Google just gave Sundar Pichai a $692M pay package

In Brief

Sundar Pichai’s new pay package could be worth $692 million. Per a filing first spied by the FT, Alphabet has structured a three-year deal for its Google CEO that could make him one of the highest-paid executives on the planet — but most of it is tied to performance, including new stock incentives linked to Waymo and Wing, its drone delivery venture.

What’s striking is how little public fascination Pichai attracts compared to Google’s founders. Larry Page and Sergey Brin — the second- and fourth richest people in the world — have lately captured headlines for a different reason entirely; both have been snapping up lavish Miami properties, widely seen as a response to California’s proposed Billionaire Tax Act — a ballot initiative targeting the state’s roughly 200 billionaires with a one-time 5% levy on net worth exceeding $1 billion. Page reportedly spent over $173 million on two mansions in Coconut Grove, Florida, recently, while Brin was just linked to a $51 million megamansion 14 miles away, atop two earlier purchases totaling $92 million.

Pichai, by contrast, remains quietly rooted in Los Altos, California, as far as the public knows. He’s a billionaire, too — the nearly sevenfold growth in Google’s market cap since he took the helm in 2015 has made the stock he’s accumulated along the way hugely valuable. He and his wife currently hold shares worth nearly $500 million, with another estimated $650 million sold as of last summer, per Bloomberg’s calculations.

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