Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai hits billionaire status as stock nears all-time high
Pichai, 53 – the company's longest-serving chief executive as of this month – saw his net worth soar to around $1.1 billion as Alphabet shares near an all-time high, according to a Bloomberg report.
Most leaders in the tech industry – including Meta boss Mark Zuckerberg and Nvidia's Jensen Huang – owe their massive fortunes to founding equity stakes in their platforms.
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Pichai, meanwhile, holds just a 0.02% stake in the company.
3 Google CEO Sundar Pichai at the company's annual I/O developers conference in May.
AFP via Getty Images
But his entry into 10-figure status comes after a blowout few years for Alphabet, which has added more than $1 trillion in market value and returned about 120% to investors since early 2023 from optimism around the company's AI opportunities.
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On Wednesday, Alphabet reported sales and profit in the most recent quarter that beat Wall Street estimates.
The newly-crowned billionaire was born into a middle-class family, growing up in a two-room apartment in southern India without a car or telephone.
When he was awarded a scholarship to Stanford University in 1993, his family purchased him a plane ticket to California that cost more than his father's annual salary of $1,000.
He snapped up a job at Google in 2004 and worked his way through the ranks, helping to develop the Chrome browser and later running the Android division.
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In 2015, Pichai was tapped to lead the company – the same year Google restructured itself to become a subsidiary of Alphabet. He was named CEO of Alphabet, as well, in 2019.
3 Sundar Pichai speaking at Google's I/O developers conference.
AFP via Getty Images
'One of the first things I did as CEO was to pivot the company to be focused on AI,' Pichai told Bloomberg in October.
Google made its first AI investment in 2014 with the $400 million purchase of DeepMind.
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Pichai, like most other leaders in the tech industry, has continued to ramp up spending on AI.
The company recorded $50 billion in spending on AI projects last year alone.
On Wednesday, Alphabet hiked its capital expenditures estimate for the full-year by $10 billion, to $85 billion, and reported a 16% jump in research and development spending.
Pichai said during a post-earnings call that the spending was necessary to keep up with a 'growth in demand for cloud customers.'
While Pichai's fortune has soared to new heights, the Google chief could have reaped a lot more in gains if he hadn't sold so much of his stock over the years, according to Bloomberg.
3 Sundar Pichai speaking at a business forum at Stanford University.
REUTERS
The CEO has sold more than $650 million worth of Alphabet stock over the past decade, losing out on more than $1 billion in potential gains.
His stake would be worth more than $2.5 billion if he had held on to all of his shares, according to Bloomberg.
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Some of Pichai's wealth goes toward his cricket obsession, paying $182 million this year for a 49% share of London Spirit, a four-year-old franchise that competes in the British cricket league, The Hundred.
The Google boss purchased his massive California mansion in Los Altos Hills for $40 million, complete with a large infinity pool, state-of-the-art gym, tennis court and mini golf course, according to several news outlets.
Pichai is also reportedly a fan of luxury cars, owning a Mercedes Maybach S650, BMW 730 LD and Mercedes V-Class, according to reports.
While it's unusual for a non-founding executive to breach the billion-dollar mark, it's not totally unheard of.
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Eric Schmidt, 70, who was Google's CEO from 2001 to 2011, is worth $36.6 billion, according to Bloomberg.
Most of his wealth is held in Alphabet stock.
Google co-founders Larry Page, 52, and Sergey Brin, 51, are in an entirely different league with net worths of $171.2 billion and $160.4 billion, respectively. That places them in the top 10 among the richest people in the world.
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