Anthropic's internal AI use, valued at retail prices, now exceeds its employee pay

Here's a notable milestone in the AI revolution: Anthropic now spends additional on inner AI use than it does paying employees.

The business revealed this in its IPO filing. In April, the value of Claude AI used internally, calculated at prices Anthropic charges customers, exceeded its monthly employee compensation costs, excluding inventory awards.

By September, that inner AI use had surged additional than 250-fold since January.

There's an crucial difference here. Anthropic isn't really spending additional prosperity on AI than salaries. It's valuing its inner AI use at retailing prices.

Still, this feels akin a watershed instant for the tech industry.

In March, I wrote concerning a new trend: Tech companies are starting to treat AI tokens (the chief way to measure usage) as a fourth component of employee compensation, alongside salary, bonuses, and inventory awards.

Anthropic's numbers display why. More than 90% of the code added to its application in September was written by Claude. Meanwhile, income has grown vastly faster than headcount.

For decades, gifted humans were the most precious asset in Silicon Valley. Now AI is challenging that assumption.

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