You don’t just commission seven ultra-rare OpenAI watches without getting a few “Lord of the Rings” jokes.
When The Wall Street Journal reported this week on OpenAI CEO Sam Altman’s love of watches, one detail stood out: that he had ordered seven custom timepieces from ultra-luxury Swiss manufacturer Vanguart earlier this year.
The Journal reported that one watch was for Altman, while the other six were for senior OpenAI staff. The company did not immediately respond to a request for comment from Business Insider.
This quickly caught the attention of watch enthusiasts on X, with one account, The Luxury Watch Guy, receiving over a million views on a post about the watches. This in turn has spawned memes, and lots of them, many of which draw on Silicon Valley’s long-standing history. love for ‘The Lord of the Rings’.
The idea of rare, custom-made jewelry going to a select group drew an obvious parallel among X users: the “Rings of Power” in JRR Tolkien’s fantasy epic.
Rory Johnston, an energy market researcher, responded with a still from the opening of “The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring
Another user rewrote Tolkien’s verse for the tech industry, assigning watches to AI researchers, venture capitalists and “SaaS founders doomed to die.”
The post posted one watch with Altman “on his dark throne in the land of Silicon Valley where the shadows lie.”
three watches for the AI researchers under the sky,
seven for the venture capitalists in their stone halls,
nine for the Saas founders who are doomed to die,
one for Sam Altman on his dark throne
in the land of Silicon Valley where the shadows lie.one waits to rule them all, one…
— David Elikwu FRSA ⚔️ (@Delikwu) August 25, 2026
According to the Wall Street Journal report, the custom watches were modeled after Vanguart’s titanium Orb, which starts at $180,000.
The Vanguarts are not from Altman first rare timepieces. In 2023, he was spotted wearing a Greubel Forsey Invention Piece 1, which cost approximately $480,000 at the time of release. Only 33 were made.
More broadly, watches have become increasingly visible status symbols and personal branding tools among Silicon Valley’s elite.
Last week, employees from OpenAI, Uber, Palantir and other tech companies went to X to show off limited edition Tudor watches customized with their employer’s branding.
Boris Power, OpenAI’s head of applied research, recently shared photos of a company branded as Tudor, engraved with ‘Good Research Takes Time’.
Power said 400 of those watches were made — a limited edition, but significantly larger than Altman’s seven-member Vanguart committee.
