Sundar Pichai's Net Worth has Surged Since Becoming Alphabet's CEO

Indian-American technology executive Sundar Pichai currently serves as the CEO of Alphabet, the parent company of Google.

Alphabet is also the parent of self-driving company Waymo and drone delivery service provider Wing. The other Alphabet businesses that fall under Pichai’s purview are video site YouTube, wireless service provider Google Fi, balloon internet technology provider Loon, and life-science business Verily.

Overall, Alphabet is valued at nearly $2 trillion, so as you can imagine, Pichai's net worth is a bit more than your standard executive. So, just how much is Pichai worth? Keep reading to find out!

Pichai received $650,000 in annual base salary in 2019. But his total compensation for the year, according to Bloomberg, comprising mostly of stock grants, hit $281 million. Pichai became Alphabet CEO in December 2019.

The board tapped him for that top job after Larry Page and Sergey Brin stepped down from their active roles of overseeing the day-to-day running of the conglomerate. At the time, Page served as Alphabet CEO while Brin served as its president.

Alphabet’s board raised Pichai’s base salary to $2 million from $650,000 as part of the deal, making him CEO of the conglomerate and its Google subsidiary.

Pichai’s new salary plan took effect in January 2020. Moreover, Pichai is eligible for $120 million in time-based stock awards and $90 million in performance-based stock awards.

In 2022, his net worth is estimated at $1.3 billion.

The time-based stock grant requires Pichai to stay with Alphabet until 2023. The performance-based stock award requires Pichai to run Alphabet well enough that its shares would perform better than the S&P 100 Index — something he seems to be achieving.

However, some Alphabet shareholders have challenged Pichai’s generous compensation package in the past.

Pichai just seems focused on Alphabet's future and that includes blockchain and Web3. In February 2022, Pichai revealed that the company was "definitely looking at blockchain and such an interesting and powerful technology with broad applications."

"So as a company, we are looking at how we might contribute to the [Web3] ecosystem and add value," Pichai said. "Just one example, our Cloud team is looking at how they can support our customers' needs in building, transacting, storing value, and deploying new products on blockchain-based platform."

On Jan. 20, the Google CEO sent his staffers a letter announcing a 12,000 people lay off. Pichai follows the lead of other tech companies like Amazon and Microsoft, who laid off 28,000 employees altogether. He said in his memo to the Google staff,

"Googlers,

I have some difficult news to share. We've decided to reduce our workforce by approximately 12,000 roles. We've already sent a separate email to employees in the US who are affected. In other countries, this process will take longer due to local laws and practices."

Read the full memo here.

Pichai was born in 1972 in the Indian city of Chennai. He started his schooling in the local town of Ashok Nagar. Pichai later went to the Indian Institute of Technology Madras. He earned a degree in metallurgical engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology Kharagpur.

Pichai moved to the United States to further his studies, earning a Master of Sciences degree in material sciences and engineering from Stanford University. He proceeded to earn an MBA from the University of Pennsylvania.

Pichai is married to Anjali Pichai. They met while both were taking their undergraduate studies at the Indian Institute of Technology.

Both studied engineering. While Pichai studied metallurgical engineering, his future wife took chemical engineering studies. They share two children, a son named Kiran and a daughter named Kavya.