Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella’s pay rose to almost $80 million for 2024

Microsoft’s financial success over the past year led to a major pay bump for CEO Satya Nadella, whose total compensation for 2024 will exceed $79 million.

Most of Nadella’s pay is wrapped up in performance-based stock awards, which are valued at $71.2 million for 2024, according to a Thursday regulatory filing. Last year, Nadella received $39 million in stock awards and $48.5 million in total compensation.

Microsoft’s stock has risen 28% this year and had a $3.16 trillion market cap as of Thursday.

The company’s soaring value has been tied to its investments in artificial intelligence and its ability to show Wall Street revenue growth based on the technology. Microsoft has been folding AI into its Office products and charging customers more for its AI-powered Copilot assistants.

Nadella’s $2.5 million salary for 2024 is the same as last year, and he requested a reduced cash bonus, which the board approved. In 2022, Nadella received a $10 million bonus which was cut down to $6.4 million in 2023 and again dropped to $5.2 million this year.

Microsoft’s board ties compensation to company performance. In May, the company made a pledge to “instill accountability” over cybersecurity by basing part of the senior leadership team’s compensation on its progress in preventing cyberattacks and intrusions, according to a company blog post.

A letter from the board’s compensation committee tucked into the regulatory filing said Nadella agreed Microsoft’s performance was “extremely strong, but reflecting on his personal commitment to security and his role as the CEO, asked the Board to consider departing from the established performance metrics and reduce his cash incentive to reflect his personal accountability for the focus and speed required for the changes that today’s cybersecurity threat landscape showed were necessary.”

If Nadella hadn’t made the request, his cash bonus would have been more than $10 million, according to the board.

Microsoft self-reported in January that state-backed Russian hackers had broke into the company’s corporate email system and accessed accounts of employees on the cybersecurity, legal and leadership teams.

The group of hackers, named Midnight Blizzard by Microsoft, accessed the accounts in late November 2023 and were discovered in mid-January.

Microsoft’s other named executives, including Chief Financial Officer Amy Hood, Chief Commercial Officer Judson Althoff, President Brad Smith and Executive Vice President Christopher Young, all received compensation bumps in 2024 as well.

Nadella’s compensation stretched the company’s CEO-to-median employee ratio, from 250-to-1 in 2023 to 408-to-1 in 2024.

Microsoft’s median compensation, not including Nadella’s, was $193,744 this year, down slightly from 2023. That median has been relatively stagnant since 2022, when it jumped to $190,302 from $176,858 the year before.

That boost came when the company announced in 2022 that it was increasing annual stock ranges by at least 25% for all employees at the senior director level and below.

Microsoft Philanthropies underwrites some Seattle Times journalism projects.