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• Analysis
OpenAI London Staff Pay Averages £2.3m Each Per Year
OpenAI's London staff each received an average of £2,318,181 in pay and shares in 2025, according to accounts filed by OpenAI UK Ltd, as the company prepares for a stock market listing at a valuation of about $1tn.
By Haut Monde Post
• October 15, 2026
• 2 Min Read
The OpenAI London staff pay figures come from accounts filed by OpenAI UK Ltd, which show average pay and shares of £2,318,181 per employee in 2025. The same filings record a stock market listing plan valued at roughly $1tn.
What the accounts show
The OpenAI UK Ltd accounts break the average down across the company's 110 London staff. Their combined compensation divided as follows:
- •£87m in salaries
- •£168m in shares
The average is a steep rise on the year before, when pay and equity came to £1.1m per head - meaning earnings roughly doubled.
How the pay compares
Measured against the wider economy, the figure is striking: the Office for National Statistics puts median UK full-time earnings at just a 58th of it. On that basis, an average OpenAI London worker could take home about £1,000 an hour in salary and equity before tax.
The distribution is far from even, however. The largest compensation packages are reserved for AI researchers who help build the San Francisco company's cutting-edge models such as Astra, leaving a wide gap between the highest and lowest earners in the office.
Talent war and listing plans
The 2025 figures fall in a year when OpenAI's rival, Meta, was reported to be offering multi-year packages running into several hundred million dollars, in a contest for AI researchers. OpenAI, for its part, is aiming to list on the stock market at a valuation of about $1tn.
The business behind the payouts has been expanding quickly. In 2025, OpenAI UK Ltd turned over £293m - a figure that has more than tripled - and kept £20.3m of it as profit. London itself is an important hub for AI talent, drawing on universities such as Cambridge.
OpenAI's growing London base
The London operation is OpenAI's largest international research hub, but it also houses a government affairs team and sales and marketing functions. OpenAI UK Ltd is based in Westminster but is opening a new HQ in London's King's Cross area, where Google DeepMind is also based. George Osborne, the former Conservative chancellor of the exchequer, joined last December as the company's head for countries.
The company declined to comment on the figures.
