OpenAI, the artificial intelligence company behind ChatGPT, is compensating its workforce at levels that dwarf those of other tech startups preparing to go public. A Wall Street Journal analysis of financial records shows that in 2025, OpenAI's 4,000 employees received stock-based compensation averaging $1.5 million each, a figure that far exceeds the payouts of comparable firms in the year before their initial public offerings.
The analysis, which compared OpenAI's payroll to 18 other companies in the year before they went public, found that the compensation gap is substantial. For example, Alphabet, Google's parent company, paid its employees seven times less on average in 2003, when adjusted for inflation. Overall, OpenAI's high-level staffers are earning 34 times more than the average across similar tech firms in their pre-IPO year.
These figures reflect the intense competition for AI expertise that has gripped Silicon Valley throughout 2025. Top firms have been spending hundreds of millions, sometimes exceeding a billion dollars, to poach leading AI researchers and engineers from rivals. The result is that tech workers at companies building AI are seeing unprecedented financial rewards.
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The soaring compensation comes as other tech giants struggle to maintain their own AI teams. Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg, for instance, has reportedly strained his relationship with his chief AI officer, Alex Wang, whom he recruited in June after spending $14 billion to acquire Wang's startup, Scale AI. Months later, Meta's chief AI scientist, Yann LeCun, left the company to found his own startup amid reported tensions.
While Wang and LeCun likely earn compensation in the hundreds of millions from Meta, their departures suggest that money alone is not enough to retain top talent in such a competitive environment. The stories of these executives offer a glimpse into the lengths that wealthy corporations will go to gain an edge in the AI race, as well as the difficulty of keeping that talent when competitors are also writing large checks.
The Wall Street Journal's findings also highlight a disparity within OpenAI's own workforce. The stock-based compensation figures apply to technical and operational roles such as engineers, researchers, and account managers. More menial positions like janitors or security officers are contracted to third-party suppliers, and it is likely that those workers do not receive the same level of compensation, nor were they included in the analysis.
OpenAI's record payouts come as the company prepares for a potential IPO in 2026. The comparison to other firms' pre-IPO years underscores the unique financial position of OpenAI, which has become a central player in the AI industry. As the company moves toward its public offering, the question of how it will sustain such high compensation levels remains open.