Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang received a 60% increase in total compensation for the past year's work, thanks to the enormous success Nvidia has been blessed with due to the AI boom. WSJ reports that Huang's compensation last year came out to $34.2 million, which is $12.8 million more than what the tech billionaire received a year earlier. Who wouldn't love to see that sort of raise?
Jensen also received a few other bonuses last year as well, including stock awards valued at roughly $7 million higher than fiscal 2023, and on top of that he received a $4 million cash bonus and a $2.5 million bonus for other various things.
Overall, Huang's total additional income comes out to roughly $44 million. While this might sound like a lot of money, Huang's pay increase is completely laughable in light of the absurd amount of money the tech billionaire is worth in stocks alone.
At the time of writing, Jensen's Nvidia stock alone is worth $82.5 billion. Reports suggest that Jensen owns a whopping 86,752,723 (86.7 million) shares in his own company, which is how he managed to gather so much wealth. Nvidia stock is at its highest point ever right now too, hovering around the $954 mark as of May 16, 2024.
This year alone, Huang has increase his portfolio by $40 billion. Nvidia stock was valued at $482 at the beginning of January, and five months later, it's nearly doubled to $950. To put it another way, Huang can make — or lose! — more money in a single day from stock fluctuations than his $44 million bonus from last year.
And if we flip back to the prior year, Nvidia stock started 2023 at around $146. By January 2, 2024, it was at $482, more than triple the price. That means Jensen went from having around $12.6 billion in shares to $41.8 billion. Put into that context, his 60% raise from Nvidia only amounts to 0.1% of the increased wealth he gained during 2023.
It's dizzying to think about how much money Jensen is actually worth, but that's the world we live in right now. Currently, Jensen Huang is rated as the 20th richest person in the world, right above Walmart's Alice Walton and right below Walmart's Rob Walton. This has given Jensen star-like power, with big names including Star Wars' George Lucas, Kendrick Lamar, and others attending his GTC 2024 keynote.
Nvidia's wealth doesn't appear to be slowing down anytime soon. Nvidia's stocks have remained bullish since the beginning of 2023, with stocks 10xing Nvidia's value since January 2023. It appears this trend will continue as the industry's insatiable demand for AI accelerators continues to carry on for the foreseeable future. (Don't treat this as financial advice.)
