Definition Box: What counts as “CEO pay”? “Highest-paid CEO” rankings measure total disclosed compensation awarded in a fiscal year, not cash deposited in a bank account. The figure combines base salary, cash bonuses, the grant-date value of stock and option awards, and perks. For most top earners, more than 70% of the number is equity that only pays out years later, and only if performance targets are hit. A $200 million “pay package” is mostly a contingent promise, not a paycheck.
The headline numbers from the 2025 proxy season are the largest in years. Median pay for the CEOs of the biggest U.S. public companies jumped 23.2% to $29.4 million, the sharpest annual rise since the post-pandemic boom of 2021. Five chief executives cleared $100 million. Two cleared $200 million. And the list at the very top looks almost nothing like it did a year ago.
That churn is the first clue that these rankings are widely misread. Below is the verified top 10 from Equilar’s 2026 study, followed by the part most listicles skip: what these figures actually mean, why the biggest name in the conversation is missing, and the one structural lesson founders should take from it.
The Top 10 Highest-Paid CEOs of 2025
All figures are total disclosed compensation for fiscal year 2025, sourced from company proxy statements filed by March 31, 2026 and compiled by Equilar in partnership with Barron’s.
| Rank | CEO | Company (Ticker) | Total Compensation | YoY Change | FY2025 Revenue |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Niraj Shah | Wayfair (W) | $280.8M | +99,088% | $12.5B |
| 2 | Hock E. Tan | Broadcom (AVGO) | $205.3M | +7,692% | $63.9B |
| 3 | Peter Gassner | Veeva Systems (VEEV) | $172.4M | +40,875% | $2.7B |
| 4 | David Solomon | Goldman Sachs (GS) | $118.9M | +280% | $59.4B |
| 5 | Sridhar Ramaswamy | Snowflake (SNOW) | $101.3M | N/A | $3.6B |
| 6 | Nikesh Arora | Palo Alto Networks (PANW) | $99.7M | +72% | $9.2B |
| 7 | Satya Nadella | Microsoft (MSFT) | $96.5M | +22% | $281.7B |
| 8 | Charles Scharf | Wells Fargo (WFC) | $94.5M | +212% | $80.0B |
| 9 | Lip-Bu Tan | Intel (INTC) | $93.0M | N/A | $52.9B |
| 10 | Robin Vince | BNY Mellon (BK) | $83.5M | +258% | $20.1B |
1. Niraj Shah, Wayfair: $280.8 million
The Wayfair co-founder tops the list almost entirely on a single one-time performance grant, which is why his year-over-year change reads as a nonsensical 99,088%. The award vests over multiple years and only pays out if Wayfair’s stock hits demanding targets. Shah’s actual take-home in cash is a rounding error against the headline. This is the textbook case of a “mega-grant” inflating a single disclosure year.
2. Hock Tan, Broadcom: $205.3 million
Broadcom tied Tan’s 2025 award directly to revenue targets for its AI products, a clean example of how the AI boom is now written into pay design. As with Shah, the eye-watering percentage increase reflects a fresh multi-year equity grant rather than a raise. Of every name here, Tan has arguably the strongest case that the package will pay out, given Broadcom’s AI-driven run.
3. Peter Gassner, Veeva Systems: $172.4 million
The least famous name in the top three, and a telling one. Veeva is a roughly $2.7 billion revenue software company, far smaller than the giants below it. Gassner ranks this high purely on the size of his equity grant, proving that company scale and CEO pay rank have decoupled at the top end.
4. David Solomon, Goldman Sachs: $118.9 million
Here the numbers get genuinely confusing, and it is worth slowing down. Goldman publicly announced Solomon’s 2025 pay as $47 million, up 21% from the prior year. Equilar lists $118.9 million. Both are correct. The $47 million is his annual compensation; the larger figure includes a one-time retention and incentive award layered on top. When you see two wildly different numbers for the same CEO, this gap is usually why.
5. Sridhar Ramaswamy, Snowflake: $101.3 million
A first full year as CEO drove a new-hire-style equity package, hence the “N/A” change. Snowflake is betting heavily that Ramaswamy can turn the data-cloud company into an AI platform, and the comp structure reflects that long-horizon bet.
6. Nikesh Arora, Palo Alto Networks: $99.7 million
One of the more consistent high earners on the list, Arora has repeatedly landed near the top over multiple years. His +72% change is modest by these standards, which paradoxically makes his package one of the more “normal” recurring ones here.
7. Satya Nadella, Microsoft: $96.5 million
The highest-paid CEO running a true mega-cap. Nadella’s $281.7 billion revenue dwarfs everyone above him on this list combined. His salary is just $2.5 million; the remaining ~$84 million sits in stock awards tied to Microsoft’s performance. A 22% bump in a year when Microsoft’s AI strategy paid off is, by the standards of this list, restrained.
8. Charles Scharf, Wells Fargo: $94.5 million
Scharf’s pay surged after the Federal Reserve lifted Wells Fargo’s multi-year asset cap, a regulatory milestone the board rewarded directly. This is pay-for-performance working as designed: a specific, measurable outcome triggered a specific payout.
9. Lip-Bu Tan, Intel: $93.0 million
Brought in to turn around a struggling Intel, Tan received a large front-loaded equity package, the standard playbook for a high-stakes turnaround hire. The “N/A” change reflects his first year. Whether this becomes real money depends entirely on whether Intel recovers.
10. Robin Vince, BNY Mellon: $83.5 million
Rounding out the list, Vince’s +258% jump reflects strong performance at the world’s largest custody bank. Like most names here, the bulk is equity tied to multi-year results.
The $1 Trillion Asterisk: Why Elon Musk Is Not on This List
Any honest “highest-paid CEO” article has to address the elephant in the room. Tesla shareholders approved a pay package for Elon Musk potentially worth up to $1 trillion over roughly a decade. That number makes everyone above look like a rounding error. So why is he absent?
Two reasons, and both matter for understanding these rankings:
- Methodology timing. Equilar’s list only includes companies that filed proxy statements by March 31, 2026. Tesla had not, so Musk was excluded on a technicality, not on merit.
- It is not realized pay. The $1 trillion is a performance grant. Musk receives essentially nothing unless Tesla hits a series of extraordinary market-cap and operational milestones over the next ten years. It is the most extreme version of the same principle running through this entire list: the biggest “pay” is contingent equity, not guaranteed cash.
Lists that crown Musk the highest-paid CEO with a $1 trillion figure are comparing a ten-year contingent jackpot to other people’s single-year grants. It is not an apples-to-apples comparison, and treating it as one is the single most common error in this genre.
What These Numbers Actually Mean (And Don’t)
Three distinctions separate an informed reading of this data from a misleading one.
| What people assume | What is actually true |
|---|---|
| The CEO “earned” this in cash | 70%+ is equity that vests over years, often contingent on hitting targets. Much of it may never pay out. |
| A huge YoY % increase means a raise | The biggest jumps (Shah, Tan, Gassner) are one-time multi-year grants front-loaded into a single disclosure year. |
| One headline number per CEO | “Annual pay” and “total disclosed award” can differ by tens of millions for the same person (see Solomon). |
The pattern is consistent. The CEOs at the top of this list are not the ones with the biggest salaries. They are the ones who received large, multi-year, performance-linked equity grants that happened to be disclosed this year. This is a direct product of post-Dodd-Frank reforms and “Say on Pay” rules, which pushed boards to tie executive pay to long-term stock performance rather than guaranteed cash.
The Context Number That Reframes Everything
The median CEO-to-worker pay ratio at these companies reached 341:1 in 2025, up from 300:1 a year earlier. The median employee at an Equilar 100 company earned about $99,229. The median CEO earned $29.4 million.
That gap is the real story behind the rankings, and it is widening even as worker pay rose nearly 10%. Expect it to stay a live political and governance issue, especially as companies simultaneously cut headcount and pour money into AI.
The Founder Takeaway: Pay Is a Strategy Document
For entrepreneurs and operators, the useful lesson here is not “CEOs make too much.” It is structural. The highest packages in corporate America are overwhelmingly:
- Equity-heavy, not cash-heavy. Base salary is often the smallest line item. Some top earners take $1 in salary.
- Contingent on multi-year performance. Payout depends on hitting specific stock-price or operational targets.
- Designed to align the executive with shareholders. The CEO only wins big if the owners win big.
When you design compensation for yourself or for the executives you hire, this is the template that survived two decades of shareholder scrutiny. Minimize fixed cash, maximize performance-linked equity, and tie the upside to outcomes you can measure. A pay package, done right, is not a reward. It is a strategy document that tells everyone exactly what the company is trying to achieve.
Frequently Asked Questions
Who is the highest-paid CEO in 2025? Among major U.S. public companies that filed proxies by the March 2026 cutoff, Wayfair co-founder Niraj Shah ranked first at $280.8 million, almost entirely from a one-time multi-year performance grant. Elon Musk’s potential $1 trillion Tesla package is larger but is a decade-long contingent award, not realized single-year pay, and Tesla had not yet filed when the ranking was compiled.
Why are CEO pay numbers so different across sources? Different sources measure different things. Some report the grant-date value of total awards (Equilar’s method), others report the “annual” pay a company chooses to publicize, and others report “compensation actually paid,” an SEC metric that recalculates equity based on real stock performance. The same CEO can have three very different “pay” figures in the same year.
Is this money the CEO actually receives? Mostly no, at least not immediately. More than 70% of top-end CEO pay is stock and options that vest over several years and often require performance targets to be met. If the stock underperforms or targets are missed, large portions are never paid.
Why did some CEOs see increases of thousands of percent? Those increases (Niraj Shah’s +99,088%, Hock Tan’s +7,692%) reflect new multi-year equity grants disclosed in a single year against a small prior-year base. They are not annual raises.
How does CEO pay compare to worker pay? The median CEO-to-worker pay ratio at the largest U.S. companies was 341:1 in 2025, meaning the typical top CEO earned 341 times the typical employee at the same company.
The Business Model Analyst Take
The 2025 rankings tell a clear story once you decode them. Pay at the top surged 23.2%, but the biggest packages are concentrated, equity-heavy, performance-contingent grants, not cash. The list churns year to year because one-time mega-grants dominate the top. And the most-discussed name in the conversation, Elon Musk, is not even on it, for reasons that reveal exactly how these numbers work. Read the figures as what they are, contingent bets on future performance, and the rankings stop being a shock and start being a lesson in how modern executive pay is built.
Data source: Equilar 100, 2026 edition, compiled in partnership with Barron’s. Compensation figures reflect fiscal year 2025 as disclosed in proxy statements filed by March 31, 2026.
