Update (10 Nov, 11:3x UTC): the awards at the filed range. Anthropic’s S-1/A, Amendment No. 2 sets the range at $70 to $78, so $70 is now the bottom of a filed range. At $78, the 1,774,342,693 options would be worth about $133.2 billion after their $2.91 average exercise price and the 1,127,993,950 RSUs about $88.0 billion, about $221.2 billion together, against about $198.0 billion at $70, by our arithmetic; these are hypothetical figures before taxes and withholding. The 16.94 billion base below is the filing’s fully diluted count at 30 June; the filing says 13,086,672,593 shares will be outstanding after the IPO and placement. Details in our piece on the filed terms.
Anthropic’s own S-1/A implies its common stock was worth about $70.04 a share on 30 September, by our arithmetic. The filing puts the aggregate intrinsic value of the 1.77 billion stock options outstanding at that date at $119.1 billion. That is the bottom of the $70 to $80 range Anthropic sent to bankers and then retracted, as Reuters reported, and about four times the $17.65 the same table implies for the end of 2025.
The award tables are also the closest primary check on a figure circulating on X: that the IPO could make about 4,250 employees, or 80% of the workforce, millionaires. Cointelegraph posted on 30 October that the IPO “could make 4,257 people millionaires, according to Hill, a private markets platform”. We could not find a report or post by a platform named Hill, or the share price and method behind the estimate.
Business Pill · Run-Rate Revenue
A one-minute explainer of run-rate revenue, a measure often used to describe fast-growing AI companies ahead of listings. It teaches the general idea only and does not discuss Anthropic’s equity awards.
The key insight: Anthropic’s S-1/A gives the aggregate intrinsic value of its 1.77 billion outstanding options as $119.1 billion at 30 September, which implies common stock worth about $70.04 a share, by our arithmetic: the bottom of the $70 to $80 range Anthropic sent bankers and then retracted, per Reuters, and about four times the $17.65 the same table implies for the end of 2025.
The S-1/A filed on 2 November says: “As of September 30, 2026, we had approximately 5,300 employees worldwide, a majority of whom work in research, engineering, and product development functions”.
Its option table shows 1,774,342,693 options outstanding on 30 September at a weighted-average exercise price of $2.91, of which about 1.08 billion were vested and exercisable. It gives their aggregate intrinsic value as $119,103 million, and $72,576 million for the vested part. The filing defines intrinsic value as the gap between the exercise price and “the estimated per-share fair value of the Company’s common stock at the measurement date”.
It also lists about 1.13 billion restricted stock units (RSUs) outstanding, at a weighted-average grant-date fair value of $28.47; 542.9 million of them were granted in the first nine months of 2026, at $49.38. None had vested, because their performance condition is met only by a listing or a change of control. The filing puts the unrecognized RSU cost at about $32.3 billion, which our earlier piece covered.
Anthropic’s common-stock value per share implied by its own option activity tables at each balance date: aggregate intrinsic value divided by options outstanding, plus the weighted-average exercise price. Approximate, from rounded figures. Data: Anthropic S-1 (26 Oct 2026, June figure) and S-1/A (2 Nov 2026); our arithmetic.
The $70 Inside the Option Table
Dividing the aggregate intrinsic value by the options outstanding and adding back the exercise price gives the common-stock value the table rests on, by our arithmetic. At 30 September that is $119,103 million divided by 1,774.3 million options, plus $2.91, or about $70.04. The vested-only row gives $70.03.
The same method gives $1.30 at the end of 2023, $2.37 at the end of 2024, $17.65 at the end of 2025 and, from the original S-1’s table, $57.54 on 30 June 2026, by our arithmetic. The S-1/A says the Series H-1 preferred sold at $589.0095 a share and gives a 10:1 conversion ratio for all but three Series D series; at that ratio that is about $58.90 per common share, and $70.04 is 18.9% above it.
What the Awards Are Worth at the Retracted Range
Options and RSUs together cover about 2.90 billion shares, 17.1% of the 16.94 billion fully diluted base implied by the S-1/A at 30 June, which our share-count piece derives. As hypothetical figures only, at $70 the options would be worth about $119.0 billion after their exercise price and the RSUs about $79.0 billion, about $198.0 billion together. At $80 the total is about $227.0 billion, by our arithmetic, before taxes and the share withholding the filing describes for RSU settlement.
Spread over 5,300 employees, that is an average of about $37.4 million to $42.8 million each, by our arithmetic. It is an average only: the filing says RSUs go to employees and non-employee service providers, and it does not show how the awards are split by holder. At a $2 trillion valuation, our 29 October piece put the 30 June awards at about $331 billion.
Checking the 4,250 Figure
The relayed tiers add up. 50 people above $100 million, 1,200 between $10 million and $99 million and about 3,000 between $1 million and $9 million make 4,250, by our arithmetic. The seven co-founders take it to 4,257. 4,250 is 80.2% of the 5,300 employees in the filing. At $70, $1 million is about 14,286 shares.
The S-1/A does not give the distribution of awards by holder, so the count cannot be checked against the filing. Some staff have already sold: the S-1/A says 179.9 million shares changed hands in a tender offer that closed in April at $25.9136 a share, from sellers that included current and former employees. That is about $4.66 billion, and $70.04 is 2.7 times the tender price, by our arithmetic.
When Staff Can Sell
The S-1/A sets a staged release, not one date. A first tranche of shares held by “our non-founder directors and officers and certain of our current and former employees and consultants” can be sold from the first trading day, with the count left blank. Other holders are locked up until the earlier of the second full trading day after Anthropic reports results for the quarter ending 31 March 2027 or the 180th day after the prospectus.
The seven co-founders and certain holders of more than 0.5% of the fully diluted shares face a longer lock-up. It runs until the earlier of the second full trading day after results for the quarter ending 30 September 2027 or the 365th day after the prospectus, subject to “timed automatic expirations” the filing describes. Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley can release holders early, the filing says. The steps are set out in our IPO explainer.
The Structural Read
As we read the option table, the company’s own fair-value estimate had already reached the bottom of the retracted range at 30 September; that is an accounting estimate, not a market price.
As we read the S-1/A, the 4,250-millionaire figure cannot be confirmed or ruled out from the filing, because it does not show how the 2.90 billion award shares are split by holder.
Anthropic, PBC Form S-1/A, 2 November 2026
“As of September 30, 2026, we had approximately 5,300 employees worldwide, a majority of whom work in research, engineering, and product development functions”
Three Implications
FOR EMPLOYEES At the retracted $70 to $80, the options and RSUs outstanding would be worth about $198 billion to $227 billion before taxes, an average of $37.4 million to $42.8 million across 5,300 employees, by our arithmetic; the split by holder is not in the filing.
FOR IPO BUYERS The S-1/A releases locked-up shares in stages, from a first tranche on the first trading day to the extended period for the seven co-founders; the size of each tranche is blank in the filing.
FOR THE VALUATION MARKS The implied $70.04 is 18.9% above the about $58.90 per common share of the Series H-1 preferred and 2.7 times the $25.9136 April tender price, by our arithmetic.
The framework argues: “That is the structural read, and it changes the valuation logic at every layer beneath it.”
As we read it, the same logic reaches the cap table: Anthropic’s own option table moved from about $17.65 to about $70.04 a share in nine months, by our arithmetic, a repricing of the cap table itself. The framework predates the S-1/A and does not discuss it.
What Is Not Established
The $70.04 is our arithmetic on the company’s estimated fair value at 30 September, from rounded figures, and is not a market price. The $70 to $80 range was retracted: Anthropic told bankers the pricing details were inaccurate and that it would update the filing, Reuters reported, and Anthropic declined to comment. No newer filing than the 2 November S-1/A was on EDGAR when we checked at 09:19 UTC on 10 November, so the final price and share counts are not public; our piece on the registered amount covers what the filing does show, and our placement piece covers the $26 billion supplier placement in the retracted copy.
The S-1/A leaves blank the number of shares in each lock-up tranche and the tax withholding rate for RSU settlement. The 4,257 estimate’s source, price and method are not public in any document we could read. The planned trading date is in our timetable piece and the full picture is in our Anthropic IPO map.
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Anthropic’s own option table, at $119.1 billion of intrinsic value on 1.77 billion options, implies common stock worth about $70.04 a share on 30 September, by our arithmetic, up from about $17.65 at the end of 2025. At the retracted $70 to $80 range, the options and RSUs outstanding would be worth about $198 billion to $227 billion. Whether that makes 4,250 employees millionaires depends on a split by holder that the filing does not give.
A note on sourcing. The headcount, option and RSU tables, tender offer and lock-up terms are from Anthropic’s S-1/A of 2 November 2026 on SEC EDGAR; the 30 June option figures are from its S-1 of 26 October. The retracted range is from Reuters’ report of 10 November, read via CNA syndication; Anthropic declined to comment to Reuters. The 4,257 estimate is quoted from Cointelegraph’s X post of 30 October; we could not locate the platform’s own report. The implied per-share values, award values, averages and percentages are our arithmetic. Anthropic was not contacted for this piece.
Gennaro Cuofano is a CRO and tech executive who has worked in AI since late 2015, starting with bringing NLP, natural-language generation, voice and chatbot products to the marketing industry. His background is in law and finance: he holds a Master's degree in Law and an International MBA with an emphasis on corporate finance (LUISS Business School and the University of San Diego, 2012), and worked as a financial analyst at a real-estate investment firm in San Diego and as an assistant controller. His work focuses on business model strategy, business engineering and, more broadly, structural analysis: how companies make money, read from their own filings. He created FourWeekMBA and leads research there and at The Business Engineer, his newsletter on AI and business strategy, with over 95,000 subscribers and more than 1,000 published analyses. His writing has also appeared on Entrepreneur (for example, How to Digitize a Family Business in Europe) and HackerNoon. Find him on LinkedIn and Substack. See how we source.
