Anthropic, the artificial intelligence company behind the Claude chatbot, has undergone a significant leadership restructuring as it prepares for a potential initial public offering (IPO) as early as October 2026. The company, which was valued at $380 billion in a February funding round, has seen its annualized revenue run rate surpass $30 billion, more than triple the figure from the finish of 2025. This growth has been accompanied by a headcount increase to roughly 2,300 employees, more than double its size just months earlier. These changes reflect a strategic shift toward balancing rapid experimentation with commercial scale while maintaining AI safety as a core differentiator.
A central element of this restructuring is the creation of Anthropic Labs in January 2026, a research and development unit focused on incubating experimental products at the frontier of Claude’s capabilities. One of its first major decisions was to withhold the public release of its most advanced model, Claude Mythos, due to its ability to identify and exploit software vulnerabilities. Instead, the company is pursuing a limited rollout under Project Glasswing, granting access to more than 50 organizations, including Microsoft and Nvidia, to assist strengthen cyber defenses. This controlled approach underscores Anthropic’s commitment to responsible innovation, particularly as it navigates the pressures of impending public market scrutiny.
The leadership reshuffle accompanying the Labs buildout includes the promotion of Mike Krieger, Anthropic’s former chief product officer and a co-founder of Instagram, to co-lead the new unit. Krieger, a Stanford University alumnus and native of Brazil, previously served as chief technology officer at Instagram and later co-founded the news app Artifact, which he sold to Yahoo in 2024. At Anthropic Labs, he works alongside Ben Mann, an Anthropic co-founder who helped architect GPT-3 at OpenAI and worked as a software engineer at Google before serving as the company’s lead product engineer focused on AI alignment and harm mitigation. Mann graduated from Columbia University.
In their shared role, Krieger and Mann oversee high-stakes initiatives including the governance of Claude Mythos. While the model offers significant potential for strengthening cybersecurity by identifying software flaws, it also poses risks if misused. To manage this dual-use dilemma, Anthropic has opted for a limited release under Project Glasswing. Anthropic president Daniela Amodei emphasized that the Labs structure provides “the right structure in place” to support the company’s product organization in discovering experimental capabilities and scaling them responsibly.
Following Krieger’s transition to Labs, Ami Vora assumed the role of chief product officer. Vora joined Anthropic in December 2025 as head of product and was quickly promoted. She previously spent 15 years at Meta, where she held leadership roles including vice president of product at Facebook and vice president of product and design at WhatsApp. Vora began her career at Microsoft and remains on the board of cloud monitoring platform Datadog. As CPO, she works closely with chief technology officer Rahul Patil to scale Claude beyond experimentation and expand Anthropic’s market presence.
Rahul Patil, who became CTO in October 2025, succeeded Sam McCandlish in that role and is now focused on bridging the gap between technical research and production-ready products. Patil previously served as CTO of Stripe and has led engineering teams at Microsoft, AWS, and Oracle. His expanded coordination with Vora reflects Anthropic’s broader effort to align innovation with commercial execution as it approaches a potential IPO.
Beyond the Labs leadership, all seven of Anthropic’s original co-founders remain with the company. Dario Amodei, who previously served as vice president of research at OpenAI, continues as CEO and co-founder. He founded Anthropic in 2021 with his sister Daniela and other former OpenAI colleagues. Daniela Amodei, who previously served as vice president of safety and policy at OpenAI, holds the role of president and co-founder, overseeing core operations including the CTO and chief architect.
Jared Kaplan, another OpenAI alumnus and co-founder, serves as chief science officer and has also acted as the company’s responsible scaling officer since 2024, helping guide safety-related decisions. Jan Leike, who co-led OpenAI’s superalignment team, has been Anthropic’s alignment science lead since 2024. Sam McCandlish, another former OpenAI employee, serves as chief architect and co-founder, focusing on model training and large-scale systems development after previously holding the CTO role.
Tom Brown, a former OpenAI GPT-3 researcher and co-founder, oversees Anthropic’s compute infrastructure as chief compute officer. Vitaly Gudanets has served as chief information security officer since September 2025, having previously led security efforts at Netflix. Jack Clark, a former OpenAI policy director and technology journalist, leads Anthropic’s policy work as a co-founder. Krishna Rao joined as chief financial officer in 2024 after previously leading finance at Airbnb. Christopher Olah, a former interpretability lead at OpenAI and co-founder, heads the company’s interpretability research, focusing on model transparency and AI safety.
Anthropic’s board of directors was expanded in February 2026 with the appointment of Chris Liddell, a former deputy White House chief of staff and former CFO at Microsoft and General Motors. Daniela Amodei noted that Liddell brings “a track record of helping organizations get [technology, public service and governance] right when the stakes are highest.” The rest of the board remains unchanged, including Dario and Daniela Amodei, Yasmin Razavi, Jay Kreps, Reed Hastings, and Chris Liddell. Meanwhile, the Long-Term Benefit Trust recently removed Kanika Bahl and Zach Robinson and added Mariano-Florentino Cuéllar, while Neil Buddy Shah remains on the trust board.
As Anthropic moves closer to a potential public listing, industry observers note that the company is shifting from a pure frontier lab model toward a more competitive commercial phase. Div Garg, founder and CEO of AGI, Inc., commented that Anthropic has recognized the limitations of the frontier lab approach alone and is preparing for broader market competition regardless of IPO timing. This evolution in structure and leadership reflects the company’s effort to balance its safety-first ethos with the demands of scaling a transformative AI technology in a rapidly maturing industry.
For ongoing updates on Anthropic’s leadership, product developments, and IPO preparations, readers can follow the company’s official newsroom and regulatory filings. Share your thoughts on how AI companies like Anthropic should balance innovation with responsibility as they approach public markets.