Krishna Rao, Anthropic’s chief financial officer since April 2024, beneficially owned 9,497,900 Class A shares on 30 September 2026, according to the company’s S-1/A of 10 November. At $74, the midpoint of the $70.00 to $78.00 IPO price range, that is $702.8 million, by our arithmetic. His total pay in the filing’s 2025 Summary Compensation Table was $720,250, so the stake is about 976 times that figure.
Most of it is options. Of the 9,497,900 shares, 153,960 are held of record by Rao and 9,343,940, about 98% by our arithmetic, are shares subject to stock options exercisable within 60 days of 30 September, 1,500,000 of them by a trust over which he exercises investment or voting control. Our values are gross: they do not deduct exercise prices or taxes.
Business Pill · IPO Float
A short explainer on IPO float, the share of a company sold in its listing. It teaches the general idea and does not discuss executive stakes.
The key insight: As we read it, Anthropic’s S-1/A of 10 November shows that the company’s only non-founder executive officer, CFO Krishna Rao, holds 9,497,900 beneficially owned Class A shares, about 98% of them option shares, worth $702.8 million at the $74 midpoint before exercise prices and taxes by our arithmetic, about 976 times his $720,250 2025 table pay.
Anthropic’s 2025 named executive officers were Dario Amodei, Daniela Amodei and Rao. The filing says it distinguishes between its seven co-founders and other senior leaders who are not co-founders, “among whom only Mr. Rao is an executive officer”, and that Rao “received base salary and equity compensation based on market data for his role and level”.
For 2025 the table shows Rao with a salary of $706,250, $14,000 in 401(k) matching contributions and no stock or option awards, for $720,250. His annual base salary was $700,000 until 15 December 2025 and $850,000 from 16 December. Dario Amodei’s 2025 total was $17,958,298 and Daniela Amodei’s $16,408,998; each received RSUs with a grant-date fair value of $9,264,932 and options of $4,028,558.
Rao’s stake traces to an option grant dated 31 May 2024 under his offer letter of 2 March 2024, with a $1.30 exercise price and a 30 May 2034 expiry. The filing says 1/4th vested at 12 months and 1/48th monthly after that. At 31 December 2025 he held 5,756,350 exercisable and 8,166,670 unexercisable options under it, and he exercised 76,980 options in 2025, realising $385,285.
The 2026 changes are larger. Rao’s base salary rose to $1,250,000 from 1 February 2026. On 20 February the board granted him 1,122,840 options at $17.66, vesting monthly over one year from 30 January 2026, and 1,862,140 RSUs. The filing says the RSUs’ service condition is met as to 1/12th on 20 May 2027 and quarterly after that, and their performance condition on the registration statement’s effectiveness.
The filing also lists Rao among the holders who sold Class A shares in the April 2026 tender offer at $25.9136 a share, and says Anthropic began offering him security services in 2026. In the ownership table he sells no shares in the IPO: his 9,497,900 shares are the same before and after the offering.
Krishna Rao’s 9,497,900 beneficially owned Anthropic Class A shares (30 September 2026, per the S-1/A of 10 November 2026) valued at five prices: the $70-$78 IPO range, the $25.9136 April 2026 tender price and the $17.66 31 December 2025 fair market value. Values are our arithmetic, gross of exercise prices and taxes.Annual base salaries of Anthropic’s three named executive officers at the start of 2025 and the latest 2026 rate, from the S-1/A of 10 November 2026: Krishna Rao $700,000 to $1,250,000 (from 1 February 2026); Dario and Daniela Amodei $600,000 to $1,380,000 (from 1 July 2026).
Our Numbers
By our arithmetic, Rao’s 9,497,900 shares are worth $664.9 million at $70, $702.8 million at $74 and $740.8 million at $78. The same share count was worth $167.7 million at the $17.66 fair market value the filing uses for 31 December 2025, and $246.1 million at the April tender price. His holdings on those dates may have differed; we hold the 30 September count constant to show the price effect.
At the midpoint the stake is about 976 times his 2025 table total, by our arithmetic, and about 562 times his $1,250,000 2026 base salary. The 1,862,140 RSUs granted in February are not in the beneficial-ownership count, as we read footnote 4; at $74 they would add $137.8 million, by our arithmetic, once both conditions are met.
Rao is the only non-founder executive officer. Among the directors, the table lists 9,410 shares each for Reed Hastings and Christopher Liddell, all RSUs vesting within 60 days, and 176,050 for Vas Narasimhan, of which 169,770 are held by Bodhi LLC. Yasmin Razavi’s line is blank; it excludes shares held by Spark Capital entities. The four non-founders together hold 9,692,770 shares, $717.3 million at $74, or about 2.0% of the 496,360,810 shares the seven officers and directors hold, by our arithmetic.
The rest sits with the two co-founder executives, whose holdings and IPO sales we covered in our piece on the co-founder sales; the full register is in who owns Anthropic. The filing’s change-of-control table put the value of accelerating Rao’s 8,166,670 unvested option shares at $133,590,388, for a qualifying termination on 31 December 2025, using $17.66 less the $1.30 exercise price.
The Structural Read
As we read the tables, the 2025 table totals run the other way: Rao’s $720,250 compares with $17,958,298 for Dario Amodei and $16,408,998 for Daniela Amodei, because the co-founders’ totals include 2025 RSU and option grants at grant-date fair value and Rao’s 2024 option grant falls outside the 2025 table. On salary alone Rao was paid $706,250, against $654,167 for each Amodei.
As we read the ownership table, the IPO does not change Rao’s count: he sells no shares in the offering, while the 1,862,140 RSUs granted in February 2026 sit outside the beneficial count until their service condition starts to be met on 20 May 2027, by the filing’s schedule.
Anthropic, PBC, Form S-1/A, 10 November 2026
“As a non-co-founder senior leader, Mr. Rao is compensated based on the market data from our peer group for his role, level, and location”
Three Implications
FOR IPO BUYERS The ownership table shows Rao selling no shares in the offering; his 9,497,900 shares are the same before and after it.
FOR THE COST LINE The filing says the 2026 NEO RSUs vest only when a service condition and a performance condition tied to the registration statement are both met.
FOR THE BOARD The filing lists indications of interest from a donor-advised fund linked to Reed Hastings of up to $300.0 million and from Christopher Liddell and his spouse of up to $3.0 million, and says they are not binding.
The framework argues: “It is becoming the first major AI lab actively attempting to define the governance layer of the AI stack.”
As we read it, the compensation section applies that design to its own people: the filing pays co-founders equally and pays its non-founder CFO on peer-group market data. The framework predates the filing and does not discuss executive pay.
What Is Not Established
The IPO price is not set; the filing gives an estimated range of $70.00 to $78.00. Footnote 4 does not say which grant the 9,343,940 option shares come from, so the exercise cost cannot be read from it: the 2024 grant’s price is $1.30 and the 2026 grant’s $17.66. The values here are before exercise prices and taxes, and the passages we read do not give the number of shares Rao sold in the April tender.
The filing also shows indications of interest from directors: a donor-advised fund for which Hastings provides investment recommendations, of up to $300.0 million in the IPO, and Liddell and his spouse, of up to $3.0 million through a trust. The filing says these are not binding. Our earlier pieces cover the staff share reserve and the S-1’s equity awards.
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Anthropic’s S-1/A of 10 November shows CFO Krishna Rao beneficially owning 9,497,900 Class A shares, about 98% of them through options, worth $702.8 million at the $74 midpoint before exercise prices and taxes, by our arithmetic, against $720,250 in 2025 table pay; he sells no shares in the IPO.
A note on sourcing. Every share count, salary and award figure here is from Anthropic’s S-1/A filed with the SEC on 10 November 2026: the ownership table and footnotes, the summary compensation, outstanding awards and termination tables, and the director compensation section. Stake values, multiples and shares of the total are our arithmetic at the filing’s $70.00 to $78.00 range, before exercise prices and taxes. Anthropic was not contacted for this piece.
Gennaro Cuofano is a CRO and tech executive who has worked in AI since late 2015, starting with bringing NLP, natural-language generation, voice and chatbot products to the marketing industry. His background is in law and finance: he holds a Master's degree in Law and an International MBA with an emphasis on corporate finance (LUISS Business School and the University of San Diego, 2012), and worked as a financial analyst at a real-estate investment firm in San Diego and as an assistant controller. His work focuses on business model strategy, business engineering and, more broadly, structural analysis: how companies make money, read from their own filings. He created FourWeekMBA and leads research there and at The Business Engineer, his newsletter on AI and business strategy, with over 95,000 subscribers and more than 1,000 published analyses. His writing has also appeared on Entrepreneur (for example, How to Digitize a Family Business in Europe) and HackerNoon. Find him on LinkedIn and Substack. See how we source.
