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 , 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, 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. 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.