Anthropic's quiet lead in the AI Talent War

Copyright © HT Digital Streams Limit all rights reserved. Isabelle Bousquette, The Wall Street Journal 3 min Read 08 Aug 2025, 03:08 pm ist anthropic rental engineers 2.68 times faster than it loses. The number is 2.18 for Openai, 2.07 for Meta and 1.17 for Google. (Reuters) Summary The Ai Start does not match Meta’s sky height of salary offers. It is still predominant when it comes to the retention of engineer. The war for Top AI talent strikes mad new heights among giants such as Meta and Openai. But it seems that Anthropic, producer of the popular Claude models, is the place where many engineers would rather work. New research from the venture firm Signalfire shows that the beginning is increasing its engineering organization faster than the competitors and more. The $ 170 billion AI company leases engineers 2.68 times faster than it loses. The number is 2.18 for Openai, 2.07 for Meta and 1.17 for Google. Certainly, we should not expect established players like Meta and Google to grow as fast as the young upstart, Signalfire said, but Anthropic’s retention advantage stands out, especially in Silicon Valley, where recruitment efforts have reached a new peak. Meta’s ride this summer to staff its ‘Superinteligence Labs’ unit has made the most recent round talent attacks with CEO Mark Zuckerberg regularly personal offers to offer AI talent in places such as at Openai as well as Anthropic, Google Deepmind and Apple. Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei said he would not match salaries with the sky height that came from Meta, and said doing so would be unfair to the equally talented engineers who were not targeted. Amodei made the comments on an episode of the Big Technology Podcast that aired last week. And yet employees still remain, he said. So far, Zuckerberg has rented at least two employees of the start – Joel Pobar and Anton Bakhtin, both of which have previously worked at Meta for several years. But Amodei said he spoke to some employees who rejected Meta’s offers and said that they would “not even talk to Mark Zuckerberg.” He added: “What they do is buy something that cannot be bought. And that is in line with the mission.” Anthropic was founded in 2021 by former Openai employees who wanted to build AI with a greater emphasis on safety and the use of technology for the better. According to Heather Loshay, a partner at Signalfire, that unique mission and culture were a great draw for AI job seekers. While most AI businesses throw large investments into handrail, Anthropic is unique about it, she said. “I’m talking to many candidates in the market in my job. And when I ask a candidate, what is the dream business you have at this point? Anthropic is more frequent than anyone else,” Loshay said. Anthropic said it recognizes his dedication to safety, the quality of his research and his team top researchers as reasons that talent chooses to go there. In many ways, Openai still has an advantage when it comes to the public’s awareness. (Chatgpt is for AI, because Kleenex is for tissues, Loshay said.) But the coding capabilities of Anthropic’s Claude models have long been very popular with the developer community – the group that makes up this talent market. Michael Shamos, leading career professor at the School of Computer Science and director of the MS in Artificial Intelligence and Innovation at Carnegie Mellon University, said there are many factors playing in a candidate’s decision on which offer to accept. Salary is an important one, but if there is no great order of the difference in compensation packages, mission and culture become greater considerations. So does the recent progress of the technology of a given business. Shamos said to a certain extent: “I think it’s cyclical. If Claude is the hottest LLM now, people want to work for anthropic work. If GPT-5 comes out, it will be open again. ‘ The bigger players should not be discounted either, he said. A Google spokeswoman said its tack -taking rates remain very low, and this attracts leading AI talent, including researchers and engineers who come from the best competitive laboratories. Meta and Openai did not comment. Loshay van Signalfire said: ‘It is clear that there will be many more miles in this marathon. And this is someone’s game. ‘ Catch all the corporate news and updates on live currency. Download the Mint News app to get daily market updates and live business news. More Topics #Openai #Artificial Intelligence Read the following story