According to Bloomberg, Pichai, who is Google’s chief executive officer, received 273,328 Class C shares on Feb. 3 from the company, which will vest in quarterly increments through 2019 if he remains in the office, according to a securities filing by Alphabet.
According to the Financial Times, the latest grant lifts the value of Mr Pichai’s equity stake in Alphabet to $650m, making the Indian born executive, one of the tech world’s richest non-founders. However, his wealth pales in comparison to Eric Schmidt, Google’s former chief executive and currently its executive chairman, whose shares in the company worth a whopping $3.2 billion.
Pichai, was the former deputy of Larry Page, Google co-founder, he reached the top spot of running the search engine, following the reorganization into holding company Alphabet last year.
Alphabet also awarded other big pay awards this year including a $42.8 million restricted stock to Diane Greene, a co-founder and previous CEO of VMware Inc, a software developer. And stocks grant amounting to $40m for Ruth Porat, Alphabet chief financial officer; she left Morgan Stanley and joined Google last year.
Google is known to grant equity awards to its executives after every two years, a strategy Google says “encourages executives to take a long-term view of the business.”