Ai Salaries Revealed: How Much Top Startups Like Openai, Anthropic, And Cohere Are Paying Employees
Cohere CEO Aidan Gomez.
Cole Burston/AFP via Getty Images
- As Big Tech and startups race for domination in AI, they're throwing money at job candidates.
- BI pulled federal filings from top unicorn startups to see how much they're paying workers.
- See the startups dangling mid-six-figure salaries in the war for talent.
Do you hear that? The groans. The thuds of heads hitting desks. That's the sound of workers mourning their choice to study English, psychology, or anything other than computer science, as a hiring war in tech escalates and AI engineers write their own tickets.
As Big Tech and startups race to dominate the next frontier of artificial intelligence, they're offering money, perks, and equity to a limited pool of technical talent who will join them.
Tech salaries range from eye-popping to borderline obscene. At OpenAI, technical staff can pull in up to $530,000 a year, according to data from federal filings. Over at Anthropic, research engineers earn up to $690,000. Even software engineers at garden-variety unicorns — venture-backed companies worth at least one billion — routinely make $250,000.
The numbers come from filings that companies must submit to the Department of Labor when hiring foreign workers through the H-1B visa program, which allows them to bring in 85,000 specialized workers annually through a lottery system.
Because tech companies typically guard their compensation details closely, these government-mandated disclosures provide a peek into pay scales. The numbers reflect annual salaries alone, excluding the stock options, signing bonuses, and other perks that can often double or triple total compensation packages.
For this list, Business Insider pulled filings from some of the top AI startups valued at over $2 billion, excluding companies in robotics, defense, and autonomous driving. See how your salary stacks up against someone's from Cohere, Glean, Thinking Machines Lab, and more.
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Abridge
- Senior Software Engineer: $235,000
- Software Engineer: $240,000
Chesnot/Getty Images
- Finance & Strategy: $230,000
- Member of Technical Staff: $300,000 to $405,000
- Member of Technical Staff (Manager): $690,000
- People Partner: $285,000
- Recruiter: $170,000
- Regulatory Operations Lead: $210,000
- Research Engineer: $340,000 to $690,000
- Research Operations: $230,000
- Startup Account Executive: $126,000
Lenny's Podcast/YouTube
- Product Designer: $250,000
Cole Burston/AFP via Getty Images
- Member of Technical Staff: $240,000
Glean
- Data Science Tech Lead Manager: $230,000
- Software Engineer: $190,000 to $260,000
- Software Engineer, Machine Learning: $210,000
- Software Engineering Manager: $250,000
Coda
- AI Engineer: $223,000
- Analytical Linguist: $164,800
- Analytics Engineer: $250,000
- Data Scientist: $170,000
- Engineering Manager, Data Platform: $315,000
- Machine Learning Software Engineer: $318,000
- Marketing Manager: $225,000
- Software Engineer: $180,000 to $302,100
- Product Designer: $110,000 to $230,000
- Product Manager: $200,000
- Software Engineer, Data Platform: $196,000
- System Engineer, Finance Infrastructure: $280,000
- Technical Accounting Manager: $201,600
- User Researcher: $221,520
Sarah Meyssonnier/AFP via Getty Images
- AI Scientist: $280,000 to $350,000
A spokesperson for Mistral said that while some employees do fall within that range, a more accurate salary band for US-based roles is $150,000 to $450,000. Mistral is hiring.
Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images
- Member of Communications Staff: $216,000
- Member of Data Science Staff: $245,000 to $385,000
- Member of Design Staff: $245,000
- Member of Finance Staff: $265,000
- Member of Go To Market Staff: $220,000 to $280,000
- Member of Intelligence and Investigations Staff: $320,000 to $382,500
- Member of Program Staff: $270,000 to $340,000
- Member of Support and Community Staff: $235,000
- Member of Technical Staff (Hardware Engineer): $360,000
- Member of Technical Staff: $210,000 to $530,000
- Member of Technical Staff (Research Engineer): $210,000 to $440,000
- Member of Technical Staff (Research Scientist): $245,000 to $440,000
- Member of Technical Staff (Security Engineer): $310,000
- Member of Technical Staff (Software Engineer): $200,000 to $440,000
A recruiter at OpenAI said more accurate salary bands are listed on the company's careers page. According to those listings, research engineers earn between $295,000 and $530,000, while software engineers make between $255,000 and $590,000.
Kimberly White/Getty Images for TechCrunch
- Member of Technical Staff: $206,315 to $290,000
Jason Warner
- Performance Director: $230,000
JACK GUEZ/AFP via Getty Images
- Member of Technical Staff: $150,000 to $500,000
Justin Tallis/AFP via Getty Images
- Customer Success Manager: $120,000
A Synthesia spokesman said that the London-founded company is hiring in its New York office, given that more than half of its revenue comes from the US.
Jon Kopaloff/Getty Images for WIRED
- Member of Technical Staff: $450,000 to $500,000
- Co-Founder/Machine Learning Scientist: $450,000
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