The average OpenAI employee is earning an astonishing amount in compensation compared to every other startup.
Throughout 2025, the top Silicon Valley firms have been engaged in a feeding frenzy of epic proportions, shelling out hundreds of millions — sometimes even topping a billion — dollars to poach top AI experts from their rival corporations.
The result is that tech workers at companies building AI — the technology which, their bosses insist, will one day automate all jobs — are making an astonishing amount of money. That’s according to fresh reporting by the Wall Street journal, which found that, on average, OpenAI employees are the highest paid startup workers in recent history.
In 2025, financial records show that OpenAI’s workforce of 4,000 receive stock-based compensation averaging $1.5 million per worker. These are the technical and operational jobs, presumably, like account managers, engineers, and researchers.
