In an unprecedented move to secure its dominance in the artificial intelligence sector, OpenAI is reportedly offering its workforce the most substantial compensation packages ever seen in the history of major technology startups. According to a Wall Street Journal analysis of financial data shared with investors, the company's stock-based payouts have reached staggering new heights.
The Staggering Scale of OpenAI's Compensation
The core of this story lies in a single, eye-watering figure: an average of $1.5 million in stock-based compensation per employee across its roughly 4,000-strong workforce in 2025. This number, adjusted for inflation into 2025 dollars, is not just high—it is historically unparalleled.
To put this in perspective, the analysis compared OpenAI's compensation to 18 other large tech companies in the year before they went public over the last 25 years. OpenAI's average payout is about 34 times higher than the average of those companies. Even the legendary Google, before its 2004 IPO, disclosed stock-based pay that was more than seven times lower than what OpenAI is offering today.
The AI Arms Race Fuels the Pay War
This aggressive compensation strategy is a direct response to an intensifying global battle for elite AI researchers and engineers. The catalyst for this pay war was a recruiting blitz initiated by Meta Platforms' Chief Executive, Mark Zuckerberg, earlier this year. Meta began offering pay packages worth hundreds of millions of dollars—and in some rare instances, up to $1 billion—to lure top talent from rival firms.
This tactic proved effective, with over 20 personnel from OpenAI, including ChatGPT co-creator Shengjia Zhao, being swept up by Meta. In retaliation, OpenAI took decisive action. In August, the company awarded a one-time bonus to some of its research and engineering staff, with several employees receiving millions of dollars. Furthermore, OpenAI recently told its staff it would discontinue a policy that required employees to work for at least six months before their equity vests, a move that could lead to further increases in compensation.
Financial Implications and Investor Perspective
While these packages make OpenAI employees among the richest in Silicon Valley, they come at a significant cost to the company's finances. The massive equity awards are inflating OpenAI's already heavy operating losses and diluting existing shareholders at a rapid pace.
The financial data shows that OpenAI's stock-based compensation was expected to increase by about $3 billion annually through 2030. As a percentage of revenue, this compensation was set to reach 46% in 2025. This is the highest among the 18 companies analyzed, except for Rivian, which had no revenue before its IPO. In comparison, Palantir's figure was 33% before its 2020 IPO, Google's was 15%, and Facebook's was just 6%. The average for the group was about 6%.
An OpenAI spokesman declined to comment on the report. The data underscores the immense financial pressure frontier AI labs are under to retain the human capital they believe is critical to winning the long-term AI race, even as it pressures their balance sheets.
