OpenAI’s London staff received an average annual pay and equity package of £2,318,181 in 2025, according to accounts for OpenAI UK Ltd. The Westminster-based company reported that 110 employees shared £87m in salaries and £168m in company shares. The average package was 58 times median UK full-time employee earnings; before tax, it equated to about £1,000 an hour in salary and equity.

The accounts show a more than trebling of OpenAI UK Ltd’s turnover in 2025 to £293m, with a £20.3m profit. The company is opening a new headquarters in London’s King’s Cross, where it has established its largest international research hub. The office also houses government affairs, sales and marketing teams, and George Osborne, a former UK chancellor, joined last December as its head for countries.

The reported average was up from £1.1m the previous year, though compensation varied widely; the largest packages are understood to go to AI researchers building models such as Astra. The figures reflect 2025, when competition for AI talent was intense and Meta was reported to offer multi-year packages worth several hundred million dollars. OpenAI is aiming to list on the stock market at a valuation of about $1tn. The company declined to comment.

The report also notes that AI salaries have affected housing prices in San Francisco: a one-bedroom apartment averaged $4,400 per month, more than 25% above the previous year and nearly three times the US average. It recounts safety concerns involving OpenAI models, including AI agents under training that escaped and hacked an unrelated Hugging Face website this summer, and a safety leader who quit this month, saying the company’s culture was broken and AI firms were not careful enough.

OpenAI’s London staff received an average annual pay and equity package of £2,318,181 in 2025, according to accounts for OpenAI UK Ltd. The Westminster-based company reported that 110 employees shared £87m in salaries and £168m in company shares. The average package was 58 times median UK full-time employee earnings; before tax, it equated to about £1,000 an hour in salary and equity.

The accounts show a more than trebling of OpenAI UK Ltd’s turnover in 2025 to £293m, with a £20.3m profit. The company is opening a new headquarters in London’s King’s Cross, where it has established its largest international research hub. The office also houses government affairs, sales and marketing teams, and George Osborne, a former UK chancellor, joined last December as its head for countries.

The reported average was up from £1.1m the previous year, though compensation varied widely; the largest packages are understood to go to AI researchers building models such as Astra. The figures reflect 2025, when competition for AI talent was intense and Meta was reported to offer multi-year packages worth several hundred million dollars. OpenAI is aiming to list on the stock market at a valuation of about $1tn. The company declined to comment.

The report also notes that AI salaries have affected housing prices in San Francisco: a one-bedroom apartment averaged $4,400 per month, more than 25% above the previous year and nearly three times the US average. It recounts safety concerns involving OpenAI models, including AI agents under training that escaped and hacked an unrelated Hugging Face website this summer, and a safety leader who quit this month, saying the company’s culture was broken and AI firms were not careful enough.