"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."
"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. (As OpenAI contracts more menial roles like janitors or security officers to third-party " suppliers," it's likely those workers don't receive the same compensation, or were even included in the WSJ 's analysis.)"
"Given that OpenAI is gearing up for an IPO in 2026, the WSJ compared its 2025 payroll to 18 other firms in the year before they went public - and found that the compensation isn't evenremotely close. Compared to Alphabet's employee compensation in 2003, OpenAI is paying its employees seven times more on average, counting inflation. Overall, the newspaper found that OpenAI is paying its high-level staffers 34 times more than the average across similar tech firms in the year before an IPO."
Throughout 2025, top Silicon Valley firms aggressively spent hundreds of millions—sometimes over a billion—to recruit AI experts, driving record compensation. Financial records show OpenAI’s 4,000 technical and operational employees received stock-based compensation averaging $1.5 million per worker in 2025. Menial roles are often contracted to third-party suppliers and likely did not receive comparable packages. OpenAI is preparing for an IPO in 2026, and its pay levels dwarf historical pre-IPO compensation benchmarks—about seven times Alphabet’s 2003 levels after inflation and roughly 34 times the average among similar firms. Major tech companies are struggling to retain elite AI talent, prompting large acquisitions and internal turmoil.
Read at Futurism
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