OpenAI UK wages and shares averaged £2,318,181 for each of 110 London staff last year. The package was built from £87m in salaries and £168m in shares. For a business competing for AI talent, that places the London operation in a pay bracket few UK employers disclose.
George Osborne and OpenAI London
George Osborne joined OpenAI last December as the company’s head for countries. His role sits alongside an OpenAI London operation that the company describes as its largest international research hub, with a government affairs team and sales and marketing functions also based there.
£2.3m per person is not a rough estimate but the arithmetic of the accounts for OpenAI UK Ltd. Divide £255m across 110 staff and the average comes to £2,318,181, which works out at about £1,000 an hour in salary and equity before tax for an average package.
OpenAI UK Ltd in Westminster
£293m in turnover and a £20.3m profit gave OpenAI UK Ltd a far larger financial footprint in 2025 than the year before. The average pay and equity package had been £1.1m in the previous year, so the disclosed figure is now more than double that level and sits at 58 times the median UK full-time employee earnings, according to the Office for National Statistics.
25% of the disclosed package can be thought of as salary in rough terms, but the real weight sits in equity. That split matters because the £168m in shares is what leaves room for the biggest awards to go to AI researchers, while the office also includes non-research roles.
King’s Cross and the share split
OpenAI UK Ltd is opening a new HQ in London’s King’s Cross area, extending a footprint that already reaches Westminster. The larger unresolved point is how much of the £168m in shares went to the highest-paid AI researchers versus other staff, because the average hides a wide gap between the top and bottom of the pay scale. If that gap is what defines the next phase of OpenAI London, the accounts show a firm that is paying for it aggressively now.
