AI Hiring: Big Numbers
- Social posts note continued heavy AI hiring, citing OpenAI doubling to about 8,000 employees and Anthropic listing 430+ roles. - The thread argues these hires counter the ‘SWE jobs are dead’ narrative. - The social commentary shows firms are still aggressively recruiting for AI talent despite broader restructuring reports. (x.com)
OpenAI is planning a major hiring push, and Anthropic is advertising hundreds of openings at the same time. (bloomberg.com) Bloomberg, citing the Financial Times and people familiar with the plan, reported on March 21 that OpenAI aims to expand from about 4,500 employees to roughly 8,000 by the end of 2026. The hiring is expected to focus on product development, engineering, research, and sales. (bloomberg.com) Anthropic’s jobs page showed 439 open roles on April 21, 2026, including 68 in AI research and engineering, 22 in software engineering infrastructure, 24 in security, and 152 in sales. The company says it is hiring across San Francisco, Seattle, New York City, and remote-friendly roles. (anthropic.com) Those postings sit alongside a broader buildout in commercial and technical teams, not just model research. Anthropic’s careers site says the company is hiring “researchers, engineers, and builders from a range of disciplines,” while its listings span finance, legal, policy, product, and trust and safety. (anthropic.com; anthropic.com) OpenAI’s own newsroom shows the company shipping products, acquisitions, and enterprise announcements at a rapid clip in March and April, including deals for Promptfoo and Astral, a new enterprise push on April 8, and multiple model releases. That pace helps explain why headcount demand is spreading beyond pure research labs. (openai.com) The hiring surge cuts against a simple version of the “software engineering jobs are dead” claim that has circulated alongside layoffs and automation fears. What the company pages and reported plans show instead is that leading artificial intelligence firms are still adding people in research, infrastructure, security, sales, and operations. (anthropic.com; bloomberg.com) The mix of roles also shows what these companies are buying with headcount: more computing capacity, more customer-facing staff, and more engineers to turn models into products. Anthropic’s listings include compute, safeguards, public policy, and technical program management, while Bloomberg reported OpenAI’s expansion would add office space in San Francisco as staffing rises. (anthropic.com; bloomberg.com) That does not mean every software job is insulated from cuts or that hiring is broad-based across tech. It does show that, in April 2026, the biggest artificial intelligence companies are still spending heavily to recruit people to build, sell, secure, and govern their systems. (anthropic.com; openai.com; bloomberg.com)
