Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei made $18 million last year. His real fortune lies elsewhere
Amodei’s 2025 compensation puts him around the middle of the pack among major tech CEOs, even as Anthropic heads toward a potential IPO valuing it at more than $2 trillion. The company has yet to disclose the founders’ full ownership stakes.
Dario Amodei, CEO of Claude developer Anthropic, received $18 million in compensation last year, according to the company’s IPO filing, placing him roughly in the middle of the pack among CEOs of major technology companies.
Anthropic is preparing for an IPO as early as this fall that could value the company at more than $2 trillion, according to its prospectus seen by Reuters. Amodei’s 2025 compensation puts him above the CEOs of Alphabet and Amazon, but well below the pay packages awarded to some of the highest-paid executives in the technology industry.
Amodei’s compensation is weighted heavily toward stock and other forms of equity, underscoring how founder CEOs can accumulate far greater wealth through their ownership stakes than through annual salaries.
Amodei and his sister, Anthropic President Daniela Amodei, each saw their annual salaries double in July to $1.4 million. Stock and option awards made up the bulk of their compensation in 2025, with Daniela Amodei receiving $16.4 million in total compensation.
This year, Anthropic’s board also granted the siblings additional restricted stock units, which provide a future payout if certain conditions are met. Some of the awards are tied to their continued employment at the company, while others are linked to the IPO.
Anthropic Chief Financial Officer Krishna Rao earned $720,250 in 2025. When he joined the company in 2024, he was granted options to purchase 1.4 million shares and exercised options worth $385,285 last year.
An Anthropic spokesperson declined to comment on the figures.
The rise in U.S. CEO pay in recent years has far outpaced gains for the average worker, a trend that critics fear could be further amplified by the widespread adoption of AI.
Average annual compensation for S&P 500 CEOs rose 21% to $22.8 million last year, excluding Tesla CEO Elon Musk’s extraordinary $158 billion restricted stock plan, according to the AFL-CIO.
Courtney Yu, director of research at executive compensation data firm Equilar, said Amodei’s $18 million compensation “seems on the lower end for a company valued at $2 trillion,” but added that it will be interesting to see how his compensation changes once Anthropic goes public and discloses his full ownership stake.
With six other co-founders, Amodei could ultimately hold a smaller share of Anthropic’s equity than some other prominent technology CEOs, Yu said.
Compensation among top executives at AI-focused technology companies varied widely in 2025, according to SEC filings.
At the high end, Oracle co-CEO Clayton Magouyrk received $627.5 million. At the other extreme, Musk received $54,080 as CEO of SpaceX before the company went public.
SpaceX has also promised Musk super-voting restricted shares if the company reaches a $7.5 trillion valuation and puts 1 million people on Mars.
At other major technology companies, annual compensation can provide only a partial picture of what executives stand to gain from their companies.
Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai received $10.9 million in 2025, including $8.8 million for personal security because of his public profile. On an “actually paid” basis, however, Pichai received $213.9 million, a figure that reflects, among other things, changes in the value of his unvested shares.
Amazon CEO Andy Jassy received $2.1 million in 2025, with the figure primarily reflecting travel and security costs. On an “actually paid” basis, his compensation was $13.2 million.
The figures illustrate why annual compensation can be a poor measure of the wealth generated by founder CEOs.
“Founder CEOs typically own enough equity that when the company does well and the stock price increases they can just live off the wealth of the equity they already own, and typically don’t take in a lot in annual compensation,” Yu said.
Anthropic said in its filing that it provides executives with a combination of salary, equity awards and other benefits. The S-1 reviewed by Reuters does not disclose the founders’ ownership stakes in the company, which could be worth billions of dollars depending on the final terms and valuation of the IPO.
The Amodei siblings and their fellow co-founders also pledged in the IPO filing to dedicate 80% of their personal equity in Anthropic to charitable causes.
Asked about the 80% commitment on Monday, an Anthropic spokesperson pointed to an essay Amodei published earlier this year. In it, he argued that wealthy individuals have an obligation to help address problems arising from AI adoption and criticized what he described as a “cynical and nihilistic attitude” among some wealthy people, particularly in the technology industry, toward philanthropy.
