Meet the CEOs Who Pull In More Than $100 Million a Year
Chief executives at Pinterest, Peloton and Hertz are outearning Apple’s Tim Cook—and hundreds of others leading bigger companies
4 min
The highest-paid CEOs aren’t always the ones running the biggest companies.
The chief executives of Hertz, Peloton and Pinterest all earned more than $100 million in 2022, topping almost every CEO in the S&P 500 including Apple’s Tim Cook, who made $99 million. Also on that list: The man who runs CS Disco, a cloud-services provider that caters to attorneys and has a market capitalisation of about $500 million.
Six of the 10 highest-paid CEOs last year ran companies that weren’t in the S&P 500, according to C-Suite Comp, an executive-pay-data and analytics company. The S&P 500 comprises most of the biggest U.S. publicly traded companies.
Stephen Schwarzman of private-equity giant Blackstone earned the biggest pay package overall, at $253 million. Blackstone, larger than many S&P 500 companies at a market capitalisation of more than $100 billion, has a corporate structure similar to dual share-class setups that until recentlyhave kept other companies out of the index.
Schwarzman edged out Sundar Pichai, who runs Google parent Alphabet and received a pay package of $226 million—a total that put Pichai atop The Wall Street Journal’s annual CEO pay survey earlier this year. Pichai was followed in the earlier survey by Live Nation’s Michael Rapino, at $139 million.
Some executives in C-Suite Comp’s top-paid list, such as the leaders of Pinterest and Hertz, wouldn’t make the Journal’s annual pay ranking because those CEOs started during the year. The Journal’s analysis only ranks CEOs who served the full year.
Median pay for CEOs of S&P 500 companies slipped to $14.5 million last year, from $14.7 million the year before.
More broadly, nine CEOs made more than $100 million in 2022, of nearly 4,000 publicly traded U.S. companies in C-Suite Comp’s analysis. That is down from more than 20 a year earlier, as equity awards slimmed down, the firm said.
The bulk of CEO pay usually consists of restricted stock or options, the value of which can fluctuate. Many equity awards often only vest—becoming fully the executive’s property—if certain performance targets are met, or if the executive remains employed for a specified period.
For Schwarzman, Blackstone’s co-founder, about $190 million of his pay came in the form of carried interest and incentive-fee allocations. Carried interest refers to a cut of profit above a target that some investment managers receive. A further $58.8 million consisted of shares in real-estate investment trusts that Blackstone manages.
Schwarzman’s total pay was more than 50% larger than his 2021 package of $160 million. Total return for Blackstone shares, including the company’s dividend, was minus 40% last year, compared with minus 18% for the S&P 500. Through late June this year, Blackstone’s total return was 22%, compared with about 14% for the index.
Schwarzman owns almost 20% of Blackstone, a stake qualifying for dividends of about $1 billion in 2022.
A Blackstone spokesman said nearly 30% of Schwarzman’s 2022 pay reflects investment performance in 2021, in a period when the company’s share price also doubled. “Virtually all his compensation is carried interest and incentive fees—which are only paid when we deliver for our customers,” the spokesman said. He declined to say how much of Schwarzman’s pay was in cash.
At Hertz, Stephen Scherr’s total pay of $182 million included $3.4 million in salary and bonus. A further $178 million in restricted stock is structured to vest through 2026, much of it only if the company’s shares reach 90-day average price targets ranging up to nearly double its current share price.
In its annual proxy statement, Hertz said two price targets had already been met, meaning about $50 million in shares at recent prices stand to vest if Scherr stays employed through 2026, in addition to roughly $20 million that vested on Dec. 31.
Scherr, who earlier worked as Goldman Sachs Group’s chief financial officer, took Hertz’s top job in February 2022, about seven months after the rental-car chain emerged from bankruptcy-court protection.
Hertz shares fell 22% during Scherr’s tenure last year, while the S&P 500 fell 16%. The company valued Scherr’s equity award at roughly $128 million at year-end, securities filings show. Hertz shares were up about 20% this year through June 30.
A Hertz spokesman declined to comment beyond company disclosures.
Peloton’s Barry McCarthy started as CEO in February 2022, after stints as chief financial officer at Spotify and Netflix. His $168 million pay package at Peloton was almost entirely in stock options, which vest monthly over four years.
With Peloton trading near $7.50 in recent days, those eight million options are underwater, meaning they would cost more to exercise than the underlying shares are worth.
Peloton shares have fallen about 3% this year through June 30, and fell 79% in 2022 as declining demand left the company with a glut of the exercise bikes it sells.
Peloton representatives didn’t respond to requests for comment.
Of the $123 million Pinterest awarded Bill Ready last year, nearly $101 million came in stock options and $21.5 million in restricted stock made up most of the rest. Both were awarded in connection with his hiring as CEO in late June 2022.
The equity awards vest quarterly over four years if Ready remains employed. By year-end, Ready’s 2022 stock and option awards had increased in value to $153.6 million, Pinterest said in its securities filings.
Pinterest shares rose just over 20% last year. So far this year, Pinterest shares have risen about 13% through June 30.
A Pinterest spokeswoman said Ready isn’t expected to receive additional equity during his first four years, and the company sees his 2022 equity awards as the equivalent of about $30 million a year over that time. Ready also had to buy and hold $5 million in shares.
“If the company performs well, then Bill’s options have value,” the spokeswoman said. “If the company doesn’t perform well, then Bill’s compensation is going to be impacted.”
CS Disco, a 10-year-old Austin, Texas, company that sells online services to law firms, attorneys and legal-services companies, is the smallest company in the top-paid set. CEO Kiwi Camara, a co-founder, received $500,000 in salary plus stock options valued at $109 million, an award shareholders approved in a vote last year.
Camara’s options vest only if the company’s 90-day average share price reaches any of six targets through 2032, or if the company is acquired or Camara loses his job under certain circumstances.
Camara earned just under $1 million total in 2021, the year the company went public in late July. Its shares closed at $8.22 on Friday, up 30% for the year so far but down more than 75% from the company’s share price at the start of 2022.
CS Disco didn’t respond to requests for comment.
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From making unpopular decisions to learning when to listen, leaders from five businesses reveal what nobody prepared them for — and how running a company has challenged their expectations.
Technology and semiconductor shares fell sharply as investors questioned the debt financing the AI infrastructure boom and confronted higher rates and Chinese competition.
Technology and semiconductor shares fell sharply as investors questioned the debt financing the AI infrastructure boom and confronted higher rates and Chinese competition.
4 minA sharp technology sell-off has exposed a new anxiety on global markets: whether the enormous borrowing behind the artificial-intelligence infrastructure boom can generate sufficient returns as interest rates rise and Chinese competition intensifies.
The artificial-intelligence investment boom has powered technology shares, semiconductor manufacturers and data-centre operators to extraordinary heights. Last week, investors were given a reminder that much of this expansion is being built with borrowed money.
The technology-heavy Nasdaq Composite fell 4.5 per cent over the week ended October 16, its weakest performance since late June. Semiconductor shares suffered an even deeper correction, with the Philadelphia Semiconductor Index losing about 11.4 per cent.
The selling spread quickly through global markets. Micron Technology fell 14.6 per cent over the week, while South Korea’s Samsung Electronics and SK Hynix dropped approximately 18 per cent and 24 per cent respectively.
This was more than a routine bout of profit-taking. Investors were reassessing three interconnected risks: higher interest rates, the rapidly expanding debt burden attached to AI infrastructure and the prospect of stronger competition from Chinese memory-chip manufacturers.
The debt behind the AI build-out
Artificial intelligence requires a physical infrastructure network of enormous scale. Data centres must be built, advanced processors purchased, power supplies secured and cooling systems installed before customers begin generating meaningful revenue from them.
Technology companies are increasingly supplementing their own cash with corporate bonds, syndicated loans, equipment leases, private credit and project-level financing.
JPMorgan describes the emerging funding model as a combination of conventional corporate borrowing and project finance tied to individual data-centre assets. In Australia, the Reserve Bank estimates that syndicated loans accounted for approximately three-quarters of data-centre financing during 2025 and 2026 to date.
The numbers are becoming large enough to affect broader credit markets. The Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas has cited Wall Street estimates suggesting AI-related investment-grade bond issuance could approach US$300 billion in 2026 alone.
That borrowing is not automatically problematic. Debt can be an efficient way to finance long-lived infrastructure when future revenue is sufficiently predictable. The concern is that AI technology, customer demand and computing economics are changing much faster than the repayment schedules attached to the assets.
A data centre financed today may carry debt for years. Investors must therefore make assumptions about future utilisation rates, electricity prices, chip performance, customer concentration and the amount businesses will ultimately pay for AI computing.
When interest rates rise, those assumptions become less forgiving.
Inflation changes the calculation
September’s US inflation data intensified the pressure. Consumer prices increased 3.7 per cent over the year, ahead of market expectations and up from 3.4 per cent in August.
The hotter reading reduced confidence that interest rates would fall quickly and pushed bond yields higher. That matters particularly for companies whose valuations depend on profits expected well into the future, as well as highly leveraged infrastructure operators that may need to refinance.
CoreWeave has emerged as a closely watched test case. The specialist cloud-computing company has accumulated substantial debt and lease obligations to build AI capacity, while relying on a concentrated group of large technology customers.
Its shares fell sharply during the sell-off, while the cost of insuring its debt against default climbed. CoreWeave has argued that its contracted backlog more than covers its obligations and that financial markets do not always understand its business model. Nevertheless, its securities have become a proxy for investor confidence in debt-funded AI infrastructure.
Oracle, another major investor in AI computing capacity, fell 8.8 per cent in Friday trading, while CoreWeave dropped 15.5 per cent.
The question is shifting from how much AI infrastructure can be built to how profitably it can be operated.
China adds another source of pressure
Interest rates were not the only catalyst. Reports of advances by Chinese memory-chip producer ChangXin Memory Technologies raised concerns that lower-cost Chinese products could increase competition across the global semiconductor industry.
Memory chips are essential to AI systems, but the industry is historically cyclical. Periods of tight supply and high pricing can encourage rapid investment, eventually producing oversupply and falling margins.
The prospect of a well-funded Chinese competitor expanding its technological capabilities unsettled investors in Samsung, SK Hynix and Micron. It also demonstrated that AI-related demand does not insulate chipmakers from conventional competitive pressures.
That combination—slower rate cuts, more expensive financing and potentially cheaper supply—challenged the assumption that every company exposed to AI would enjoy continually expanding margins.
A reset rather than the end of the boom
The sell-off does not establish that the AI boom is ending. Demand for computing power remains strong, the largest technology companies continue to generate formidable cash flows and many infrastructure projects are backed by long-term customer contracts.
What has changed is the market’s willingness to overlook the price and financing structure of that growth.
The most resilient companies are likely to be those able to fund investment from operating cash flow, secure long-duration customers and demonstrate that new capacity will earn returns comfortably above its financing costs.
More speculative operators may face greater scrutiny, particularly where debt is expensive, customers are concentrated or expected revenue depends on demand that has not yet materialised.
For Australian investors, the lesson extends beyond US technology shares. Local data-centre operators, infrastructure funds, electricity suppliers and property groups are increasingly exposed to the same investment cycle.
Artificial intelligence may remain one of the defining growth themes of the decade. But last week’s correction showed that enthusiasm for the technology does not eliminate financial discipline.
The next stage of the AI boom will be judged not only by computing power, model performance or demand for chips, but by something more traditional: whether the assets being financed can generate enough cash to repay the money borrowed to build them.
Fact box
Nasdaq Composite: Down 4.5 per cent for the week ended October 16, 2026
Philadelphia Semiconductor Index: Down approximately 11.4 per cent
Micron Technology: Down approximately 14.6 per cent
Samsung Electronics: Down approximately 18 per cent
SK Hynix: Down approximately 24 per cent
US September inflation: 3.7 per cent annually
Estimated 2026 AI-related investment-grade issuance: Approximately US$300 billion
BNW Developments has established a Sydney presence, joining Arada and Sobha Realty among the growing number of UAE developers pursuing Australian buyers and development opportunities.
Technology and semiconductor shares fell sharply as investors questioned the debt financing the AI infrastructure boom and confronted higher rates and Chinese competition.
