Some of Anthropic’s employees earn a base salary of more than $1 million, new data about the AI giant reveals.
Anthropic could go public as early as this fall. The San Francisco-based company has ramped up hiring over the past year and kept employee pay high as it scales toward a $1 trillion IPO.
The company’s federal application for H-1B visa sponsorship provides a glimpse into the generous pay packages it offers its employees. Two of Anthropic’s recent H-1B salaries stand out for their impressive size. Their roles were both listed as members of technical staff, which is a common catch-all at AI Labs, and one earned a base salary of $1.12 million and the other earned $1.38 million.
The high salaries that Anthropic offers some of these workers stem from the fierce battle for talent. Deep-pocketed competitors like Meta, Google, and OpenAI are fighting to attract and retain top engineers and are counting exorbitant salary packages as necessary expenses.
Because Anthropic applies the title Technical Staff Member broadly, it is impossible to know from the application documents what exactly these employees do. They could be top AI researchers hand-picked for their technical acumen, or they could be seasoned executives who decide to make the leap to a thriving lab.
Anthropic qualified approximately 80 H-1B roles in the first two quarters of fiscal year 2026. Federal filings obtained in the process show how much base pay the company offers its foreign-born workers. Bonuses and stock compensation are not included in the filing, but they often make up a large portion of total pay, especially given that Anthropic’s valuation soared to $965 billion in May of this year. Still, the base salaries listed in filings help explain why AI Labs is one of the corporate world’s most sought-after employers.
Talent availability has led AI standouts to hire more employees overseas. As Business Insider previously reported, several big tech companies have stopped applying for H-1B visas in the second quarter of fiscal year 2026, but Anthropic, OpenAI, and Nvidia have each stepped up their applications.
Additionally, competition for talent is very heated, with researchers often negotiating salaries in the millions of dollars. Anthropic has a big selling point. Skyrocketing valuations mean stock options for employees who have only been with the company for a few years are increasing to millions of dollars.
SignalFire reported in an analysis last year that the company has been able to retain employees at a higher rate than other labs, and recently won the talent war by poaching researchers from Google.
Anthropic declined to comment for this story.
Here’s how much the company behind Claude is paying for other key roles:
Technical staff salary
Technical staff members: $133,952 to $1,380,000
Technical staff member (manager): $134,139 to $850,000
Technical Staff Member, Reinforcement Learning Researcher: $112,778 to $500,000
product salary
Product Design Manager: $140,254 to $385,000
Product operations: $125,000 to $500,000
Finance, Marketing and Other Salaries
Treasurer: $141,378 to $230,000
Commercial lawyer: $198,765 up to $320,000
Computing power: $187,574 to $300,000
Finance and Strategy: $182,978 to $310,000
Financial Systems: $152,152 to $315,000
Marketing: $159,328 to $200,000
Partnership: $227,760 to $248,500
Research activities: $125,000 to $500,000
Technology sales: $155,522 to $500,000
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