Google CEO Sundar Pichai cashes in on $500m

THE tech giant boss is set to have a great week. He’s about to cash in on shares given to him in 2014 — that are worth 90 per cent more that what they were back then.

GOOGLE CEO Sundar Pichai has 500 million reasons to smile as he looks set to cash in on a massive investment.

Mr Pichai’s award of 353,939 restricted shares he received before a promotion in 2014 will vest, according to Bloomberg.

That means the Google boss effectively gains the right to own its stock.

The grant is worth about $500 million which makes it one of the largest single payouts to a public company executive in recent years, Bloomberg reported.

Alphabet’s stock has surged in the past five years, meaning Pichai’s payday is worth 90 per cent more than it was when he received the restricted shares in 2014.

Google CEO Sundar Pichai is partially responsible for his huge pay packet. Picture: Christoph Dernbach/dpa

Since assuming the role, Alphabet’s shares have risen more than 50 per cent, meaning the 90 per cent improvement on Pichai’s payday has a lot to do with his own work.

The 45-year-old has led Alphabet Inc’s Google since 2015 when he took over many of Larry Page’s responsibilities.

He received the shares before he was promoted to senior vice president of products in 2014.

But Pichai’s payday isn’t the first time he’s come into a giant windfall.

In 2016, Pichai received $263 million ($US200 million) compensation for running the internet company that makes nearly all the money for Alphabet Inc.

He also received a $855,000 ($US650,000) salary in 2016 in addition to personal security services and air travel valued at $490,000 ($US372,000).

In 2017, Page dropped Pichai’s salary to $US1, instead paying the Google exec in annual compensation packages.

The measly salary won’t have much impact on his hefty fortune.

In 2017, Pichai was worth an estimated $55 billion.

Pichai joined Google way back in 2004 and wasn’t originally pegged as someone who would take on a senior role.

He was originally hired as a semiconductor engineer and managed the Google Toolbar — software used to assist people searching on other browsers.

He also had a big role in developing Google Chrome and Google Drive.

But it didn’t take long for Pichai to rise rapidly through the Google ranks, eventually catching Larry Page’s eye who turned the engineer into his protege.

In an October 2014 memo, announcing Pichai’s promotion, Page praised the man he’d mentoree for years.

“Sundar has a tremendous ability to see what’s ahead and mobilise teams around the super important stuff,” Page wrote in his memo.

Since assuming the senior role, Pichai has forged his own path in the tech world — pioneering Google’s artificial intelligence research.

Years ago, the company invested in fundamental building blocks for artificial intelligence including voice recognition, language understand and machine translation long before any other tech company had even considered it.

“We have this vision of a shift from mobile-first to an AI-first world over many years,” Pichai told Forbes.

Pichai also plans to “reinvent” every device on the planet during his time as CEO.

— With AP