Microsoft’s CEO, Satya Nadella, saw his fiscal 2024 compensation increase by 63 percent, reaching $79.1 million, Reuters news report said.
This surge in salary of Satya Nadella was driven by stock awards, which rose to about $71 million from $39 million the previous year.
The increase coincided with a 31.2 percent rise in Microsoft’s share price during the fiscal year ending June 30, 2024, and the company’s market value surpassing $3 trillion.
Generative AI Investment:
Microsoft’s leadership in the generative AI business, bolstered by its investment in OpenAI, positions the company as a frontrunner in the AI race among tech giants.
Despite the stock awards, Nadella’s cash incentive was $5.2 million, lower than the $10.7 million he was eligible for, as he voluntarily requested a reduction following multiple cybersecurity breaches reported during the fiscal year.
Other High-Profile CEO Earnings:
Apple’s CEO, Tim Cook, earned $63.2 million in 2023.
Nvidia’s CEO, Jensen Huang, earned $34.2 million in fiscal 2024.
The increase in compensation for Satya Nadella reflects Microsoft’s robust performance, particularly in AI, while also acknowledging the challenges the company faced in cybersecurity.
Satya Nadella recently wrote a letter to Microsoft shareholders, focusing on achievements during fiscal 2024.
Microsoft has made significant investments across five continents to enhance cloud and AI capacity, ensuring long-term growth and economic development worldwide.
Azure now offers top AI training and inference capabilities, featuring AI accelerators from AMD, NVIDIA, and Microsoft’s Azure Maia silicon. The introduction of Azure Maia last November has strengthened this offering.
Azure Arc saw 36,000 customers, a 90 percent year-over-year increase, streamlining customer transitions to Azure services while securing and operating workloads globally.
Microsoft announced Phi-3, a family of small, powerful language models, and partnered with OpenAI and G42 to bring AI to the UAE. Azure AI now serves over 60,000 customers.
Microsoft launched Microsoft Fabric, an AI-powered data platform with 14,000 paid customers. The Microsoft Intelligent Data Platform now integrates databases, analytics, and governance, driving insights through a unified solution.
GitHub Copilot, with 1.8 million paid subscribers and 77,000 enterprise customers, drove productivity gains up to 55 percent. The introduction of Copilot Workspace further enhanced developers’ capabilities.
Power Platform Growth: Now with 48 million active users, Power Platform integrates generative AI for creating apps and automating workflows through natural language.
Microsoft 365 Copilot Success: Rapid adoption with nearly 60 percent of Fortune 500 using it, offering up to 70 percent productivity improvement for specific tasks. Pages and Copilot Studio were introduced to enhance AI-driven collaboration.
Microsoft Teams: A new version of Teams is now twice as fast, using 50 percent less memory, with Teams Premium exceeding 3 million seats.
AI-powered Dynamics 365 apps transformed business functions, expanding market reach and boosting productivity in healthcare through DAX Copilot.
Copilot for Security was launched, leveraging Microsoft’s threat intelligence and daily security signals to enhance customer security operations.
Microsoft introduced Copilot+ PCs, AI-ready Windows machines built to deliver top-tier performance in partnership with AMD, Intel, and Qualcomm.
LinkedIn surpassed 1 billion members with record engagement and a 51 percent increase in Premium signups.
With the Activision Blizzard King acquisition, Microsoft added multiple billion-dollar franchises and expanded content to new platforms like Nintendo Switch and Sony PlayStation.
