Sundar Pichai is riding high as the chief executive officer at Alphabet (GOOG) , parent company of Google.
Pichai took over as CEO in December 2019, as company co-founders and co-CEOs Larry Page and Sergey Brin stepped back from the day-to-day oversight of both Alphabet, the holding company, and its main subsidiary, Google.
In the move, the company installed Pichai as chief decision-maker at Alphabet (he had already served as CEO of Google since a company restructuring in 2015).
Manning the helm of a company valued at $2.16 trillion (as of mid-May 2024) comes with its fair share of both prestige and pressure, but it also comes with hefty compensation.
How much is Pichai worth in 2024, and what is his salary?
What is Sundar Pichai’s net worth?
Pichai’s wealth primarily comes from the shares he holds in Alphabet. According to a February 2024 filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission, Pichai owned 2.4 million shares, but he sold 180,000 shares through May 2024. In mid-May 2024, that puts his net worth (based on his Alphabet shares) at around $390 million.
Pichai also has almost 600,000 units that have yet to vest.
Other reports estimate that his net worth is in excess of $1.3 billion, and he reportedly sold close to a billion dollars in Alphabet stock since he first joined the company in 2004.
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What is Sundar Pichai's salary?
As CEO of both Alphabet and Google, Pichai earns a salary of $2 million annually, but also earns a great deal more in bonuses and stock options.
In 2022, he received one of the largest payouts in his career at the company, with his total annual compensation amounting to $226 million, including salary and stock awards in the form of restricted stock units (GSUs) or performance-based restricted stock units (PSUs)
As the architect of some of Google’s greatest achievements, like Gmail, Google Maps, Pixel, and Android, Pichai has certainly done his part to grow the Google brand and rake in billions of dollars in profits.
While Pichai's wealth is staggering, it's a mere drop in the bucket compared to that of founders Page and Brinm, who each own more than $100 billion in Google stock despite taking home token employee salaries of $1 annually.
Pichai’s early life
How did Pichai climb the corporate ladder and become the CEO of one of the world’s largest and most prominent global brands?
Sundar Pichai (whose real name is Pichai Sundararajan), was born in Chennai, India, in July 1972. His parents, Lakshmi and Regunatha, both worked full time, his mother making a living as a stenographer and his dad working as an electrical engineer at U.K.-based GEC.
Pichai attended the Indian Institute of Technology Madras and earned a degree in metallurgical engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology Kharagpur.
After moving to the U.S., Pichai earned a master’s in material sciences and engineering from Stanford University and then went to the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania for an MBA, graduating with high honors.
Onward to Google
Pichai launched his business career as a product manager at Applied Materials (AMAT) and moved on to a business consulting position at McKinsey & Company.
Pichai arrived at Google in 2004, where he took a leading role working on Google Chrome, the company’s flagship web browser platform. He also worked closely with the company’s software engineering team on Chrome OS, the firm’s operating system.
Pichai picked up the pace at Google, traveling abroad to ride herd on new company applications like Gmail and Google Maps.
By 2013, Pichai was leading Google’s Android team, and was increasingly earning the attention of Brin and Page. Within two years, the company founders had seen enough — on Aug. 10, 2015, Pichai was tapped as Google’s new CEO, a position he earned from his own pluck and hard work, but also by surrounding himself with good talent — but with an edge.
“It’s always good to work with people who make you feel insecure about yourself,” he once said. “That way, you will constantly keep pushing your limits.”
Pichai earned approximately $100 million at Google in 2015 and almost doubled that figure in 2016, thanks to an increasing amount of lucrative stock options awarded as he climbed the company’s executive ladder.
To the head of the class
Even as he was climbing the corporate ladder with Google, another Pacific Coast software titan had its eye on Pichai, as well. Prior to being named CEO at Google, Pichai was rumored to be at the front of the line as CEO at Microsoft (MSFT) . That position eventually went to Satya Nadella.
Happy and productive at Google, Pichai stayed on to become CEO of both Alphabet and Google in 2019, but not before controversy arose.
In 2017, Pichai found himself in the cultural crosshairs after terminating a Google staffer who had written a controversial memo bashing the company’s diversity policy, and urging company leadership to award jobs, bonuses, and promotions based on performance alone, and not include diversity, per se, in the equation.
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Pichai openly criticized the letter and fired the employee, opening himself up to his own bout of criticism for squashing diversity of thought inside the company’s culture.
Externally, Pichai has also fought off talk of cultural bias in Google’s search engine models, with conservative advocates accusing Google of tipping the scales in favor of left-wing causes in its search algorithms.
In testimony to Congress in December 2018, Pichai strongly denounced the charges, noting that it would be “impossible” for any Google staffer or rogue employees working together to manipulate its search model, as the process is “so complex and has so many steps. "
Since becoming CEO, Pichai has shifted the company’s focus to artificial intelligence (AI), which has been used in its Google Search engine and other products. Alphabet claims it has been an AI-first company since 2016, and that machine learning was first incorporated into Google Search “to suggest better spellings to users searching the web.”
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How has Alphabet’s stock performed under Pichai as CEO?
Since Pichai took over as Alphabet CEO in December 2019, the stock rose more than 150% through the middle of May 2024 when it closed at record highs, compared to the S&P 500’s nearly 70% gain over the same period. Both revenue and profit gained substantially during the period.
Part of the stock’s gain in the past year could be attributed to the popularity of investing in AI-related companies, and Alphabet has made AI a major initiative under Pichai’s leadership.
How does Sundar Pichai spend his money?
Not much is known as to how Pichai spends the millions he has made at Alphabet, but he does give to charity. ProPublica, an investigative journalism group, published a 2022 tax form for Pichai nonprofit Pichai Family Foundation, which listed almost $40 million in assets and dispensed $2.6 million.
Should Alphabet continue to perform well and Pichai remain as CEO, he is likely to continue to receive generous compensation in the coming years and maintain the distinction as one of the wealthiest paid CEOs in the world.
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