A profit participation unit is a contractual right to a share of a company’s future profit distributions, granted in place of stock. It carries no shareholder vote, and it pays only when the company distributes profits or the units are bought back or sold, so its value rests on terms a stock grant does not have: any cap on returns, the payout schedule and the rules on selling the units.
In an offer
If you have read that Anthropic pays FDEs in PPUs, no source in our research supports it: Levels.fyi describes the equity on its Anthropic page only as stock or equity grants on a vesting schedule, and on Blind one candidate with an Anthropic software engineer offer reported, in October 2025, being told they would get double-trigger RSUs after the first year, and that the recruiter said not to price them like the stock options they had received. Source 1Anthropic Forward Deployed Engineer SalaryPublisherLevels.fyiSource typeself-reported pay on Levels.fyiSource 2Anthropic offer - advice + RSU info?PublisherBlindSource typecandidate report on BlindSource 3RSU Valuation for current Anthropic offers?PublisherBlindSource typecandidate report on BlindSource 4Anthropic options exercise windowPublisherBlindSource typecandidate report on Blind
If an offer names PPUs or any instrument you do not recognize, a strong candidate asks what it pays out on, when payouts happen, whether returns are capped, how often tender offers run, who is eligible, what share of vested units you may sell and at what last price, and how the units are taxed, before comparing it with a stock grant. Ask for those answers in writing.
Related: H-1B labor condition application, OTE.