Anthropic spent $2.75 million guarding Dario Amodei last year—more than 4 times his salary, but a fraction of Mark Zuckerberg’s security bill

Anthropic spent $2.75 million protecting cofounder and CEO Dario Amodei in 2025, more than four times his $654,167 base salary, according to the AI company's newly public IPO filing. The security bill accounted for more than 15% of Amodei's $17.96 million in total reported compensation for 2025, which also included stock and option awards. The company spent another $1.29 million on personal protection, home security, and transportation for his sister, president and cofounder Daniela Amodei, plus $97,055 on private-aircraft travel for Dario Amodei that it said was required under his security program. Anthropic did not disclose its 2024 executive security spending, so it is not possible to determine whether costs rose sharply in 2025. According to the S-1, the board determined in 2025 that enhanced protection for the Amodeis and their families was necessary, citing security studies, increased media attention, and what it called "bona fide business-related, heightened security concerns."

The filing also describes threats that have become public this year. In April, following an attack on OpenAI CEO Sam Altman's home, a man entered the lobby of Anthropic's San Francisco office and told a guard that a top executive was "going to be killed," according to the Wall Street Journal. In August, a Claude user claimed in a chat to have bought an AR-15 and to have Amodei "in his sights," according to a police report obtained by the San Francisco Standard; Anthropic reported the chat and banned the account. Liferaft CEO Jonathan Graff told the Journal that digital threats against AI executives and data centers surged sevenfold from late February to May 2026. Anthropic's filing states that "Heightened public attention on AI has increased physical and informational security risks."

On a relative basis, Amodei's protection is far below Meta's. Meta disclosed approximately $8.5 million in direct security costs for Zuckerberg in 2025, plus a $14 million annual allowance, about $22.5 million in total. Other disclosed figures include $8.8 million for Alphabet's Sundar Pichai, about $4.8 million paid by Tesla to a Musk-owned security company, and nearly $4 million for Nvidia's Jensen Huang in fiscal 2026. However, ISS-Corporate reported a median CEO security cost of $93,818 among S&P 500 companies and $401,336 among software and services companies, which makes Amodei's figure roughly seven times the sector median. Valeriano Saucedo, associate director at ISS-Corporate, argued that the CEO's public profile may matter more than the company's size. Anthropic's program has also expanded to CFO Krishna Rao, though the company has not disclosed that cost.

ISS-Corporate said boards should assess whether security expenses address legitimate business risks, whether costs are reasonable, and whether arrangements are regularly reassessed. Anthropic said its board regularly reviews the security measures and their costs. ISS-Corporate noted that private-aircraft use can be justified within a security program but that boards should consider less costly alternatives. As Saucedo put it, "The dollar amount alone does not determine whether an expense is appropriate."