Anthropic IPO filing reveals $1.7 billion staff bill

Anthropic spent about $1.7 billion on its roughly 5,300 employees from July through September, according to an amended IPO prospectus the company filed on Monday, November 2. That works out to more than $100,000 per worker each month. The figures show how much the AI company spends to hire and keep talent as it prepares for a public listing expected later this month.businessinsider.com

Stock pay drives the total

The quarterly total covers cash salaries and bonuses, benefits and employer payroll taxes. The largest part was $1.1 billion in stock-based compensation, according to Business Insider. Calcalist worked out an average of about $320,750 per employee for the quarter, or $106,920 a month. It noted that a small number of very large packages for senior staff and researchers could pull that average up.calcalistech.com+1

Personnel expense actually fell slightly, to $1,711 million from $1,857 million in the second quarter. The filing says the drop came mainly from some option awards becoming fully vested, partly offset by higher cash pay as headcount grew. Personnel costs for the first nine months of 2026 came to $4.8 billion, or about 15% of revenue. In 2023, Anthropic spent more than twice as much on staff as it brought in.businessinsider.com+1

Those costs are likely to rise. The company has more than $32 billion in stock compensation expense it has not yet recorded. Had the offering closed on September 30, Anthropic would have recorded $8.2 billion in cumulative charges for restricted stock units on that date.fourweekmba.com+1

Pay for the Amodeis

The prospectus also lists 2025 pay for the sibling co-founders. CEO Dario Amodei received $17,958,298 and President Daniela Amodei received $16,408,998, most of it in stock and option awards. Each had a base salary of about $654,000. Anthropic spent $2.75 million on security for Dario and $1.29 million for Daniela. Dario's package also included about $97,000 for personal private flights, which the company said his security needs required. Both base salaries went up to $1.38 million on July 1.wol.com+3

Revenue and compute spending

The amended filing reports revenue of $33.24 billion for the first nine months of the year, up about 1,200%, with roughly $17 billion of that in the third quarter. It also shows purchase commitments of about $895.4 billion, mostly for compute. Expensive short-term compute deals pushed the company to a $567 million operating loss for the quarter.cnbc.com+1

Anthropic's headcount is still small next to its peers. Meta Platforms ↘ 3.96% has about 67,000 employees and Broadcom ↘ 10.43% has more than 30,000. "Talent density matters more than talent mass," Anthropic wrote in its filing.businessinsider.com