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Here Are The Highest Paid CEOs In 2024: Where Did Elon Musk, Warren Buffett Rank?
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