The Indian-origin tech leader and Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai has joined the billionaire club, with his net worth reaching $1.1 billion, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index. The Forbes Real-Time Billionaires list places it slightly higher, at $1.2 billion (approximately Rs 10,000 crore)
The Madurai-born Pichai saw a significant decline in his salary in 2024. As per Alphabet’s latest annual report, he earned $10.72 million — a sharp drop from the $226 million he received in 2022. The 2022 figure included a substantial stock award granted every three years.
Despite the reduction in overall compensation, Pichai’s base salary remained unchanged at $2 million. The remainder of his income came from stock-related earnings and executive perks.
Alphabet, the parent company of Google, also increased spending on Pichai’s personal security by 22 percent in 2024, totalling $8.27 million. This included residential security, consultation fees, monitoring services, car and driver support, and protection during travel.
Alphabet Inc. is a multinational holding company that owns Google and several other companies previously part of Google. It was created in 2015 as part of a restructuring of Google to streamline operations.
Pichai’s growing net worth is largely tied to Alphabet’s recent stellar performance. The tech giant posted a second-quarter profit of $28.2 billion on $96.4 billion in revenue, beating market expectations. The company credited artificial intelligence for enhancing all parts of its business.
Alphabet also announced an additional $10 billion in capital expenditure this year to meet rising demand for cloud services.
Following the results, Alphabet’s shares rose by as much as 4.1 per cent in early trading on Thursday — their biggest intraday gain in two months. Pichai, who owns a 0.02 per cent stake in Alphabet, benefited directly from the rally. The company is currently valued at around $440 billion.
Pichai joined Google in 2004, where he led the product management and innovation efforts for a suite of Google's client software products, including Google Chrome and ChromeOS, as well as being largely responsible for Google Drive. In addition, he went on to oversee the development of other applications such as Gmail and Google Maps.
Pichai started his role as the CEO of Google in October 2015 at the completion of the formation of Alphabet Inc. He was appointed to the Alphabet board of directors in 2017.
Pichai was born in 1972 in Madurai to a Tamil family. His mother, Lakshmi, was a stenographer, and his father, Regunatha Pichai, was an electrical engineer.
