The AI Equity Premium: What the Data Shows Across Private Tech and Life Science Companies

In Carta‘s State of Startup Compensation Report, they said that “the dominance of AI is shaping how founders build and compensate their teams.” AI equity compensation is rising — but is it rising equally across every industry? In Michael Bodley‘s article digging into the report, he noted that initial equity grants for individual contributors on Carta have grown by nearly 11% over the past two years, while median salaries rose 6.4%.

That motivated us to look at our own life science and tech data to see if the AI equity premium was hitting every industry the same way. And it’s not.

For private tech companies, equity for AI/ML Engineers and Data Scientists has climbed notably since 2023. But when you look at private life science companies — biotech, medical device, and diagnostics — equity has stayed flat in the same time frame. The big equity bump happening in private tech hasn’t hit life science companies the same way. At least not yet.

Headcount tells a similar sector-split story. Biotech companies run lean by design — the fundraising road is long, and they don’t over-inflate themselves with talent. That discipline shows in the data. On the tech side, the only headcount category growing YoY is teams of 25 or fewer. Mid-size and larger teams have contracted significantly.

Carta’s report is a valuable piece of the picture, but it is coming from a cap table management perspective. What it doesn’t capture is the full comp mix, which Thelander offers as a private market compensation data and consulting firm — cash alongside equity, and how compensation shifts by actual capital raised, not just valuation (which was a big spread, $1 million to $100 million).

To see how your current compensation compares to market, regardless of industry, complete the Thelander Private Company Compensation Survey today and access real-time comp data for all the job titles you input data for: survey.jthelander.com

Categorised in: Data Drops

This post was written by jthelander