Anthropic opens its wallet: employees selling shares amid valuation concerns

While the whole world argues about whose model writes code better, a different drama is unfolding inside AI laboratories — a financial one. Anthropic, the main rival to OpenAI, is preparing to open its coffers and allow employees to sell their shares. This is not simply a gesture of goodwill, but a strategic necessity in the battle for minds.

The $350 billion puzzle

Let's sort out the figures that might make your head spin. Reports mention a company valuation of $350 billion and the attraction of $20 billion in investments. If we take these figures at face value, Anthropic suddenly became more than twice as expensive as OpenAI (which is valued at $157 billion).

Sounds fantastic? It is. With a high degree of probability, we are observing a classic "translation error" or currency confusion. If we convert 350 billion yuan to dollars, we get about $48 billion — a figure that almost perfectly matches recent market rumors that Anthropic is aiming for a $40 billion valuation. The same goes for investments: $20 billion is too large a sum for a single round, but $2.8 billion (equivalent to 20 billion yuan) sounds like a standard check for training a new model.

Why now

Let's leave numerology aside and look at the essence. Secondary share sales (tender offer) is the new standard for AI unicorns. Companies remain private longer than ever, and employees with their "paper millions" are getting bored. To keep a leading engineer from leaving for a competitor with a "real" bonus, they need to be given the opportunity to cash out here and now.

SpaceX and OpenAI do this regularly. Now it's Anthropic's turn. It's a signal that the company feels confident and is willing to spend resources not only on Nvidia chips, but also on team loyalty.

What this means for the industry

Even if we correct the valuation to a realistic $40-50 billion, Anthropic solidifies its status as a heavyweight. Attracting new capital (whether $2 billion or more) confirms the thesis: the entry ticket to the club of AGI creators is getting more expensive every month. The money will go to GPU clusters and, possibly, to training Claude 4 or 3.5 Opus, which everyone has been waiting for.

The main point: The arms race is transitioning to a budget race. Whoever runs out of money to retain engineers first loses.