Anthropic PBC, the artificial intelligence company run by American billionaire siblings Dario and Daniela Amodei, is preparing an initial public offering that will turn a large share of its roughly 5,300 employees into millionaires, a windfall the chief executive has worried could weaken his staff’s commitment to the company’s mission.
Outstanding stock options at the maker of the Claude chatbot had an intrinsic value of $98.2 billion at the end of June, according to the registration statement Anthropic filed with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission on Oct. 26. About $50.1 billion of that was already vested and could be exercised. The options carry a weighted-average exercise price of just $2.89 a share, compared with about $58.90 a share that investors paid in the company’s latest private funding round.
Employees also hold restricted stock units that have yet to pay out. Anthropic still has $23.7 billion of stock-based compensation to recognize over about 2.1 years, and many of the units vest only once the company is public. Had the offering closed on June 30, it would have booked a one-time charge of $2.9 billion for those awards.
The company has grown fast. It had about 940 employees at the end of 2024, and its headcount nearly tripled in the 12 months to September. It has more than 600 open positions, and it advertises base salaries of $350,000 to $850,000 for staff software engineers.
Money versus mission
The size of the payout has become a concern inside the company. Dario Amodei, 43, has worried that new hires are joining for the money rather than for Anthropic’s stated goal of building AI safely, a person familiar with his thinking said in August.
Some job candidates have since described being asked in culture interviews how they would feel if Anthropic dropped its AI ambitions for safety reasons and its stock fell to zero. One candidate wrote on Blind, an anonymous workplace forum, that they answered honestly that they would not be happy. Anthropic has not confirmed that the question is part of its interviews. Daniela Amodei, the company’s president, has said Anthropic has run a culture interview “since day one.”
The filing itself flags the risk. Anthropic warns that some longtime employees will see large parts of their equity vest when the offering is completed, and that the value of those holdings could affect whether they stay.
Staff will not be able to cash out all at once. Under the lockup terms in the prospectus, non-founder directors, officers and some employees can sell up to 10% of their holdings from the first day of trading. Another 35% is released after the company reports its 2026 results, and the rest at the earlier of its first-quarter 2027 results or 180 days after the listing. Some staff have already sold. In an April tender offer, existing shareholders, including employees, sold about 179.9 million shares at $25.91 each, for a total of about $4.66 billion.
What the founders own
The Amodeis are among Anthropic’s seven co-founders, who left OpenAI in 2021 to start the company. Each owns about 1.4% of Anthropic. Daniela Amodei holds 241.4 million shares and her brother 240.6 million, including options and units that vest within 60 days. Forbes values Dario Amodei’s fortune at about $13.6 billion and his sister’s at about $13.7 billion, based on the $965 billion valuation from the company’s $65 billion funding round in May.
That figure could rise sharply. Investors have discussed a market value of $1.5 trillion to $2 trillion for the listing, which would lift each founder’s stake above $20 billion. Anthropic plans to list on the Nasdaq Global Select Market under the symbol ANT, with Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley leading the deal. It has not yet set a price range or the number of shares it will sell, and it is aiming to begin trading before the U.S. Thanksgiving holiday later this month.
The seven co-founders have each pledged to give 80% of their Anthropic equity to charity. The filing describes the pledges as voluntary and revocable, and they are not legally binding. Dario Amodei has written that “the thing to worry about is a level of wealth concentration that will break society,” and that wealthy people have an obligation to help address it.
The siblings’ salaries were raised to $1.4 million in July. Dario Amodei’s total pay for 2025 was about $18 million, most of it in stock, and his sister’s about $16.4 million.