The AI lab's people costs more than tripled year over year, but revenue grew much faster ahead of a planned Nasdaq listing
Anthropic spent $1.71 billion on personnel in the third quarter. A year earlier, that line item was $489 million.
The quarterly jump is part of a broader trend. Anthropic’s personnel expenses reached $3.152 billion in the first half of 2026, according to its SEC Form S-1, which was filed on October 26, 2026.
That represents a 486% increase over the same period a year earlier.
A large share of it isn’t cash. Stock-based compensation made up approximately 70% of personnel costs, or around $2.2 billion.
Headcount stood at approximately 5,300 employees as of September 30, 2026.
The revenue side of the ledger
Anthropic reported revenue of $16.286 billion for the first half of 2026. That is an increase of around 1,300% year over year.
Personnel expenses fell to 19% of revenue in the first half of 2026, down from 46% a year earlier.
Revenue per employee shows the same shift. On a trailing-twelve-month basis, Anthropic generated around $6.6 million per employee as of September 30, 2026, compared with $1.4 million a year prior.
People aren’t the biggest bill
Anthropic spent $8.945 billion on compute and infrastructure in the first half of 2026. That works out to 55% of revenue for the period.
For comparison, personnel took 19% of revenue in the same window.
What this means for the IPO
Anthropic plans to list on Nasdaq under the ticker symbol “ANT.” The S-1 is the document that gives public investors their first detailed look inside the company.
The personnel figures will likely draw scrutiny on two fronts. The first is dilution: equity awards that were around $2.2 billion in a single half-year mean existing and future shareholders own a slightly smaller piece of the pie with each grant.
