This is an incredible milestone in the AI revolution: Anthropic is now spending more on internal AI usage than it is on paying employees.
The company disclosed this in its IPO filing. In April, the value of Claude AI’s internal use, calculated at Anthropic’s customer price, exceeded the cost of monthly employee compensation, excluding stock awards.
As of September, internal AI usage has increased more than 250 times since January.
There is an important difference here. Anthropic doesn’t spend more money on AI than salaries. It estimates internal AI consumption at retail price.
Still, this seems like a watershed moment for the tech industry.
In March, I wrote about a new trend: Tech companies are starting to consider AI tokens (the primary way to measure usage) as the fourth component of employee compensation, along with salary, bonuses, and stock awards.
Anthropic figures show why. More than 90% of the code added to the software in September was written by Claude. Meanwhile, revenue has grown faster than the number of heads.
For decades, talented human beings have been Silicon Valley’s most valuable resource. Now AI is challenging that assumption.
Sign up for the AI Insider newsletter here. Contact me by email at abarr@businessinsider.com