Comparable to Premier League players, OpenAI's London subsidiary had a per capita remuneration of more than 2.3 million pounds last year.

News on October 15 shows that according to local British media reports, the per capita annual compensation of employees at OpenAI's London branch reached 2.318181 million pounds (equivalent to about 20.55 million yuan) last year, demonstrating that this star artificial intelligence company is willing to offer salaries comparable to those of Premier League players to fully compete in the global AI race.

It is reported that OpenAI UK Limited is registered in Westminster. The company is opening a new headquarters in London's King's Cross area, which is expected to be officially put into use in 2027 and can accommodate more than 500 team members.

Company accounts show that 110 employees of OpenAI's London branch received a total salary of 87 million pounds, plus 168 million pounds worth of company equity. OpenAI's target listing valuation is about 1 trillion US dollars.

Data from the Office for National Statistics shows that this compensation level is 58 times the median income of full-time employees in the UK. Converted before tax, the average compensation package (salary + equity) of OpenAI employees is about 1,000 pounds per hour.

For an intuitive comparison, statistics from a sports salary data website based on the salary data of 419 first-team players from 20 clubs show that the median salary of Premier League players is 61,000 pounds per week, equivalent to an annual salary of 3.172 million pounds; the arithmetic average salary is 77,882 pounds per week, but a few sky-high contracts have pushed up the arithmetic average, so it is more accurate to use the median to describe the real income level of "most players".

For OpenAI's London branch, the internal income gap is also very wide. The highest compensation level in the company is reserved for AI researchers, who help the enterprise develop cutting-edge large models such as Astra. However, compared with the previous year, employee income has achieved substantial growth, with the average salary and equity treatment in the previous year being 1.1 million pounds.

OpenAI's London office is its largest overseas research center, and it also has government affairs, sales and marketing teams to sell authorizations to enterprises and institutions. In London, OpenAI UK Limited's revenue in 2025 more than tripled to 293 million pounds, recording a profit of 20.3 million pounds.

Reports earlier this month showed that OpenAI disclosed to investors that its annualized revenue as of the end of September was close to 500 billion US dollars, rather than the about 700 billion US dollars reported by the media last month. The report said that this gap mainly stems from different accounting methods, rather than a 200 billion US dollar gap in OpenAI's business.

Anthropic counts revenue generated through cloud service partners such as AWS and Google Cloud into its revenue, while OpenAI does not do so. Therefore, investors have adjusted the figures released by OpenAI to make them comparable to Anthropic's data, which also led to the generation of the estimated value of about 700 billion US dollars.

Anthropic has previously surpassed OpenAI to become the world's most valuable AI startup. Anthropic announced the completion of the $65 billion Series H financing at the end of May this year, with a post-investment valuation of $965 billion, while OpenAI's valuation at that time was $852 billion.

The latest report shows that Anthropic said at an investor exchange meeting held at its San Francisco headquarters that the company has achieved adjusted profitability in the third quarter of this year, which is also the second consecutive quarter that the company has achieved adjusted profitability. As of the end of the third quarter, Anthropic's free cash flow was positive, quarterly revenue reached 16.8 billion US dollars, adjusted gross margin reached 85%, and adjusted operating margin exceeded 11%.

According to people familiar with the matter, at the meeting, Anthropic executives elaborated on how the safety-centered concept, rapid growth momentum and continuously improving efficiency will lay the foundation for the company's successful completion of its initial public offering (IPO) in November.

OpenAI has been exposed that it is planning to raise at least 300 billion US dollars and seek a valuation of about 1.4 trillion US dollars. Reports say that this round of financing may serve as transitional financing before the IPO to provide the company with the capital needed for further expansion. OpenAI previously completed a round of financing in March this year, obtaining committed capital of 1220 billion US dollars.

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman previously stated that the company will not go public in 2026, adding that this decision is related to considerations in artificial intelligence security.

This article is from the WeChat official account "Jiemian News", republished by 36Kr with authorization.