Key insights
- According to federal documents, OpenAI pays a high price for its expert staff.
- Researchers on the AI company earn salaries between $245,000 and $685,000.
- Salary data shows that OpenAI employees are among the many best-compensated staff in Silicon Valley.
Federal records show OpenAI pays the best price for talent. The AI giant compensates its technical staff researchers with a base salary of over half one million dollars, not including stock awards or bonuses.
The ChatGPT maker doesn’t publicly disclose salary data, but is required to submit federal documents containing salary figures when hiring foreign staff. The resulting data, seen by Business Insidershows that OpenAI engineering jobs pay within the mid-six figures, while researchers earn salaries between $245,000 and $685,000.
The federal filings result from OpenAI hiring employees on H-1B visas or foreign employee visas with special skills. In September, the Trump administration charged a fee of $100,000 for every latest H-1B visa application filed within the United States
Despite this latest fee, BI reported that OpenAI hired over 60 latest H-1B employees from October to December 2025. Last yr, the AI company submitted a complete of over 160 latest H-1B applications per BI.
Salary data shows that OpenAI employees are amongst the best paid staff in Silicon Valley – possibly resulting from competitive pressures. Last yr, the corporate announced that it was “recalibrating” salaries in response to Meta’s poaching of talent from its company.
Here is a snapshot of the bottom salary H-1B employees receive at OpenAI, excluding stock awards or bonuses:
- Intelligence and Investigations Staff Member: $320,000 to $382,500
- Technical Staff Member (AI Systems Engineer): $245,000 – $460,000
- Technical Staff Member (Research and AI Systems): $310,000 to $460,000
- Technical Staff Member (Research Engineer): $210,000 – $460,000
- Technical Staff Member (Research Scientist): $245,000 – $685,000
- Technical Associate (Data Science): $255,000 to $490,000
- Technical Staff Member (Hardware Engineer): $250,000 to $555,000
- Technical Staff Member (Safety Engineer): $310,000 to $325,000
- Technical Staff Member (Software Developer): $325,000
- Technical Staff Member (Software Engineer): $170,000 to $490,000
- Design Team Member: $245,000 to $310,000
- Product Staff Member (Product Management): $210,000 to $325,000
- Program Staff Member: $150,000 to $355,000
- Finance Staff Member: $240,000 to $260,000
- Support and Community Staff Member: $180,000 to $235,000
OpenAI’s high salary levels reflect how aggressively the corporate still competes for AI talent, at the same time as it publicly talks about slowing headcount growth. Earlier this yr, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman said said at a civic event that the startup would slow its pace of hiring because he believed AI would allow the corporate to “do a lot more with fewer people.”
However, OpenAI remains to be expanding its workforce – and paying for it 4,000 staff So. The Wall Street Journal reported last yr that OpenAI employees receive a median of $1.5 million in stock awards every year, greater than every other tech startup in recent history.
Key insights
- According to federal documents, OpenAI pays a high price for its expert staff.
- Researchers on the AI company earn salaries between $245,000 and $685,000.
- Salary data shows that OpenAI employees are among the many best-compensated staff in Silicon Valley.
Federal records show OpenAI pays the best price for talent. The AI giant compensates its technical staff researchers with a base salary of over half one million dollars, not including stock awards or bonuses.
The ChatGPT maker doesn’t publicly disclose salary data, but is required to submit federal documents containing salary figures when hiring foreign staff. The resulting data, seen by Business Insidershows that OpenAI engineering jobs pay within the mid-six figures, while researchers earn salaries between $245,000 and $685,000.
