The typical software engineer at ChatGPT developer OpenAI LLC is making about $925,000 in total compensation, according to a website that tracks salary data in the tech industry.
At the median, OpenAI pays such engineers $300,000 base salary and $625,000 in a form of stock-based compensation, according to Levels.fyi. That's for someone who's a level 5 — or L5 — engineer with about 10 or more years of experience, according to the salary tracking site. The San Francisco startup, which has developed not just the ChatGPT chatbot but the large language models needed for it and other artificial-intelligence apps, pays some higher level software engineers as much as $1.4 million, according to Levels' data.
OpenAI representatives did not respond to a request for comment.
Levels' data is based on compensation stated in job offer letters users have submitted to it over the past year. Most of the offer letters from OpenAI were made to engineers with more than five years experience. The most recent offer letter Levels has on file was from earlier this month.
The lowest compensation Levels had on file for OpenAI was $210,000, which was for a software engineer with two to four years of industry experience. The compensation in that offer letter was entirely in salary and didn't include any stock compensation, which the startup provides in so-called Profit Participation Units, according to Levels. As implied by their name, such units give employees the right to a share of the company's profits.
In general, OpenAI appears to be paying well above other employers in the region. Bay Area-wide, the median salary for an AI-focused software developer is about $300,000, according to Levels.
Heaed by CEO Sam Altman, OpenAI sparked the current AI boom with its launch in November of ChatGPT, which has since become the poster child for so-called generative AI. Generative AI is a flavor of the technology that can mimic human-created text and images in response to simple prompts.
Thanks to the rapid success of ChatGPT, OpenAI has seen its fortunes soar. Earlier this year, Microsoft reportedly committed to investing $10 billion in the startup over several years. The software giant also announced plans to include some of OpenAI's technology into its search and office products.
All told, OpenAI has raised $11.3 billion and is valued at between $27 billion and $29 billion, according to TechCrunch.
OpenAI's deal with Microsoft prompted Google LLC parent company Alphabet Inc. to quickly incorporate generative AI features into its dominant search engine and release a ChatGPT rival called Bard.
