Brit AI boffins making bank with £560K average pay packet at Anthropic

Google, DeepMind, Microsoft also shower UK staff with six-figure salaries

The UK units of some US technology companies are paying average salaries of well into six figures, with some more than matching that with share-based payments, according to annual accounts recently published by Companies House.

Anthropic Limited, the UK arm of the AI company behind Claude, spent £24.1 million employing an average of 43 staff in 2024, according to its accounts for the year ending December 31.

This translates to a mean of £560,000 per employee – though such averages can be skewed by high earners – comprising £288,000 in salary, £226,000 in share-based payments, and the remainder in pension and National Insurance costs.

The per-employee figure represents a slight decline from 2023, when the company spent £3.63 million on six staff members, averaging £604,000 each.

These numbers aren't statistical anomalies. Anthropic's current London job listings show base salaries ranging from £105,000-£140,000 for a security operations coordinator and £250,000-£435,000 for a research engineer in pretraining scaling – not including share-based payments and benefits.

Google UK Limited spent £2.42 billion employing 7,029 people in 2024, averaging £345,000 per person. The search giant's British unit paid £1 billion in wages (£142,000 per employee) and £1.15 billion in share-based payments (£163,000 per employee).

However, the company charged other Alphabet group entities £382 million for staff costs, which may affect these per-person calculations. Approximately half of Google UK's workforce focuses on research and development, with most others working in sales and marketing.

DeepMind Technologies Limited, another Alphabet subsidiary specializing in AI research, spent £1.01 billion on staff in 2024, up from £826 million the previous year. Since its personnel are formally employed by other Alphabet subsidiaries, it doesn't disclose a headcount.

Microsoft Research Limited spent £53.4 million on 202 employees in the 12 months ending 30 June 2024 – 184 of whom work in research and development. This equates to £264,000 per employee, including £148,000 in salary and £64,000 in share-based payments. The research arm operates separately from Microsoft Limited, which handles UK sales and distribution.

Palantir Technologies UK Limited, the British division of the security-focused technology supplier, spent £173 million employing 749 people in 2024 – a comparatively modest average of £231,000 per staff member, comprising £121,000 in salaries and £83,000 in share-based payments.

Nearly two-thirds of Palantir's UK workforce (474 employees) work in sales and marketing. ®