OpenAI's British arm spent £258 million on staff last year, and it had just 110 of them. That works out at an average of £2.3 million per person, and most of it was not cash. Of the total, £167.8 million came as share-based pay, which is roughly £1.5 million of equity for every employee on the books, on top of £87.4 million in salaries.
The figures come from OpenAI UK Ltd's 2025 accounts, filed at Companies House on 6 October 2026 and covering the year to 31 December 2025. They are the clearest public look yet at what it costs to hire AI talent in London, and the answer is Silicon Valley money, paid in pounds.
What OpenAI paid its UK staff in 2025
£258.0m
total staff cost
110
average employees
£2.3m
average pay per head
£1.5m
equity per head
How the £258.0m breaks down
Share options £167.8mWages £87.4m65%34%Pensions and other benefits make up the remaining £2.8m (1%).Source: OpenAI UK Ltd financial statements for the year ended 31 December 2025, Companies House (registered number 14367667).
Paid like San Francisco, based in London
The average matters less than what sits behind it. A crude £2.3 million per head flatters the typical worker, because the number is dragged up by a smaller group of senior researchers and engineers on very large packages. Even so, the shape of the pay is the point. Cash wages of £87.4 million across 110 people average roughly £790,000 each, which is already far above a normal London tech salary. The share options then more than double that.
That tilt towards equity is how frontier AI labs compete for a tiny pool of researchers. The valuable part of the offer is a stake in the company, not the salary, and OpenAI is now making that offer from London. For a sense of the direction, staff costs were £60.8 million the year before, so the total pay bill more than quadrupled in twelve months as headcount doubled from an average of 55 to 110.
One honest caveat sits inside the share-pay figure. OpenAI went through a group recapitalisation in 2025, when staff holdings were converted from one type of unit to another, so part of the £167.8 million reflects that reshaping rather than only fresh grants. The scale of equity flowing to UK staff is real either way, but it is not purely a year of new awards.
Where the money went, and who got it
The accounts also show who OpenAI is hiring. Of the 110 average staff, 34 sat in research and development and 64 in a broad "other" category that covers technical and operational roles, against just 12 in administration. This is a research and engineering base, not a sales office. Spend on research and development rose in step, from £48.2 million to £117.8 million.
| Staff costs, year to 31 December | 2025 | 2024 |
|---|---|---|
| Wages and salaries | £87.4m | £16.6m |
| Share-based compensation | £167.8m | £43.3m |
| Pension costs | £1.4m | £0.4m |
| Other employee benefits | £1.4m | £0.5m |
| Total | £258.0m | £60.8m |
| Average employees | 110 | 55 |
How a UK arm affords this
The pay bill is large next to the company's reported profit, and that needs explaining. OpenAI UK Ltd is a service company inside the wider group. It does not sell ChatGPT to British customers. Its accounts state that it "earns revenue from the parent company through a cost-plus intercompany arrangement," so the US parent, OpenAI PBC, reimburses the UK costs and adds a margin. That is why turnover tripled to £293 million while the reported profit stayed thin.
Here is the picture in brief. Turnover rose from £79.2 million to £293.0 million, pre-tax profit reached £31.7 million, and after an £11.4 million tax charge the company kept £20.3 million. But the revenue is essentially the pay bill plus other costs, recharged to head office with a markup. In other words, the staff spending drives the revenue, not the other way round.
The wider growth, 2024 to 2025
Turnover
£79.2m£293.0m20242025Pre-tax profit
£6.8m£31.7m20242025R&D spend
£48.2m£117.8m20242025Source: OpenAI UK Ltd statutory accounts, year ended 31 December 2025.
What it means for the UK
Strip away the accounting and the pay bill is the real signal, and it is a positive one for Britain. OpenAI is paying UK researchers at American rates, doubling its London team, and spending more on research than on anything else. That is the kind of money that pulls senior AI talent to the UK and keeps it here, which is worth more to the country over time than any single contract.
It fits a busy year for British AI. The government leaned in with its compute plans and the private sector followed, with NVIDIA committing $250 million of compute to UK AI safety research and a deal for Anthropic to help build an AI assistant for GOV.UK. A frontier lab paying nine-figure sums to a London team belongs in the same picture, and it helps explain why the UK held second place globally for tech funding in 2025.
Scale keeps it honest. OpenAI's group revenue was reported at around $4.3 billion for the first half of 2025 alone, and it has since raised tens of billions more, so £258 million of UK pay is small in group terms. The nearest comparison at home is Google's DeepMind, the London lab that also recharges most of its costs to a US parent and has long paid its researchers on a similar model. The pattern is the same for both: a lot of the world's AI research is being done, and paid for handsomely, in Britain, even when the revenue and the big decisions sit in California.
For founders, the read-through is blunt. If OpenAI is handing London engineers an average of £1.5 million in equity a year, that is now the going rate at the top of the market, and it resets what every other UK employer is competing against for the same people.
OpenAI UK Ltd (company number 14367667) is registered at 50 Broadway, London SW1H 0BL, audited by Deloitte Ireland LLP and ultimately owned by OpenAI PBC of Delaware. All figures are taken from its statutory accounts for the year ended 31 December 2025, filed at Companies House on 6 October 2026. Averages are crude per-head figures across the reported average of 110 employees and do not reflect how pay is actually distributed.
