> Was 2025 specifically a cherry-picked off year for him? Or is the $10.5m simply false?

Yes, to make it more comparable to what you might expect from a pre-IPO company like Anthropic; otherwise it would be apples and oranges.

Read https://www.entrepreneur.com/business-news/alphabet-google-c... which gives you a sense of how and why it varies. Know also that the $692m number is a ceiling, not a guarantee.