David Choe Just Made 200 Million USD for Painting the Facebook Office

In 2005 artist David Choe was asked by Facebook to paint their headquarters at the time. With the filing for IPO by Facebook, it turns out that painting the offices of the then Internet start-up, will make him one of the richest living artists one day.

This week Facebook announced that they will be going public in the near future. Along with the filing, they had to reveal the current ownership state of the company. In 2005 David Choe chose to be paid in stock rather than cash and it looks like that stock will be worth 200 Million USD, if Facebook will be valued on the open stock market at the estimated 100 Billion Dollar mark.


“In 2005, Mr. Choe was invited to paint murals on the walls of Facebook’s first offices in Palo Alto, Calif., by Sean Parker, then Facebook’s president. As pay, Mr. Parker offered Mr. Choe a choice between cash in the “thousands of dollars,” according to several people who know Mr. Choe, or stock then worth about the same. Mr. Choe, who has said that at the time that he thought the idea of Facebook was “ridiculous and pointless,” nevertheless chose the stock. Many “advisers” to the company at that time, which is how Mr. Choe would have been classified, would have received about 0.1 to 0.25 percent of the company, according to a former Facebook employee. That may sound like a paltry amount, but a stake that size is worth hundreds of millions of dollars, based on a market value of $100 billion. Mr. Choe’s payment is valued at roughly $200 million, according to a number of people who know Mr. Choe and Facebook executives.”

You can read the full New York Times article on what happened here.