OpenAI’s British staff handed £800,000 each
UK employees of tech giant are collectively paid £258m over one year
OpenAI’s UK staff were paid nearly £800,000 each last year as pay deals for top AI researchers soared.
OpenAI’s British staff took home £258m in total across wages and share awards last year, including £87.3m in base pay.
The ChatGPT creator employed an average of 110 people in Britain in 2025, with an average basic salary of about £794,000.
The wages eclipse even those of more established Silicon Valley giants. Google’s average pay last year, including shares, was around £400,000.
Many staff received pay deals tied to shares, so they benefited from OpenAI’s valuation rising from around $150bn (£114bn) at the start of 2025 to around $500bn last year. Including share awards, average UK pay packages were worth nearly £2.3m per person.
In accounts filed with Companies House, OpenAI reported revenues of £292.9m in 2025, up from £79.2m a year earlier. It recorded a profit of £31.7m.
OpenAI, which charges subscriptions and offers advertising on its ChatGPT bot, said its UK branch provided sales, marketing and R&D Services to the wider business, which spent tens of billions of dollars last year.
The Silicon Valley lab has been expanding its UK operations. It employs around 200 UK staff, with plans to grow to more than 500 people in a new office space in King’s Cross, north London.
Its rival, Anthropic, which makes Claude, plans to grow its UK team to 800 people in an office near Regent’s Park.
In the past year, rival labs have competed fiercely for AI talent, offering salaries and share deals worth tens or hundreds of millions of pounds to secure leading experts.
Companies have also agreed to generous salaries for non-technical staff. This week, it emerged Anthropic was offering £145,000 for a personal assistant for London executives.
Both OpenAI and Anthropic have announced high-profile UK hires. OpenAI has recruited George Osborne, the ex-chancellor, to lead its international operations. Meanwhile, Anthropic has hired Rishi Sunak, the former prime minister, as an adviser.
The two companies are targeting initial public offerings that could make many early employees billionaires.
OpenAI, which had around 4,500 staff globally at the start of this year, has pushed back its float until 2027, while Anthropic’s is expected as soon as November.
Last year, about 600 OpenAI staff cashed out a combined $6.6bn in shares as part of a funding deal, making many overnight millionaires, with an average payout of about $11m.
An OpenAI spokesman declined to comment.