According to a recent S-1 filing, Anthropic confirmed that it spent $1.711 billion on employee-related costs over the past three months. Although this is slightly below the $1.857 billion recorded in the previous quarter, it represents an increase of approximately 3.5 times compared with the $489 million reported in the same quarter of 2025.
With approximately 5,300 employees, the figures suggest that the company incurs an average cost of more than $322,000 per employee per quarter, or over $107,000 per month.
These figures are likely to overstate the average employee’s actual salary, as they include bonuses, employee benefits, payroll taxes and stock-based compensation. Nevertheless, they illustrate how much more the AI company has had to spend on attracting talent compared with the previous year.
Anthropic Spends Billions on Employee Compensation
The important distinction is that an average employee does not receive $107,000 in cash every month. The total includes various forms of compensation and benefits, with stock-based compensation accounting for an estimated $1.1 billion — nearly two-thirds of the overall amount.
Even so, employee-related expenses represented approximately 15% of the company’s revenue during the first nine months of 2026. Anthropic spent a total of $4.8 billion on its workforce over the first three quarters.
Looking at the figures in relation to revenue, Business Insider estimates that Anthropic generates approximately $6.6 million in revenue per employee. By comparison, the figure stands at $3.2 million at Meta and $2.5 million at Google.
Hiring AI Talent Is Expensive
Anthropic does not publicly disclose employee salary data. However, its substantial spending relative to its workforce shows how expensive it has become to attract talent in the AI industry.
The fact that stock-based compensation accounts for around two-thirds of employee-related expenses suggests that the company is attracting workers not only through immediate payments but also through the potential for significant future wealth.
According to a recent Reuters report, an upcoming initial public offering (IPO) could value Anthropic at approximately $1.5 trillion. A separate Reuters report says this valuation would put the company ahead of OpenAI, which is currently reportedly targeting a valuation of around $1.25 trillion.
