The report notes that $1 billion figure is all that Nadella has received from Microsoft, including equity grants, dividends, bonuses, and annual salary. Microsoft’s shares have returned over 1000% since Nadella became Microsoft CEO in 2014.
A Microsoft spokesperson told Bloomberg that Nadella “does not have a net worth of a billion dollars or more.” However, Bloomberg also estimates that most of the billion-dollar kitty of Nadella has earned came from equity grants, payouts (dependent on his and the company’s performance), cash bonuses, and dividends. The report also says that it is assumed that all the payouts are “taxed at the top federal rates.”
Microsoft under Nadella as CEO
“Boringly excellent,” is how one Wall Street analyst described Microsoft’s quarterly results a few years ago. Under Nadella, Microsoft became a $1 trillion company and now is the second-largest tech company behind Apple. Incidentally, Apple CEO Tim Cook is the other tech CEO who has hit the $1 billion mark as head of the company,
It has been quite an impressive turnaround for the Richmond-based company in the last nine years since Nadella took over as CEO in 2014. Microsoft had fallen behind – at least in terms of perception – the bigwigs of Silicon Valley but a series of measures and initiatives has brought it back into the reckoning big time.
Now, Microsoft isn’t even considered “boring” — if that was the case to begin with — as it has ushered in quite a few AI innovations. Microsoft’s $1 billion investment in OpenAI also has paid off huge dividends. OpenAI is the company behind ChatGPT and Dall-E — both AI tools — and stock market analysts have suggested that the surge in Microsoft’s share has been because of its AI bets.