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Anthropic's IPO filing ties part of the Amodeis' new stock to their staying on
Dario Amodei made $18 million in 2025, mostly in stock and options, Anthropic's IPO filing shows, ahead of a listing that could value it above $2 trillion. The co-founders' stakes are not yet disclosed, so the new stock units are the best guide investors have to what keeps them there.
The Investor · Invest desk
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What happened
- Dario Amodei and his sister, President Daniela Amodei, each had their annual salaries doubled to $1.4 million this past July.
- Anthropic's board granted the pair restricted stock units this year, with some tied to remaining at the company and some tied to the IPO.
- Daniela Amodei's 2025 package totalled $16.4 million, and stock and options made up the bulk of both siblings' pay.
- The Amodeis and their fellow co-founders pledged in the filing to dedicate 80% of their personal Anthropic equity to charitable causes.
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Why it matters
- cost The siblings' combined base salary comes to $2.8 million a year, so most of their pay arrives as stock that future shareholders fund through dilution.
- exposure Buyers at a valuation above $2 trillion would pay about 2.07 times the $965 billion of Anthropic's last private round, as Crypto Briefing reports that figure.
- decision Because part of the new units is tied to the IPO, the founders hold a personal stake in the listing going ahead, separate from the units that reward staying.
Against the broad market the $18 million is below average: about 79% of the $22.8 million the AFL-CIO reports as the average pay of an S&P 500 chief executive last year, or roughly $4.8 million short [28][21]. Courtney Yu, director of research at the compensation data firm Equilar, said the figure "seems on the lower end for a company valued at $2 trillion, but it will be interesting to see how that changes once the company goes public" [9]. Even at the new $1.4 million rate, salary would be about 7.8% of his 2025 total [19]. An Anthropic spokesperson declined to comment on the figures [17].
On reported figures, Amodei ranks above the chief executives of Alphabet and Amazon and below those of Oracle and Nvidia [18]. The ranking is a weak guide to what large tech companies actually hand their bosses. Alphabet's Sundar Pichai made $10.9 million in 2025, $8.8 million of it for personal security, while his "compensation actually paid", a measure that reflects the change in value of unvested shares, came to $213.9 million, about 19.6 times the headline [11][22]. Amazon's Andrew Jassy went from $2.1 million to $13.2 million on the same basis [12]. Founder chief executives "typically own enough equity that when the company does well and the stock prices increases they can just live off the wealth of the equity they already own," Yu said [13].
For an IPO buyer, the terms that matter most are the ones that keep the founders in place. Should the founders' stakes prove large, the tenure-linked units would be small next to them. If seven co-founders splitting the founding equity, plus the charitable pledge, leave each with a modest retained stake, the units carry most of the reason to stay [27][24]. A short vesting schedule on those units would hold the founders for less time than a buyer paying more than $2 trillion would assume [5].
I think the second case is closer. Yu said that with six other co-founders, Amodei may wind up with a lesser share of the wealth the IPO creates than other major tech chief executives [10]. After the pledge, 20% of each co-founder's personal Anthropic equity sits outside it [24]. The counter-case is in the same Reuters report: the founders' ownership could be worth billions of dollars depending on the final terms and valuation, and a fifth of billions is still a strong incentive to stay [14]. An amended filing that shows big founder stakes beside small unit grants would prove the view wrong.
Below the siblings the pay scale drops quickly. Chief Financial Officer Krishna Rao's $720,250 last year is about one twenty-fifth of Amodei's, and the options he exercised in 2025, worth $385,285, equal about 53% of it [7][25][26]. His hiring grant in 2024 was options on 1.4 million shares [8].
What to watch
- An amended S-1 with an ownership table showing how large the seven co-founders' stakes are next to the new units.
- The number, value and vesting schedule of the Amodeis' restricted stock units, and how they split between tenure and the IPO.
- Where the IPO prices relative to the $965 billion last private round and the more-than-$2 trillion prospectus figure.