OpenAI London staff pay averages £2.3m per person in 2025 accounts
Average pay for OpenAI's London staff reached £2,318,181 each last year, according to accounts for OpenAI UK Ltd, where 110 employees shared £87m in salaries and £168m in shares. The figures cover 2025, and the company declined to comment.
OpenAI London staff pay averages £2.3m per person in 2025 accounts
The accounts for OpenAI UK Ltd put OpenAI London staff pay far above any ordinary benchmark, and they more than doubled in a single year.
What the accounts show
The 2025 filings show an average package of £2,318,181 per head, a big jump on the previous year, when the average pay and equity package was £1.1m.
- 110 staff shared £87m in salaries and £168m in shares
- The average package equalled 58 times the median UK full-time employee earnings, according to the Office for National Statistics
- A worker on the average package could expect about £1,000 an hour in salary and equity before tax
How the pay compares
The average hides a spread: there is understood to be a wide discrepancy between the highest and lowest earners at the London office. The largest packages are reserved for AI researchers who help build the San Francisco company's cutting-edge models, such as Astra.
Why London pays so much
The London office is OpenAI's largest international research hub, though it also houses a government affairs team and sales and marketing functions. The figures cover 2025, when OpenAI's rival Meta was reported to be offering multi-year packages running into several hundred million dollars.
The UK capital's role as an AI talent hub also matters, with experts drawn from universities such as Cambridge; Google DeepMind is also based in King's Cross.
Company performance and next steps
The wider business grew quickly alongside the wage bill. OpenAI UK Ltd recorded a more than trebling of its turnover in 2025 to £293m, on which it made a £20.3m profit. The company is based in Westminster but is opening a new headquarters in London's King's Cross area, and is aiming to list on the stock market at a valuation of about $1tn.
George Osborne, the former Conservative chancellor of the exchequer, joined OpenAI last December as the company's head for countries. This month one of OpenAI's safety leaders quit, saying its culture was broken and that AI firms were not:
being nearly careful enough
about developing the technology. The company declined to comment on the pay figures; it is aiming for a stock market listing at a valuation of about $1tn.
