There's nothing cynical about leaving a job after cliffing. If a company wants a longer commitment than a year before issuing equity, it can set a longer cliff. We're all adults here.
I don't see anything interesting about that detail; you keep trying to make something out of it, but there's nothing there to talk about.
There might be some marginal drama to scrape up here if the post was negative about OpenAI (I'd still be complaining about trying to whip up drama where there isn't any), but it's kind of glowing about them.
Well now the goalpost has shifted from "it's not cynical" to "even if it is cynical it doesn't matter" and dang has already warned me so I'm hesitant to continue this thread. I'll just say that once you recognize that a lot of the fluff in this article is cynically motivated, it reduces your risk of giving the information presented more meaning than is really there.