OpenAI's London Staff Averaged £2.3m Each in 2025
OpenAI UK Ltd paid its 110 London staff an average of £2,318,181 each in 2025.
The total comprised £87m in salaries and £168m in shares, according to 2025 accounts reported on 14 October 2026 by The Guardian. Equity did the heavy lifting. Shares accounted for almost two-thirds of the payout.
Turnover for the subsidiary reached £293m in 2025, more than trebling year on year. Profit was recorded at £20.3m. The margin was thin. Revenue growth was steep, but compensation absorbed a large share of it.
The 2025 average was roughly double the £1.1m pay and equity package recorded the previous year. The London structure mirrors the parent company's wider reliance on stock-based compensation. Separately, OpenAI was reported to pay workers an average of $1.5 million in stock-based compensation, as reported by Fortune.
OpenAI UK Ltd is based in Westminster and is opening a new headquarters in London's King's Cross area. The London office is described as the company's largest international research hub. Corporate records list the entity under company number 14367667 with a registered address at Suite 1, 7th Floor 50 Broadway, London, SW1H 0BL. The parent company is aiming to list on the stock market at a valuation of about $1tn.
The broader context here is compensation as operating strategy for frontier labs. Cash salaries at this level already exceed norms for senior technical staff in London. The decisive component is equity. It ties researchers to future valuation, defers cash outlay, and raises the cost of departure. For staff, the trade is concentration risk. Payout depends on a private valuation holding into a public listing.
Looking at what this means for London, the figures clarify why the city sustains an outsize role in AI research despite smaller venture pools than Silicon Valley. A 110-person unit generating £293m in turnover with £20.3m in profit is a high-revenue, high-compensation operation, not a sales outpost. Retention at that productivity level requires globally competitive packages. The planned King's Cross headquarters points to further headcount commitment rather than a static presence.
In my view, the numbers also preview the discipline a $1tn listing would impose. Trebling turnover while doubling average compensation is sustainable only if revenue per researcher keeps climbing or equity values reset at listing. Investors will read the £168m share allocation as both talent cost and cap-table signal. For policymakers and competitors, the question is less whether £2.3m per head is excessive than whether any other structure could hold this cohort together.
