-13
FinanceYF5 ranks the top 25 companies by what a $250K vested equity grant from late 2022 would be worth now, net of dilution:
- AI apps dominate: ElevenLabs 820x ($20.5M), Cursor 725x ($181M), Harvey 210x ($52.5M), Perplexity 108x ($27M)
- AI labs & infra: Anthropic 95x ($23.8M), Mistral 47x, BaseTen 46x, OpenAI 20x ($5M)
- Beyond AI: Figure (robotics) 70x, Polymarket 30x, Helsing (defense) 27x, Nvidia 19x ($4.8M), Palantir 17x
- Benchmark: the S&P 500 returned just 2.2x ($550K) over the same period
The list is nearly all AI companies, underscoring how startup equity in AI has crushed every other tech asset class over the past four years.
Related event: AI Startups Deliver Massive Equity Returns, Data Shows(2 posts)→
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