Anthropic, the four-year-old artificial intelligence company challenging industry leaders, is offering hundreds of its current and former staff the opportunity to sell some of their equity, initiating the AI company’s first share buyback program since its founding.
The move, valuing the San Francisco-based startup at $61.5 billion according to The Information, underscores how such secondary sales are increasingly used to reward staff and hold onto sought-after talent within the highly competitive AI sector.
The $61.5 billion valuation applied to this employee share sale precisely matches the figure established during Anthropic’s Series E funding round announced earlier this year. That round saw the company raise $3.5 billion, led by Lightspeed Venture Partners with participation from firms including Bessemer Venture Partners, General Catalyst, and others, placing Anthropic among the highest-valued private AI companies globally at that time.
Details of the Buyback Program
Eligibility for this liquidity event extends to both current employees and alumni who spent at least two years contributing to Anthropic’s growth. Participants can offer up to 20% of their vested shares for sale.
However, the total value any individual can realize from this sale is capped at $2 million. For a company operating in a field where experienced researchers command premium compensation packages, offering this kind of structured liquidity event provides a tangible benefit.
The buyback serves as a key factor in retaining staff who might otherwise look to competitors or public markets for financial gains. Anthropic itself employs various strategies to attract and keep talent, including unique job structures and strong benefits packages, complementing this financial incentive.
The need to keep employees motivated is amplified by the intense rivalry with OpenAI, Google DeepMind, and other AI labs. OpenAI, for instance, recently secured a massive funding deal with SoftBank, altering its own cloud infrastructure arrangements. Anthropic has been actively developing its Claude models, launching Claude 3.7 Sonnet and a Code Assistant in February, and integrating with Google Workspace in April, positioning itself as a strong enterprise alternative.
Funding and Broader Context
The buyback program is underpinned by Anthropic’s substantial funding history. Beyond the March Series E round, the company has secured major commitments from cloud giants, including $4 billion from Amazon and $2 billion from Google.These investments also forge close ties, with AWS serving as Anthropic’s primary cloud provider for training its Claude family of AI models, a partnership that has drawn regulatory attention in some regions.
While focused on internal finance, the buyback occurs against a backdrop of Anthropic asserting its influence technically. Its Model Context Protocol (MCP), designed for AI interoperability by standardizing how models connect to external tools and data, gained significant traction with adoption announcements from Microsoft, AWS, Google, and even rival OpenAI through late March and April.
This broad uptake signals Anthropic’s role in shaping the technical underpinnings of the developing AI agent ecosystem. The company also continues its focus on AI safety, updating its Responsible Scaling Policy and exploring potential AI risks through partnerships like one with the U.S. Department of Energy.
