Google awards Sundar Pichai a $692M compensation package

Sundar Pichai’s latest compensation package could be worth $692 million. According to a filing first spotted by the Financial Times, Alphabet has put together a new three-year arrangement for Google’s chief executive that could place him among the highest-paid executives in the world. Most of the package, however, is performance-based, including fresh-stock incentives tied to Waymo and Wing, Google’s drone-delivery business.

What stands out is how little public attention Pichai tends to attract compared with Google co-founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin. In recent months, the two founders — who rank as the second- and fourth-richest people in the world — have been drawing headlines for a very different reason.

Both Page and Brin have been buying ultra-luxury properties in Miami, a move that is widely viewed as a reaction to California’s proposed Billionaire Tax Act. The ballot initiative would target about 200 billionaires in the state with a one-time 5% tax on net worth above $1 billion. Page is believed to have spent more than $173 million recently on two mansions in Coconut Grove, Florida. In comparison, Brin was linked to a $51 million megamansion about 14 miles away, on top of two earlier purchases totalling $92 million.

Pichai, on the other hand, appears to have remained quietly based in Los Altos, California, at least as far as public information suggests. He is also a billionaire. Since he became Google’s top executive in 2015, the company’s market capitalisation has grown nearly sevenfold, making the stock he accumulated over that period extraordinarily valuable. Pichai and his wife are estimated to hold shares worth nearly $500 million, and Bloomberg estimated that he had also sold around $650 million in stock as of last summer.