Chief Executive Officer pay soared to new heights in 2024, with compensation packages for the top executives at America's largest companies reaching record levels.
The median compensation for the highest-paid 100 CEOs in 2024, according to data from Equilar, reached $25.6 million, reflecting a 9.5% increase over the previous year.
A significant driver of this increase was the median value of stock awards, which jumped 40.5% year over year — from $13.2 million in 2023 to $18.6 million in 2024. In 2024, stock awards represented about 73% of the median total compensation for Equilar’s top 100 CEOs.
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Here are the top 10 S&P 500 CEO pay packages in 2024:
Company CEO Total Pay In 2024
| Coherent Corp. (NYSE:COHR) | James Robert Anderson | $ 101,497,009 |
| Starbucks Corp. (NASDAQ:SBUX) | Brian Niccol | $ 95,801,676 |
| General Electric Company (NYSE:GE) | H. Lawrence Culp, Jr. | $ 87,393,876 |
| Microsoft Corp. (NASDAQ:MSFT) | Satya Nadella | $ 79,106,183 |
| Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL) | Tim Cook | $ 74,609,802 |
| Carrier Global Corporation (NYSE:CARR) | David Gitlin | $ 65,554,845 |
| Palo Alto Networks, Inc. (NASDAQ:PANW) | Nikesh Arora | $ 58,036,875 |
| Adobe Inc. (NASDAQ:ADBE) | Shantanu Narayen | $ 52,390,182 |
| Nutanix, Inc. (NASDAQ:NTNX) | Rajiv Ramaswami | $ 51,143,711 |
| CrowdStrike Holdings, Inc. (NASDAQ:CRWD) | George Kurtz | $ 46,983,855 |
One notable name missing from the list is NVIDIA Corp. (NASDAQ:NVDA) CEO Jensen Huang, who earned $49.9 million in total compensation, but was excluded because the company filed its proxy after Equilar's April 30 cutoff.
Two well-known billionaires ranked near the bottom: Warren Buffett, CEO of Berkshire Hathaway, Inc. (NYSE:BRK) (NYSE:BRK) and Elon Musk of Tesla, Inc. (NASDAQ:TSLA).
Buffett received $405,000 in compensation, about five times the salary of the average Berkshire Hathaway employee.
Musk was the lowest-paid S&P 500 CEO and received $0 in compensation from Tesla in 2024, as his $56 billion multiyear pay package from 2018 remains embroiled in a legal battle.
Image: Shutterstock
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