Andrej Karpathy, former AI director at Tesla, mentioned that a few Tesla employees could afford yachts due to their stock grants, similar to Nvidia employees. He highlighted that most employees sell their stock grants early, but a few 'true believers' have held onto their shares, expecting further gains from Tesla's future achievements, particularly in fully autonomous driving. Both Nvidia and Tesla have seen significant stock price increases, making some employees millionaires. However, Tesla did not offer merit-based equity awards to some salaried employees in 2023, a deviation from its usual practice.