Anthropic pays some employees base salaries of more than $1 million, it has emerged.

Business Insider reported on June 26 that recent U.S. H-1B visa sponsorship disclosures showed base pay for some Anthropic employees reached as high as $1.38 million.

The most notable job category was “technical staff.” Base pay for some positions in that category reached $1.12 million and $1.38 million. The title is a broadly used job category name at AI research labs, making it difficult to identify actual duties from the disclosure alone. It has been suggested they could be top AI researchers or key personnel whose technical capabilities are recognised.

The figures appear to reflect cash base pay only, excluding bonuses and stock compensation. Anthropic’s valuation was assessed at $965 billion in May, suggesting stock options could account for a significant share of total compensation. It was also reported that stock options held by employees who joined several years ago rose to values worth several million dollars.

Anthropic received about 80 H-1B job certifications in the first half of fiscal 2026. The disclosures showed the highest base pay went to technical staff and managerial-level technical staff. Some core roles, including reinforcement learning researchers and product operations, research operations and technical sales, were also offered base salaries of up to $500,000. Non-research roles in product design, finance, legal, compute infrastructure, marketing and partnerships also maintained high compensation levels. That amounts to building an aggressive compensation system across product, operations, sales and corporate support, not just research jobs.

Hiring from abroad is also expanding. In the second quarter of fiscal 2026, several large technology companies cut H-1B applications, while Anthropic, OpenAI and Nvidia increased them. Analysts say a trend is continuing in which companies try to offset a shortage of AI talent in the United States through overseas hiring.

The talent battle in the AI industry has moved beyond simple salary competition. Researchers are also known to negotiate compensation packages worth several million dollars. Anthropic is strengthening its recruitment competitiveness on expectations tied to its high valuation and stock options, and SignalFire analysis last year showed it recorded a higher employee retention rate than other AI research labs. It has also recently recruited researchers from Google.

Anthropic did not provide a separate position on the report. The disclosure is seen as an example showing how much labour costs AI companies are willing to bear to secure key talent. With speculation that Anthropic could pursue an initial public offering as early as this fall, attention is expected to focus on its future hiring and compensation strategy.