As Anthropic prepares for its IPO, its employee stock ownership plan (ESOP) is entering a critical vesting phase. The company's IPO filing, submitted on November 10th, reveals that as of the end of September, it had granted approximately 1.128 billion unvested Restricted Stock Units (RSUs). Of these, 543 million were newly granted in the first nine months of 2026, while 35.96 million were cancelled or forfeited. Most RSUs require a four-year service period and IPO listing conditions; early departure could result in the loss of unvested units. Meanwhile, between October 24th and November 5th, three employees involved in the development of Claude
Code announced their departures. Product lead Cat Wu subsequently joined OpenAI, and another Anthropic growth team member, Austin
Lau, also joined OpenAI. Anthropic acknowledged in its IPO filing that competitors' continued direct recruitment and the increased equity wealth of some long-term employees could influence their willingness to remain. The key contradiction in this personnel turnover lies in the fact that while IPOs should enhance employee retention through equity appreciation, some product and growth talents still choose to leave before the listing, indicating that competition between external career opportunities and long-term equity incentives is intensifying.
