OpenAI's London office paid its 110 staff members an average of £2.3m per person last year, according to company accounts filed for OpenAI UK Ltd.
The Westminster-based subsidiary distributed £87m in salaries and £168m in shares among those employees, according to filings reviewed by The Guardian. The bulk of compensation came through equity grants rather than cash wages.
OpenAI UK operates from Westminster and is establishing a new headquarters in London's King's Cross area. The parent company is pursuing a stock market listing at a target valuation of approximately £1tn.
The per-person payout figure reflects OpenAI's aggressive spending to attract AI talent in a competitive global market. The company competes directly with other AI leaders including Anthropic, Google DeepMind and Meta for specialized research and engineering staff. Senior researchers and engineers in the AI field command premium salaries and substantial equity packages as companies race to build advanced language models and systems.
The scale of compensation underscores the financial stakes in the AI industry. OpenAI's London payroll represents one slice of the company's total global workforce costs. The presence of a major AI company headquarters in London signals the city's emergence as a secondary hub for AI development, alongside Silicon Valley, San Francisco and other US technology centers.