Item — HN Reader

It is because of pre IPO money.

Until Anthropic and OpenAI IPO, it is no brainer to join and it is almost risk free to get equity and make a huge amount of money before they IPO.

Just wait until the IPO is done and the lockup period is over, and you will see lots of star employees leaving, some making their own VC firms, some retiring or some just making huge expensive purchases.

Nothing wrong with this, but it is a huge reason why they these "well known" tech execs are joining now.

1 comments

These people are already massively rich and likely have opportunities to join any tech org that's growing, and any of those opportunities could make them even richer. It doesn't really explain why Anthropic is their apparent best option.

It's probably just the most interesting and challenging tech company right now (that's hiring high profile roles?). There's lots of other companies doing interesting things but if your expertise is software applied to a complex domain, Anthropic probably comes out on top.

> These people are already massively rich...

Maybe they want the highest likelihood be even more richer and Anthropic gives them this.

Equity in a $1TN company pre IPO is very attractive than investing in startups and waiting 10 years for an exit.