OpenAI is paying employees more than any major tech startup in history
- lastmansurfing
- Dec 31, 2025
- 1 min read
OpenAI is paying employees more than any tech startup in recent history, according to financial data it has shown investors.
The company’s stock-based compensation is about $1.5 million per employee, on average, across its workforce of roughly 4,000.
That is more than seven times higher than the stock-based pay Google disclosed in 2003, before it filed for an initial public offering in 2004. The $1.5 million is about 34 times the average employee compensation of 18 other large tech companies in the year before they went public, according to a Wall Street Journal analysis of data compiled by Equilar. The analysis reviewed major tech IPOs over the last 25 years.
Read more | WALL STREET JOURNAL