Anthropic’s median new offer to a US senior software engineer is $570K in total pay, against $363K at Stripe, according to a Levels.fyi chart posted on X on 6 November by Zuhayeer Musa, whose profile lists Musa as founder of Levels.fyi. The chart covers new offers reported to the site from January 2024 to October 2026.
At the senior level, the one where both companies’ columns rest on at least 10 offers, Anthropic’s median is 1.57 times Stripe’s, a gap of $207K, by our arithmetic. Most of that gap is stock: $250K against $86K.
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The key insight: As we read it, the Levels.fyi chart puts the median new offer to a US senior software engineer at $570K at Anthropic and $363K at Stripe, 1.57 times as much, a $207K gap of which about 79% is stock, by our arithmetic. The figures are self-reported medians, and four of the eight paired columns rest on fewer than 10 offers.
The chart matches levels using the Levels.fyi leveling comparison and splits each median into base, stock and bonus. Its footnote says stock is “the median total minus median base and bonus”, and that “Shaded columns rest on fewer than 10 offers”. Anthropic’s columns carry no bonus, marked “no bonus reported”, and the chart shows “No entry level” at Anthropic.
At Stripe, the medians are $208K at L1, $267K at L2, $363K at L3, $478K at L4 and $840K at L5. At Anthropic, they are $438K for a software engineer, $570K for a senior software engineer, $870K for a lead software engineer and $1.32M for a staff software engineer. The chart pairs Anthropic’s software engineer with Stripe’s L2, senior with L3, lead with L4 and staff with L5.
Stock’s share of the median rises with level at both companies, from 19% at Stripe’s L1 to 49% at L5, and from 37% to 69% at Anthropic, the chart shows. Four of the eight paired columns are shaded: Anthropic’s software engineer and staff columns, and Stripe’s L4 and L5.
Zuhayeer Musa, whose profile lists Musa as founder of Levels.fyi, posted a Levels.fyi chart comparing median new-offer pay for software engineers at Stripe and Anthropic, level by level. The piece reads its figures and notes which columns rest on fewer than 10 offers.
For fun, overly long (slightly bearish?) thoughts on Stripe โ
Yeesh, I found out about a couple more personnel churns yesterday. Out of all the best people I worked with at Stripe, roughly half are at Anthropic and the other half are at OAI, with a misc few that fell through the cracks and went to startups. In absolute numbers, the extent to which this is true is actually funny, and a bit unnerving lol.
They’re facing a perfect storm:
โข Ant/OAI’s engineering comp bands are so much higher than Stripe’s that they more or less don’t even overlap. i.e. The min comp at Ant/OAI is above (or about the same) as Stripe’s max.
โข Ant/OAI have both announced intent to IPO, providing a clear signal of future liquidity. The Collisons remain adamant in their intent not to IPO, and remind employees and potential hires of this on a regular basis (most recently, Aug 2026 investor letter). With every tender offer they’ve always been careful to insist that “no future tenders are guaranteed” and they made good on that this year, skipping what’d become a fairly reliable H2 tender.
โข Stripe operates in the usual ultra-HCOL cities (SF, NYC), exactly where Ant/OAI also do all their hiring. But Ant/OAI are paying enough for the 52% tax and $7k/mo rent. Stripe isn’t.
Stripe’s processing payments for both Ant/OAI and as seen by their latest $159B valuation, gotten a major tailwind from that. But as we’ve seen recently from Ant/OAI who both literally reinvented Git (!!), it cannot underestimated the extent to which they’ll rebuild in house. They’ve got the resources, the technology, and the grit to reinvent anything. I wouldn’t be surprised if one or both companies have skunkworks microchip projects for god’s sake.
Stripe’s always prided itself on A-tier talent, but it’s safe to say that their pipeline for that is closed. Is the plan to drop to B-tier/C-tier, or fall back on Europe or Asia These are the types of conversations exec is having behind closed doors.
Talk about missed opportunity though! If they had IPOed during their fairly clear window (2025, early 2026), the market would have been extremely kind. These guys were the darlings of Silicon Valley and the stock would’ve been a rocket ship. Now I think I agree with the Collisons โ it’d still go well, but they’d be upstaged by more impressive companies. Maybe private is better.
Stripe will be fine โ it’s still led by two of the best founders in SV, but it’s a case study in how an A-tier company that can do no wrong and walks on water can slip to a B-tier company. You either die a hero, or you live long enough to see yourself become Paypal.
Brandur, a former Stripe engineer, wrote that roughly half of the best people they worked with at Stripe are at Anthropic and the other half at OpenAI, and that the labs’ engineering pay bands barely overlap with Stripe’s. These are Brandur’s own observations; the post names none of the people who moved.
Where the Gap Comes From
At the senior level, base pay differs by $80K, $320K against $240K, while stock differs by $164K, $250K against $86K, by our arithmetic. Stock is about 79% of the $207K gap. At the other matched levels the ratio runs from 1.57 times at principal to 1.82 times at staff, but those comparisons rest on at least one shaded column.
Anthropic’s lowest median, $438K at the mid level, is above Stripe’s senior median of $363K and below its staff median of $478K, by our arithmetic. The chart reports medians, not pay ranges, so it does not show how far the two companies’ pay bands overlap.
The Stripe Post It Answered
Musa’s post quotes a post from Brandur, whose profile lists Brandur as an engineer at River and a former Stripe employee. Brandur wrote that “Out of all the best people I worked with at Stripe, roughly half are at Anthropic and the other half are at OAI”. Brandur also wrote that the two labs’ “engineering comp bands are so much higher than Stripe’s that they more or less don’t even overlap”. Those are Brandur’s own observations; the post names none of the people who moved, and we have not verified the moves.
As we read the split, base pay at the senior level differs by $80K while stock differs by $164K, so the gap is mostly in equity, by our arithmetic.
As we read the levels, Anthropic’s lowest median, $438K, sits above Stripe’s senior median and below its staff median, by our arithmetic; the chart gives medians, not pay bands.
As we read Brandur’s post, it is one former employee’s observation about colleagues and names none of the people who moved; we have not verified the moves.
Brandur, former Stripe engineer, on X
“Out of all the best people I worked with at Stripe, roughly half are at Anthropic and the other half are at OAI”
Three Implications
FOR ENGINEERS COMPARING OFFERS The chart reports medians of offers people chose to report, with fewer than 10 offers behind four of its eight paired columns.
FOR EMPLOYERS At the senior level, stock accounts for about 79% of the gap in the chart, by our arithmetic.
FOR READING THE FIGURES Levels are matched by Levels.fyi, and the stock figures are a residual of total minus base and bonus, the chart says.
The framework says: “Expertise shifts toward reviewing outputs, coordinating multiple agents, and making strategic decisions.”
The framework does not discuss pay, Stripe or Anthropic’s offers; we cite it for its view of how engineering work is changing.
What Is Not Established
The figures are medians of offers that people chose to report to Levels.fyi, not company pay data, and the chart does not give sample sizes beyond the under-10 shading. Levels are matched by Levels.fyi, not by the companies. The stock figures are a residual and depend on how each offer valued its equity; Anthropic’s stock is in a private company that has filed to list. Neither Stripe nor Anthropic has commented on the chart in anything we found.
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On Levels.fyi’s self-reported offers, Anthropic’s median senior engineer offer is $570K against Stripe’s $363K, 1.57 times as much, and stock is about 79% of the $207K gap, by our arithmetic. A former Stripe engineer says many of the best people they worked with have moved to Anthropic and OpenAI; the chart gives the pay side of that claim.
A note on sourcing. The pay figures, level pairings and notes are transcribed from the Levels.fyi chart that Zuhayeer Musa posted on X on 6 November 2026; they are medians of offers self-reported to Levels.fyi. The talent observations are Brandur’s, from a post on X of 4 November 2026, and are not verified. The ratios, gaps and stock share of the gap are our arithmetic.
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.
