Google execs hooked on Swiss watch made Tudor build special edition for them

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. The Google edition is based on the Tudor Pelagos, a titanium diver that retails for around $4,500 (roughly Rs 4.3 lakh). 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. Tudor needs at least 40 buyers before it customises a watch 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. Production takes about six months. Employee collector groups do the work of rounding up enough interested buyers, and each member pays full retail price. That setup keeps runs small and designs private. A watch made for one company’s collector group tends to stay within that group, so every edition is rare by default. OpenAI, Palantir and Uber staff have their own limited-edition Tudors OpenAI’s head of applied research, Boris Power, posted the company’s version, which has “Good Research Takes Time” engraved on the caseback. 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. Palantir’s strategic engagement head, Eliano Younes, said the company’s run was limited to 468 pieces, with a barely noticeable Palantir logo on the dial. Uber engineer Alex Feng shared a caseback marked 1/100, the first watch in a batch of 100. A former Facebook employee admitted he regretted not buying every custom model made during his six years there. Tudor is not the only maker involved. 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. 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. Custom tech-company Tudor watches are selling for double their retail price Rarity carries a premium. 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. 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). Not every branded watch fetches those numbers, and one online watch auctioneer pointed out that some buyers simply find them ugly. For the people ordering them, the draw is belonging. An Adobe designer who owns about 40 watches described these pieces as a ticket into an insider club. Google’s own chief is the odd one out. Sundar Pichai’s most talked-about watch moment came in 2022, when he wore an unreleased Pixel Watch on stage. His employees, it seems, would rather wear the company logo on a Swiss movement.