Dario Amodei, the CEO of Anthropic, a company behind Claude AI, earned $18 million last year, as revealed in the company’s IPO filing. This places him somewhere in the middle when it comes to salaries of top tech executives.
Anthropic is gearing up for an IPO that could potentially value the company at over $2 trillion, as indicated in its prospectus reviewed by Reuters.
Amodei’s compensation puts him ahead of CEOs from companies like Alphabet and Amazon, though he falls behind those at Oracle and Nvidia.
His pay structure relies significantly on stock and various other compensation types, which suggests that, similar to many tech founders, his actual salary is just a small part of his overall wealth.
In July, both Dario Amodei and his sister, Daniela Amodei, who serves as Anthropic’s president, saw their salaries increased to $1.4 million.
Their compensation packages for 2025 were largely built around stock and options, with Daniela earning around $16.4 million last year.
This year, the board granted both siblings further equity in the form of restricted stock units that promise payouts upon meeting certain future conditions.
Some of these conditions are linked to their continued employment at the company, while others are tied to the forthcoming IPO.
The CFO, Krishna Rao, earned $720,250 last year. He received options to purchase 1.4 million shares when he joined in 2024 and exercised options worth $385,285 in 2025.
An Anthropic representative declined to comment on these figures.
Middle of the pack
In recent years, CEO pay in the U.S. has surged significantly, far outpacing the pay of the average worker. Critics are concerned that this trend may worsen with the increasing adoption of AI.
The average annual compensation for S&P 500 CEOs rose by 21% to $22.8 million last year, excluding unusually high figures like Elon Musk’s staggering $158 billion stock plan from Tesla, according to the AFL-CIO.
Equilar’s director of research, Courtney Yu, commented that while Amodei’s $18 million seems relatively low for a company valued at $2 trillion, it will be intriguing to see how his compensation evolves once the company goes public and his full ownership stake is revealed.
Given that Amodei has six other co-founders, he might end up with a smaller slice of the pie compared to other tech CEOs, Yu added.
The earnings of top executives in AI-focused tech firms showed a wide range in 2025, based on SEC filings.
On the high end, Oracle co-CEO Clayton Magouyrk earned $627.5 million, whereas the low end had Musk earning $54,080 as CEO of SpaceX before it went public.
SpaceX also promised Musk super-voting restricted shares if its market value reaches $7.5 trillion and if the company successfully sends one million people to Mars.
Some large companies have executive pay structures where the yearly salary appears relatively low while the actual wealth comes from considerable stock ownership.
For example, Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai received $10.9 million in 2025, including $8.8 million designated for personal security, due to his high-profile public presence. In terms of “compensation actually paid,” he received $213.9 million last year, which was impacted by changes in the value of his unvested shares.
Amazon CEO Andrew Jassy’s reported pay was $2.1 million in 2025, mainly covering travel and security, but on an “actually paid” basis, he received $13.2 million.
Living off the stock
Equilar’s Yu pointed out that these disclosures illustrate how many of these executives aren’t solely focused on yearly salaries.
“Typically, founder CEOs hold enough equity that when the company performs well and stock prices rise, they can rely on the wealth from their accumulated shares and generally don’t need to take in much from annual compensation,” Yu explained.
Anthropic’s filing mentioned a mix of salary, equity awards, and other benefits offered to executives. However, the S-1 statement does not specify how much equity the founders own, which could be worth billions, depending on the final IPO valuation.
The Amodei siblings, along with their co-founders, committed in the IPO filing to allocate 80% of their personal Anthropic equity to charitable initiatives.
In response to inquiries about this 80% figure, a spokesperson noted an essay Dario Amodei wrote earlier this year, expressing that wealthy individuals have a responsibility to tackle issues arising from AI’s impact, and criticized the growing cynical attitudes among some wealthy individuals in the tech sector regarding the value of philanthropy.
