The Guardian reported on 14 October 2026 that OpenAI’s London staff each received £2,318,181 on average last year. The figure comes from the 2025 accounts of OpenAI UK Ltd, filed at Companies House on 13 October 2026, which put staff costs at £258.0M for an average of 110 employees.
Most of that was not salary. The accounts list £167.8M of share-based compensation and £87.4M of wages and salaries. By our arithmetic, total staff costs come to about £2.35M per average employee, of which about £1.53M is share-based.
Business Pill · PERCENTILES
A one-minute explainer of percentiles: why an average can hide how spread out the numbers are. It teaches the general idea only and says nothing about any company in this story.
The key insight: As we read it, the accounts show where the UK company’s money goes: staff costs equal to about 88% of its turnover, by our arithmetic, and about two thirds of those costs in share awards rather than salary.
OpenAI UK Ltd’s staff-cost note lists wages and salaries of £87,372,625, pension costs of £1,418,451, share-based compensation of £167,838,900 and other employee benefits of £1,406,986, for a total of £258,036,962.
The note says the wages and salaries “are directly incurred by the company and not part of a recharge from a fellow group company.”
The average monthly number of employees, including the Director, was 110, up from 55 in 2024. The accounts split them into 34 in research and development, 12 in administration and 64 in other roles.
By our arithmetic, wages and salaries alone come to about £794,000 per average employee, and share-based compensation makes up about 65% of total staff costs.
OpenAI UK Ltdโs 2025 accounts list staff costs of ยฃ258.0M, including ยฃ167.8M of share-based compensation and ยฃ87.4M of wages and salaries, for an average of 110 employees; the ยฃ2.35M per head is our arithmetic (Companies House, filed 13 October 2026).
A Fourfold Jump From 2024
In 2024 the same note listed total staff costs of £60,774,526, including £43,296,145 of share-based compensation, for an average of 55 employees.
By our arithmetic, that is about £1.1M per average employee in 2024. The Guardian put the previous year’s average pay and equity package at £1.1m.
Total staff costs rose about 4.2 times in a year, by our arithmetic, while the average number of employees doubled.
How the Share Awards Are Counted
The accounts say employees of the company “participate in group-wide share-based payment arrangements operated by OpenAI”, and that the relevant awards are Restricted Membership Units and Restricted Stock Units.
In connection with the 2025 group recapitalisation, the accounts say, unvested RMUs held by participating employees were exchanged for RSUs, on the same vesting and other terms.
The awards are then measured “at fair value at grant date or modification date and recognised over the relevant vesting period.” The accounts also say the expense recognised by the company “is based on a reasonable allocation of the group charge for participating employees.”
So the £167.8M is an accounting charge for share awards allocated to the UK company, not a cash payment in the year.
What the UK Company Does
The strategic report describes OpenAI UK Ltd as a wholly owned subsidiary within the wider OpenAI group that provided sales and marketing services and research and development services to group undertakings.
Turnover rose to £292,964,030 from £79,208,733. Operating profit was £30.2M and profit for the year £20.3M, the accounts say.
The report says administrative expenses rose to £264.1M, “driven principally by higher staff costs and increased investment in research and development capabilities.” Research and development costs of £117.8M are listed in the notes.
By our arithmetic, staff costs were equal to about 88% of the company’s turnover.
What the Guardian Reported
The Guardian said the average equals 58 times the median UK full-time employee’s earnings, according to the Office for National Statistics.
It reported that there is “understood to be a wide discrepancy between the highest and lowest earners”, and that the biggest packages are reserved for AI researchers.
The Guardian said the company declined to comment on the figures. It also reported that OpenAI UK Ltd is opening a new headquarters in London’s King’s Cross area.
As we read it, the share line carries most of the rise: the accounts list share-based compensation of ยฃ167.8M against ยฃ43.3M a year earlier, and wages and salaries of ยฃ87.4M against ยฃ16.6M.
As we read it, the UK company’s revenue comes from the group itself: the strategic report says it provided sales and marketing services and research and development services to group undertakings.
The accounts count 34 of the 110 average employees in research and development, and the Guardian reported that the biggest packages are reserved for AI researchers.
The Guardian, 14 October 2026
“there is understood to be a wide discrepancy between the highest and lowest earners”
Three Implications
UK AI EMPLOYERS The accounts put OpenAI UK’s average monthly headcount at 110 in 2025, with ยฃ167.8M of share-based compensation allocated from the group charge.
THE OPENAI GROUP The strategic report says the UK company’s ยฃ293M of 2025 turnover came from services provided to group undertakings.
READERS OF THE AVERAGES The Guardian reported a wide gap between the highest and lowest earners, so the per-head figures are averages across the company, by our arithmetic.
The framework begins: “Every technology stack has layers. Some are scarce, some are abundant.”
As we read it, these accounts show OpenAI paying for one layer it treats as scarce, the people who do its research and selling, mostly in shares of the company. The framework does not discuss these accounts.
OpenAI UK Ltd’s staff-cost note for 2025 lists share-based compensation of £167.8M, wages and salaries of £87.4M, pension costs of £1.4M and other employee benefits of £1.4M (Companies House, filed 13 October 2026).
What Is Not Established
The staff-cost note gives one total for each line. In the accounts we read, it does not break pay down by employee, role or seniority, so the per-head figures are averages over an average monthly headcount of 110.
The accounts say the fair value of the awards is determined by the group using valuation techniques “appropriate for the relevant awards and the absence of an active market.” In the pages we read, they give no per-unit value for the awards.
A note on sourcing. We read the full accounts of OpenAI UK Ltd for the year to 31 December 2025, filed at Companies House on 13 October 2026, from the filing’s page images, and the Guardian’s report of 14 October 2026 in full. Every pound figure comes from the accounts; the per-head figures, shares and multiples are our arithmetic and are labelled as such. The pay distribution, the researchers’ packages and the company’s decision not to comment are the Guardian’s reporting. The Dublin and forward-deployed-engineer context comes from our own earlier reporting.
Gennaro Cuofano is a CRO and tech executive who has worked in AI since late 2015, starting with bringing NLP, natural-language generation, voice and chatbot products to the marketing industry. His background is in law and finance: he holds a Master's degree in Law and an International MBA with an emphasis on corporate finance (LUISS Business School and the University of San Diego, 2012), and worked as a financial analyst at a real-estate investment firm in San Diego and as an assistant controller. His work focuses on business model strategy, business engineering and, more broadly, structural analysis: how companies make money, read from their own filings. He created FourWeekMBA and leads research there and at The Business Engineer, his newsletter on AI and business strategy, with over 95,000 subscribers and more than 1,000 published analyses. His writing has also appeared on Entrepreneur, HackerNoon and Search Engine People. Find him on LinkedIn and Substack. See how we source.
Scroll to Top
Discover more from FourWeekMBA
Subscribe now to keep reading and get access to the full archive.
![Cost Leadership vs Differentiation Strategy: Key Differences & When to Use Each [2026]](https://i0.wp.com/fourweekmba.com/wp-content/plugins/contextual-related-posts/default.png?resize=150%2C150&ssl=1 "Cost Leadership vs Differentiation Strategy: Key Differences & When to Use Each [2026]")
