The world’s richest person also received the highest CEO compensation in 2021. Elon Musk, the chief executive of SpaceX and Tesla, topped Fortune‘s new list of the most highly compensated CEOs on the Fortune 500. In 2021, Musk “realized” compensation worth almost $23.5 billion, from exercising some Tesla stock options awarded in a 2018 multiyear “moonshot” grant. That was—by far—the biggest CEO payday in 2021, according to our new analysis of how Fortune 500 CEOs are compensated. After Musk, the 10 most highly compensated Fortune 500 CEOs of 2021 are all tech and biotech CEOs, including the heads of Apple, Netflix, and Microsoft.
List of top 10 most highly compensated CEOs:
- Elon Musk, Tesla: USD 23.5 Billion
- Tim Cook, Apple: USD 770.5 Million
- Jensen Huang, NVIDIA: USD 561 Million
- Reed Hastings, Netflix: USD 453.5 Million
- Leonard Schleifer, Regeneron Pharmaceuticals: USD 452.9 Million
- Marc Benioff, Salesforce: USD 439.4 Million
- Satya Nadella, Microsoft: USD 309.4 Million
- Robert A. Kotick, Activision Blizzard: USD 296.7 Million
- Hock E. Tan, Broadcom: USD 288 Million
- Safra A. Catz, Oracle: USD 239.5 Million