We all know CEOs take home the lion’s share of profits among company workers. But do we really know how large it is? Most CEOs take home compensation packages ranging from as low as $20 million (I know this is a huge sum for 99% of us, but you get what I mean) to as high as $200 million.
Whether they deserve this pay or not is not our concern today, but if you’re like me and you’re wondering, I found this excellent article on why.
Most times, the salaries CEOs receive aren’t really all the pay they take home. For example, they may have a base salary of $50,000, but their compensation packages may be in the millions. The compensation package may include stocks and shares from the company.
So, the higher the profit the CEO leads his company to earn, the higher his compensation. Following the AI boom in recent years, tech companies have seen valuations in the billions, never before seen in the history of the world. As such, the CEOs of these companies take home huge salaries, bonuses, and compensations, sometimes as high as 7% of the company’s net worth, like in the case of Tesla CEO Elon Musk.
Today, we’re going to compare and contrast the salaries of these top executives.
Actual Salaries of These CEOs
We are going to look at the salaries of the CEOs of the heavyweights in the AI industry. I would have done more, but I couldn’t find the salaries of the CEOs of most of these companies online.
We’ll take a look at the ones we have, which include OpenAI, Amazon, Nvidia, Microsoft, Meta, Inflection, Tesla, Hugging Face, and IBM.
- Jensen Huang of Nvidia: Jensen Huang founded Nvidia in 1993 and has since grown it into a unicorn. Nvidia Corporation is a leading technology company specializing in graphics processing units (GPUs) for gaming, professional visualization, data centers, and automotive markets. It is headquartered in Santa Clara, California. Nvidia’s profits have multiplied since its inception, and so has Jensen Huang’s profit, which stands at a staggering $996,514 per annum and $34.2 million in compensation. Interestingly, the average salary paid at his company is $269,000.
- Andy Jassy of Amazon: The current CEO of Amazon took over in 2021 after its most famous CEO, Jeff Bezos, stepped down. Jassy is the brilliant brain behind AWS (Amazon Web Services), which he founded in 2003. It has grown into the world’s leading cloud computing platform, driving significant revenue and innovation for Amazon. Under Jassy’s leadership, AWS has become an important part of Amazon’s business model, offering cloud storage and computing power. Andy’s case is somewhat different in that his compensation is to be paid over a period of ten years, amounting to a mouthwatering sum of $212.7 million. The median amount paid to workers at Amazon is $36,274.
- Satya Nadella of Microsoft: The CEO of Microsoft, Satya Nadella, is a U.S. citizen of Indian descent. Joining Microsoft in 1992, Nadella led major projects such as the company’s move to cloud computing, playing a major role in developing Azure, Microsoft’s cloud platform. He took over as CEO in February 2014, succeeding Steve Ballmer. His annual salary as CEO is a substantial sum of $2,500,000. The median pay at Microsoft is $193,770.
- Mark Zuckerberg of Meta: Mark Zuckerberg, a very popular name in the tech business scene and social media, doesn’t really need an introduction as we all know him. Meta Platforms, Inc., formerly known as Facebook, Inc., was founded in 2004 by Mark Zuckerberg, Eduardo Saverin, Andrew McCollum, Dustin Moskovitz, and Chris Hughes. Under Mark’s leadership, Meta has expanded its portfolio to include acquisitions like Instagram, WhatsApp, and Oculus VR. Mark Zuckerberg’s salary at Meta is $1 annually and $24,399,968 compensation package.
- Elon Musk of Tesla: The most controversial user on X and CEO of Twitter is also the CEO of Tesla. Musk joined Tesla shortly after its inception and has been instrumental in its development and growth. The company also focuses on renewable energy products, including solar panels and energy storage solutions like the Powerwall. Elon doesn’t receive a salary from Tesla, but at the time of writing this article, he’s going to receive a mind-blowing compensation package of $56 billion.
- Arvind Krishna of IBM: Arvind assumed the role of CEO at IBM in 2020. Krishna joined IBM in 1990 and has been the brain behind the company’s cloud computing, AI, and quantum computing. Arvind’s salary at IBM is $1,500,000 annual pay, with compensation at $20,398,426.
- Sam Altman of OpenAI: The famous Sam Altman, admired by business men and his employees, envied by tech bros and hated by artists has a salary of $70,000 per year. You would think that in addition to this, he probably has a fat compensation package somewhere, also, wrong. Sam Altman for a while wasn’t even receiving salary from Open AI. His enormous wealth is as a result of his robust investment portfolio.
Elon Musk Probably Uses A Diamond Toilet and Wipes with Gold Foil
From the data above, the highest-paid CEO is Elon Musk at $56 billion in compensation, light years above the salaries of the other CEOs on the list. It’s no wonder he’s the richest man on earth. According to him, he doesn’t want to receive the compensation but he has to. What on earth does Elon Musk need $56 billion for when he’s already worth almost $200 billion? I guess we’ll never know; maybe he has mammoth bills to pay or whatever.
The next highest on the list is Andy Jassy, with a compensation package of $212 million over a period of 10 years, which is not too surprising as Amazon is a giant multibillion-dollar corporation. However, what makes this sad is that compared to the substantial sums Andy receives, the average worker at Amazon receives a paltry $36,274. $36,274 is 0.01% of $212 million!
Mark Zuckerberg has the lowest salary, with just $1 per annum and a compensation package of $24,399,968. The median salary at Meta is a healthy amount of $379,050.
Satya Nadella, the Microsoft CEO, has the highest actual salary at $2,500,000 vs. the modest $193,770 median salary. The disparity between the salaries of CEOs and regular workers keeps widening due to various factors that are not resolving any time soon. We can only hope more companies like Amazon see how large this gap is and try every possible means to close it.
