OpenAI UK Ltd reports £293M turnover and £20.3M profit for 2025

OpenAI’s UK arm had a very good 2025. OpenAI UK Ltd reported turnover of £293 million for the year ending December 31, 2025, up from £79.2 million in 2024. That is a nearly fourfold jump in a single year. The headline-grabbing number, though, is what it cost to employ each person in the building. According to the company’s accounts, staff costs reached £258 million for an average workforce of 110 employees. That works out to roughly £2.3 million per head. The numbers behind the London office OpenAI UK posted a pre-tax profit of £31.7 million, then booked a tax charge of £11.4 million. That left a post-tax profit of £20.3 million. Of the £258 million total staff costs, £87.4 million went to wages and salaries. A much bigger slice, £167.8 million, was share-based compensation. That is nearly double what the company spent on cash pay. Research and development spending also climbed sharply. The UK unit spent £117.8 million on R&D in 2025, compared with £48.2 million the year before. The accounts were prepared under UK Generally Accepted Accounting Principles and audited by Deloitte Ireland LLP. They were filed at Companies House. Why the profit is less exciting than it looks OpenAI...