Elon Musk, Tim Cook, and other male tech execs top list of highest paid CEOs

The Tesla CEO had a very good 2019.
 By 
Sasha Lekach
 on 
Elon Musk, Tim Cook, and other male tech execs top list of highest paid CEOs
2019 was a good year for Elon. Credit: Yasin Ozturk / Anadolu Agency via Getty Images

Elon Musk is number one.

He tops Bloomberg's list of the highest paid CEOs of 2019, along with plenty of other tech execs, while Wall Street barely cracked the top 10. The first woman appears on the list at number 19.

Musk, head of Tesla, SpaceX, and The Boring Company, made nearly $600 million last year, though not from his salary alone. He's known for forgoing any annual base pay. Instead, his earnings come from Tesla stock.


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Recently, the electric car company's stock hit $1,400 a share. That made Tesla the most valuable car company in the world. (Its production workers, by the way, report making under $20 per hour.)

Second on Bloomberg's list is Apple's Tim Cook. He brings in $3 million from his annual salary. But with Apple equity and other perks, his 2019 total was more than $133 million.

Other well-known tech executives round out the top 10, including Alphabet's Sundar Pichai (no. 8 at $86 million), Microsoft's Satya Nadella (no. 9 at $77 million), and Intel's Robert Swan (no. 7 at $99 million).

Only four women made the top 100 list. That includes Facebook’s Sheryl Sandberg, who isn’t a CEO, but the company's chief operating officer. She is number 72 with a total earnings package of nearly $32 million.

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Sasha Lekach

Sasha is a news writer at Mashable's San Francisco office. She's an SF native who went to UC Davis and later received her master's from the UC Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism. She's been reporting out of her hometown over the years at Bay City News (news wire), SFGate (the San Francisco Chronicle website), and even made it out of California to write for the Chicago Tribune. She's been described as a bookworm and a gym rat.

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