Dario Amodei, CEO of Anthropic, earned $18 million in total compensation last year, according to disclosures in the company’s initial public offering (IPO) filing. This places his pay near the midpoint among leading technology executives, reflecting a compensation package heavily weighted toward stock and equity awards rather than cash salary.
Anthropic, the artificial intelligence firm behind the Claude AI platform, is preparing for an IPO as early as this fall, with a potential valuation exceeding $2 trillion. Amodei’s compensation surpasses that of CEOs at Alphabet and Amazon but remains below what executives at Oracle and Nvidia received in 2025. His annual salary was increased to $1.4 million in July, matching the raise given to his sister Daniela Amodei, the company’s president, who earned a total of $16.4 million last year. Both were also granted restricted stock units that vest upon meeting certain performance and tenure conditions, including the company’s public debut.
Chief Financial Officer Krishna Rao received $720,250 in total pay last year. Rao, who joined Anthropic in 2024, was awarded options to purchase 1.4 million shares at hire and exercised stock options valued at approximately $385,000 in 2025. An Anthropic spokesperson declined to comment on compensation details.
The upward trend in CEO pay among U.S. companies has outpaced gains for average employees in recent years, a disparity that some observers suggest could be intensified by the proliferation of AI technologies. According to industry data, the average annual compensation for S&P 500 CEOs rose 21 percent last year to $22.8 million, excluding extraordinary cases such as Tesla CEO Elon Musk, whose compensation is largely composed of a $158 billion restricted stock plan.
Courtney Yu, director of research at executive compensation data company Equilar, noted that Amodei’s $18 million earning “seems on the lower end for a company valued at $2 trillion,” adding that more insights may emerge once the company goes public and Amodei’s full equity stake is disclosed. Given that Anthropic was founded by seven co-founders in total, Amodei’s share of wealth generated by the IPO could be smaller compared to the stakes held by other major tech CEOs.
Executive pay within AI-focused firms varies widely. Oracle co-CEO Clayton Magouyrk received $627.5 million in 2025, while Musk’s reported cash compensation as CEO of SpaceX was $54,080 before its future public offering. SpaceX has arranged for Musk to receive significant super-voting restricted shares contingent on ambitious milestones, including valuation increases and interplanetary colonization goals. Other tech leaders, such as Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai, recorded $10.9 million in reported compensation last year, which included nearly $9 million in security costs tied to his public profile. However, when accounting for changes in unvested stock holdings, Pichai’s “compensation actually paid” amounted to $213.9 million.