Throughout 2025, Silicon Valley’s top companies have been engaged in a massive feeding frenzy to attract top AI experts from their rival corporations, sometimes spending as much as a billion dollars.
The result is that technical workers at companies that build AI – technology that their bosses insist will one day automate all jobs – are making astonishing amounts of money. This is according to the latest reports From wall street journal, Which found that, on average, OpenAI employees are the highest-paid startup employees in recent history.
In 2025, financial records show OpenAI’s 4,000 employees receive stock-based compensation average $1.5 million per employee. These are likely technical and operational jobs such as account managers, engineers, and researchers. (As OpenAI contracts out more minor roles, such as janitors or security officers, to third parties)suppliers“It’s possible that those workers do not receive equal compensation, or are also included in WSJanalysis of.)
Given that OpenAI is preparing for an IPO in 2026 WSJ Compared its 2025 payroll to 18 other firms in the year before going public — and found that compensation isn’t even Closer than far.
For example, Google’s parent company Alphabet was the second runner-up for OpenAI. Compared to Alphabet’s employee compensation in 2003, OpenAI is paying its employees an average of seven times more, accounting for inflation. Overall, the newspaper found that OpenAI was paying its high-level employees 34 times more than the average for similar tech firms in the year before its IPO.
The news comes as other tech giants struggle with their efforts to retain cutting-edge AI teams. For example, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg has reportedly soured his relationship with his recently appointed Chief AI Officer, wunderkind Alex Wang.
In June, Zuckerberg spent $14 billion to acquire Wang’s startup, Scale AI, and recruit the 28-year-old AI whisperer in the process. Months after the news that Wang was to begin leading Meta’s AI team, the company’s chief AI scientist, Yan LeCun, decided to split from the corporation to establish his own startup. tension between the two,
Given that Wang and LeCun could potentially measure their compensation from META in the hundreds of millions or more, it’s unlikely More The money may have prevented his relationship with the tech giant from deteriorating. Still, their stories offer a fascinating glimpse of just how far these infinitely wealthy corporations are willing to go to gain a lead in the AI ​​footrace – as well as the difficulty of retaining that talent when all the competitors are cutting huge checks.
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