OpenAI UK Branch Pays Average 4 Billion Won per Employee

OpenAI's UK branch pays an average of 4 billion Korean won per employee, roughly £2.3 million or about $2.9 million at recent exchange rates, according to The Korea Daily. The figure puts the UK office of the ChatGPT maker at the top of British tech compensation, and it shows how concentrated the AI talent market has become.

To put the number in plain terms: 4 billion won converts to about £2.3 million. The median UK full-time salary sits near £37,000 a year, per the most recent Office for National Statistics data. The OpenAI UK average is more than 60 times that median, and it sits an order of magnitude above typical senior engineering pay at top UK tech firms.

What does 4 billion won actually mean?

The won-denominated headline number deserves translation, because Korean readers and UK readers tend to read very different numbers from the same story.

• 4 billion KRW ≈ £2.3 million at recent rates.
• £2.3 million ≈ 60× UK median full-time pay.
• 4 billion KRW ≈ $2.9 million, or about 25× a typical US senior engineer base.

The Korea Daily's "AI wage gap" framing is the point: the gap isn't between AI engineers and other engineers. It's between US AI labs and the broader UK labor market. The headline number is the gap, expressed in won.

What does an OpenAI UK pay package look like?

Total compensation at US AI labs typically breaks down into three pieces, and the mix matters for reading the average.

• A cash base, often £150,000 to £300,000 for senior technical staff in the UK.
• A performance bonus tied to project or company milestones.
• Equity in the parent company, vesting over four years.

The 4-billion-won average almost certainly comes from the equity line, not the cash base. OpenAI's private valuation has climbed in recent years, and restricted stock units granted in earlier rounds are now worth multiples of their grant value. The headline figure values equity at the latest funding-round mark, which moves with each new valuation.

Cash alone doesn't explain the gap. Equity does.

Where the average misleads

An average is only as useful as the distribution behind it. At OpenAI's UK office, two groups likely sit at very different points on the pay scale:

• Senior research scientists and engineering leads, who command the largest packages.
• Operations, support, and corporate staff, whose pay tracks closer to UK norms.

A small number of very large packages can lift a company-wide average well above what most staff take home. The 4 billion won figure equals the mean across the whole UK office, and a skewed distribution can make that mean look like a typical employee's check.

The headline average isn't the typical OpenAI UK package. It's the top of the office pulling up the middle.

What this tells the AI labor market

The Korea Daily's figure lands in a UK tech market where AI compensation has become a recurring story. Demand for senior research scientists, RLHF engineers, and large-model trainers has outpaced supply for three years running, and US AI labs have used premium packages to anchor the top of the market.

That anchoring has spillover effects. UK-based AI startups now compete with labs whose average pay runs an order of magnitude above their own. Those contests shape retention offers, equity refreshers, and counter-offers across the sector, and they push up the broader UK AI pay curve even for workers who never receive an OpenAI offer.

For a senior AI engineer weighing offers today, the OpenAI UK average isn't the offer they'll receive. It's the ceiling their other offers will be benchmarked against.

The Korea Daily's number will draw closer scrutiny from UK compensation consultants in the weeks ahead, and that's where the next move in the AI wage story likely sits.