Meet the new highest-paid CEO in America, who earns more than CEOs of Google, Microsoft, Nvidia and Apple

In a shake-up of the highest-paid CEO rankings, Jim Anderson, the relatively lesser-known chief executive of laser and network equipment maker Coherent, has taken the top spot in the US with a compensation package of $101.5 million for 2024. Anderson, who took the reins at the Pennsylvania-based company in June 2024, edged out high-profile names like Starbucks CEO Laxman Narasimhan ($95.8 million), Microsoft’s Satya Nadella ($79.1 million), Apple’s Tim Cook ($74.6 million), Disney’s Bob Iger ($40.6 million), and Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang ($34.17 million), a report from a market research company has said.
According to data from executive analytics firm Equilar (via Fortune), nearly all of Anderson’s earnings — more than $100 million — came from stock awards, making him the only CEO among Equilar’s top 100 earners to crack the nine-figure mark. His base salary for the year was a modest $81,538, and that is due to his midyear start, supplemented by a $500,000 signing bonus.
Notably, Google CEO Sundar Pichai has not been included in the top 100 list.
Recently, Google's parent company Alphabet revealed Pichai's earnings for the year 2024 in its 2025 Proxy Statement. Pichai's total compensation for the year 2024 is $10.72 million – a significant decrease as compared to his $226 million earnings of 2022 – mainly attributed to the absence of the triennial stock award that Pichai received in the previous reporting period.
While the overall compensation saw a considerable reduction, details of the breakdown reveal a base salary of $2 million for Pichai. The remaining portion of his 2024 package consisted of stock awards and other compensation.

Equilar’s study, which analysed proxy filings through March 31 for companies with $1 billion or more in revenue, also revealed broader trends: median CEO pay rose to $25.6 million in 2024, up 9.5% from the previous year. The biggest contributor? Stock-based compensation, which now accounts for nearly 75% of total CEO pay, and saw a 40.5% year-over-year jump.