Anthropic CEO Amodei made US$18m last year, IPO filing shows
Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei received US$18 million in total compensation last year, according to the company's IPO filing. The figure places him in the middle of tech CEO pay, above Alphabet and Amazon chiefs but below Oracle and Nvidia leaders.
Dario Amodei made US$18 million last year as CEO of Claude AI developer Anthropic, the company's IPO filing shows, putting him in the middle ranks of top executives at major technology firms in terms of compensation.
Anthropic is preparing for an IPO as early as this fall that could value it at more than US$2 trillion, according to its IPO prospectus seen by Reuters. Amodei's pay last year puts him above CEOs at Alphabet and Amazon but behind those at Oracle and Nvidia.
Amodei's pay leans heavily towards stock and other sorts of compensation, suggesting that like many other tech founders, his yearly salary will account for just a fraction of his wealth. Dario Amodei and his sister, Anthropic President Daniela Amodei, each had their annual salaries doubled this past July to US$1.4 million. Stock and options awards made up the bulk of their packages in 2025, with Daniela Amodei receiving a total of US$16.4 million last year.
Anthropic's board this year granted the pair the promise of further equity in the form of restricted stock units, which promise a future payout if certain conditions are met. Some of that is tied to their remaining at the company, and some of it is tied to the IPO. Chief Financial Officer Krishna Rao earned US$720,250 last year. He was granted options to buy 1.4 million shares when he was hired in 2024, and exercised options worth US$385,285 in 2025. An Anthropic spokesperson declined to comment on the figures.
Courtney Yu, director of research for executive compensation data firm Equilar, said Amodei's US$18 million haul "seems on the lower end for a company valued at US$2 trillion, but it will be interesting to see how that changes once the company goes public" and his full ownership stake is shown. With six other co-founders, Amodei may wind up getting a lesser share of the wealth created by the IPO compared with other major tech CEOs, Yu added.
Top executives at AI-focused tech firms earned amounts that varied widely in 2025, based on SEC filings. At the high end, Oracle co-CEO Clayton Magouyrk earned US$627.5 million, while the lowest was the US$54,080 paid to Musk as CEO of SpaceX before it went public. Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai made US$10.9 million in 2025, including US$8.8 million for personal security. Amazon CEO Andrew Jassy made US$2.1 million in 2025, mainly reflecting travel and security.
The Amodei siblings and their fellow co-founders pledged in the IPO filing to dedicate 80 per cent of their personal Anthropic equity to charitable causes. Asked about the 80 per cent figure Monday, an Anthropic spokesperson noted an essay Dario Amodei posted earlier this year, where he wrote that wealthy individuals have an obligation to help address problems stemming from AI adoption, and decried that many wealthy people, particularly in the tech industry, "have recently adopted a cynical and nihilistic attitude that philanthropy is inevitably fraudulent or useless."