Google employees got Tudor to build them their own Swiss watch
Custom tech-company Tudor watches are selling for double their retail price
The Google edition is based on the Tudor Pelagos, a titanium diver that retails for around $4,500 (roughly Rs 4.3 lakh). Tudor, Rolex’s sister brand, runs a customisation programme with a minimum order of 40 watches, according to the managing editor of a luxury watch news site. The same slogan appears on T-shirts OpenAI sells, and Power has said Tudor made 400 of these with OpenAI’s logo on the dial. Adobe’s watch club is working with British brand Studio Underd0g on 128 branded pieces at about $1,200 (around Rs 1.2 lakh) each. A Meta-branded Tudor Black Bay 54 has attracted bids as high as $10,500 (about Rs 10 lakh), against a standard price of $4,725 (roughly Rs 4.6 lakh).
OpenAI’s head of applied research, Boris Power, posted the company’s version, which has “Good Research Takes Time” engraved on the caseback. OpenAI CEO Sam Altman went further, commissioning just seven watches from Swiss maker Vanguart, based on a model that starts at $180,000 (about Rs 1.7 crore), with “COMPUTE IS DESTINY” engraved around the rotor. A Google-themed Tudor featuring Chrome’s offline dinosaur sold for over $10,000 (about Rs 9.6 lakh) at auction earlier this year, while an Apple “pirate” edition drew a $13,500 (around Rs 13 lakh) bid.
Silicon Valley has a new way to flex, and at Google , it comes with a Swiss movement and a Tudor logo. In August, a post showing custom Tudor watches built for Googlers started circulating on X, and staffers at OpenAI, Palantir, Uber and Perplexity were soon replying with photos of their own company-branded timepieces. Google does not hand these out. Like most of these watches, it was ordered by an internal group of watch collectors, paid for out of pocket, and is usually available only to members of the group that commissioned it. Production takes about six months. Employee collector groups do the work of rounding up enough interested buyers, and each member pays full retail price. Tudor is not the only maker involved. Rarity carries a premium.