Ladbible says OpenAI UK accounts show £2.32m average pay per employee

Ladbible reported that newly published accounts for OpenAI UK Ltd show 110 staff splitting £87m in salaries and £168m in company shares, producing an average pay figure of £2,318,181 per employee. The outlet said those figures come from the 2025 accounts and framed the year as one of intense competition among AI firms for talent.

Ladbible compared the calculated average with the Office for National Statistics’ median annual earnings for full-time UK employees, which it cited as £39,039. The article presented the arithmetic plainly: total salaries plus shares divided by the headcount yields the per-person average that prompted widespread attention.

Ladbible noted that the accounts are filed by OpenAI UK Ltd, which it located in Westminster, and emphasised the size of share allocations recorded in the accounts alongside cash pay. The piece did not attempt to break down individual pay packets, roles, vesting schedules or how the company valued those shares beyond the totals recorded in the accounts.

Ladbible said the figures reflect the labour market dynamics of 2025, a year the article described as featuring a ‘‘talent war’’ among AI companies.

The outlet placed the reported totals in a wider market context by mentioning rival valuations — it cited Anthropic’s May valuation and OpenAI’s reported valuation ambitions — but did not use those items to alter the accounting facts from the UK filings. On outreach, Ladbible reported that The Guardian approached OpenAI and that OpenAI declined to comment on its salaries.

The article did not include a response from OpenAI beyond that declined comment, and it did not cite any independent verification of how the share totals translate into realised compensation for individual employees.

Headlines in other outlets echoed the same central number, stating an average of about £2.3m per person; those headlines corroborate that multiple outlets published the same calculation but do not add further detail beyond Ladbible’s account.

The reporting in Ladbible’s article is limited to the figures shown in the filed accounts and to the comparison with the ONS median; it stops short of analysing individual grants, vesting, or tax treatment.

Readers should note that the published account totals and the headcount are the basis for the £2,318,181 figure as reported by Ladbible, and that the company declined to comment to The Guardian when asked about its salaries.