Reuters has seen Anthropic’s IPO prospectus and published the 2025 compensation figures from it. Dario Amodei made $18 million as CEO, his sister Daniela Amodei $16.4 million as president. CFO Krishna Rao sits at $720,250.
Base salaries are the smallest slice of that. Both siblings only had their annual salaries doubled this past July, to $1.4 million each. The rest is stock and options.
Middle of the pack, measured against whom
At $18 million, Amodei lands above the CEOs of Alphabet and Amazon and behind those of Oracle and Nvidia. The S&P 500 average last year was $22.8 million, up 21% — the AFL-CIO’s count, which leaves out Elon Musk’s $158 billion restricted stock plan.
Courtney Yu, director of research at compensation data firm Equilar, calls the $18 million “on the lower end for a company valued at $2 trillion”, and says the interesting part comes after the listing, when Amodei’s full ownership stake becomes visible. His caveat: with six other co-founders, Amodei may end up with a smaller share of the IPO wealth than other tech CEOs.
The spread in the comparison is absurd. Oracle co-CEO Clayton Magouyrk made $627.5 million in 2025. At the other end sat Musk with $54,080 as SpaceX CEO, before the listing — though with the promise of super-voting restricted shares if SpaceX reaches $7.5 trillion in market value and puts a million people on Mars.
For founders, the annual number says the least
Yu’s point is the one that matters: founder CEOs own enough equity to live off it, so they take little home year by year. Alphabet’s Sundar Pichai shows up in the 2025 filings at $10.9 million, including $8.8 million for personal security; by the “compensation actually paid” measure it’s $213.9 million. Amazon’s Andy Jassy: $2.1 million against $13.2 million.
That number is exactly what’s missing at Anthropic. The S-1 Reuters saw does not describe the founders’ ownership stake, and it could be worth billions, depending on the final terms of the listing. The board granted the siblings further restricted stock units this year, some tied to them staying, some tied to the IPO itself.
80%, pledged in the prospectus
The prospectus contains something else: the Amodei siblings and their co-founders have pledged to dedicate 80% of their personal Anthropic equity to charitable causes. Asked about it on Monday, a spokesperson pointed to Dario Amodei’s essay from earlier this year, where he argues the wealthy have an obligation to help with the consequences of AI adoption and criticizes a “cynical and nihilistic attitude that philanthropy is inevitably fraudulent or useless”. On the compensation figures themselves, the spokesperson declined to comment.
The number that counts isn’t in the prospectus
Plenty of figures have come out of the IPO prospectus over the past days, and the $18 million is the mildest of them. It doesn’t describe Amodei’s wealth. It describes what went through payroll in one year.
What’s missing is the stake. 80% of an unknown number stays an unknown number, and a pledge in a prospectus is not a trust deed. Both become checkable after the listing. Until then the more interesting line isn’t the pay — it’s the one saying part of the new equity grants depends on the two of them staying.