Anthropic launches $6 billion employee stock sale plan, opening liquidity window with a $350 billion valuation

Artificial Intelligence giant Anthropic recently launched a $6 billion employee stock sale program, allowing current and former employees to sell shares at an estimated valuation of $350 billion. This not only provides a liquidity window for employees but also highlights how large AI companies, in the trend of delaying IPOs, are using secondary market transactions to retain talent.

(Anthropic strikes again! Claude Code causes IBM to drop 13%)

Anthropic opens employee share sales, valuation at $350 billion

Bloomberg reports that Anthropic has recently offered some current and former employees the opportunity to sell shares, with a transaction valuation of approximately $350 billion. The total scale is expected to be between $5 billion and $6 billion. The actual amount will depend on the participation of eligible employees.

According to the arrangement, any current or former employee who has worked at the company for at least 12 months can participate in this sale. Shares will be transferred to external investors, not repurchased by the company. Details are still being finalized and may change.

Earlier this month, a new round of financing was completed, bringing Anthropic’s valuation to $380 billion. Although this employee stock sale is slightly lower in valuation, it still reflects strong market expectations for cutting-edge AI companies.

Private companies moving toward normalcy, opening share sales as a talent retention tool

In the trend of large tech startups delaying IPOs, secondary share sales in the AI industry are becoming increasingly common. They allow employees to realize some gains before the company goes public and help companies enhance their attractiveness in a competitive talent market. Companies like Stripe and SpaceX have also offered similar mechanisms.

Last October, Anthropic’s main competitor OpenAI completed a secondary market transaction worth $6.6 billion, at a valuation of up to $500 billion at the time.

The report notes that as capital continues to flow into the AI sector, “super unicorn” private companies are growing larger. Balancing funding needs and employee incentives before IPO remains a key challenge.

(As public company growth slows: How private companies are destroying capitalism?)

Rising tech competition: Anthropic accuses Chinese AI companies of free-riding

Meanwhile, Anthropic also issued a statement today accusing three Chinese AI companies—DeepSeek, Moonshot AI, and MiniMax—of long-term use of “distillation” techniques to extensively extract output from its Claude chatbot to enhance their own models.

It is known that distillation is a common practice in the industry, but if it involves unauthorized use of competitors’ model outputs, it could raise intellectual property and compliance issues.

Anthropic states that about 24,000 accounts have interacted over 16 million times to bypass U.S. export restrictions on advanced AI technology, which could pose potential information security risks.

OpenAI also mentioned this issue last week in a memo to the U.S. House Select Committee on the CCP, warning that if distillation continues, it could weaken the competitive advantage of U.S. AI companies and raise national security concerns related to security and illegal misuse.

(OpenAI accuses DeepSeek of free-riding! Stealing U.S. AI training data to build its own models)

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