Elon Musk Tops List of Highest Paid Fortune 500 CEOs with $23.5 Billion

According to Fortune’s list of the top 10 highest-paid CEOs of the Fortune 500, Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk received the highest compensation in 2021 while Apple CEO Tim Cook trailed just behind. Musk’s realized compensation of $23.5 billion in 2021 dwarfs Cook’s otherwise impressive $770.5 million haul.

Fortune reports that Elon Musk has topped the publications list of the most highly compensated CEOs on the Fortune 500. Musk realized compensation worth almost $23.5 billion in 2021, mostly from exercising Tesla stock options that were awarded in a 2018 “moonshot” grant. Tesla was ranked 65 on this year’s Fortune 500.

(Pool/Getty)

( Justin Sullivan/Getty)

After Musk sold massive amounts of Tesla shares at the end of 2021, the stock has seen a major downturn recently, hitting an 11-month low as many investors worry about the company and its CEO Elon Musk’s ongoing battle to acquire Twitter. Earlier this month Tesla stock fell by seven percent to $628, pushing the stock down almost 49 percent from its all-time high in November and wiping over $30 billion from the company’s market capitalization. The company’s market cap has fallen to $650 billion from a high of over $1.2 trillion.

Apple CEO Tim Cook trailed far behind Musk with compensation of $770.5 million in 2021. However, this compensation isn’t from a salary but a 10-year granting of shares worth $1.7 billion. Cook gets an annual salary from Apple, he was further awarded $81 million in stock in 2021 as well as $630,630 for personal security and $712,455 for private jet use.

Fortune counted the salary and bonuses Cook received as well as “other compensation such as vested restricted stock grants, long-term incentive payouts and perks, and stock gains in the form of value realized from exercising stock options.”

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