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Sam Altman, the CEO of ChatGPT-maker OpenAI, appears to beryllium beating Facebok laminitis Mark Zuckerberg successful the 1 country wherever Meta has focused its astir assertive resources: salaries to its employees – making institution researchers and engineers immoderate of the richest employees successful Silicon Valley.
Citing fiscal information that the institution has shown to its investors, a study by The Wall Street Journal, OpenAI is paying its employees an mean of $1.5 cardinal each successful stock-based compensation – which is much than immoderate tech startup successful the caller history. OpenAI is said to person a workforce of astir 4,000.The study said that this compensation is much than 7 times higher than the stock-based wage Google disclosed successful 2003, a twelvemonth earlier the institution filed for an archetypal nationalist offering.
Moreover, the $1.5 cardinal is astir 34 times the mean worker compensation of 18 different ample tech companies successful the twelvemonth earlier they went public, arsenic per to a Wall Street Journal investigation of large tech IPOs implicit the past 25 years. Notably, the compensation figures person been adjusted into 2025 dollars to relationship for inflation.In fact,
’s fig was astir 6% earlier it went nationalist successful 2012, according to information compiled by the Journal.
Mark Zuckerberg ‘poached’ employees for multi-million-dollar packages
In 2025, arsenic the request for AI endowment soared, Zuckerberg reportedly paid nine-figure, and sometimes billion-dollar (Andrew Tulloch, co-founder of Mira Murati's Al startup Thinking Machines Lab), packages to lure top-tier researchers. Meta adjacent hired astir 20 employees from OpenAI, which has reportedly issued one-time bonuses worthy millions.It is to beryllium noted that OpenAI precocious told employees it would scrap a argumentation requiring them to enactment astatine the institution for astatine slightest six months earlier equity begins vesting, which means the employees tin get entree to their awards quickly.
