Anthropic paid one H-1B hire a base salary of ₹13.06 crore (around $1.38 million) over the past year, fresh US visa filings show, the highest figure in a dataset that opens a rare window into how generously the AI company pays its staff as it prepares for what could be a $1 trillion stock market debut this autumn.
H-1B filings: a rare window into Anthropic's pay scale
A Business Insider analysis of Anthropic's H-1B sponsorship filings, covering roughly 80 roles certified in the first two quarters of fiscal 2026, found two pay packages that sit well above the rest.
Both belong to Anthropic staff holding the title Member of Technical Staff, a designation Anthropic applies so broadly that it could describe a freshly hired researcher or a senior executive.
One role was certified at a base salary of $1.12 million, or about ₹10.60 crore. The other came in at $1.38 million, or roughly ₹13.06 crore (calculated at the current exchange rate of around ₹94.6 to the dollar).
The filings do not include bonuses or equity, which at a company as big as Anthropic which is now valued at $965 billion often make up the larger part of total pay.
Even the entry point on Anthropic's largest job category, base pay of $133,952, converts to roughly ₹1.27 crore, a sum that would count as a senior salary across most of corporate India. Several smaller departments, including legal, finance and partnerships, start their bands above ₹1.7 crore.
Pay bands in rupees: what Anthropic pays, role by role
The talent war: Why the numbers run this high
The scale of the pay reflects how fiercely AI labs are competing for engineers. Meta, Google and OpenAI have all written large pay packages off as a necessary cost of holding onto talent, and Anthropic's rising valuation gives it its own lever: staff who joined only a few years ago have watched their stock options grow into the millions, on top of whatever base salary the filings disclose.
SignalFire reported last year that Anthropic retains employees at a higher rate than rival labs, and the company has also recorded notable wins in hiring researchers away from Google.
