The $79,106,183 compensation, which happens to be the highest he has received since becoming Microsoft’s CEO in 2014, is also a 63% increase over the previous year.

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What are the details of Satya Nadella’s compensation package?

Nadella’s salary itself was just $2.5 million out of the $79.106 million compensation package.

The majority of the compensation was based on stock awards worth $71,236,392.

He also got $5.2 million coming under the title, ‘Non-equity Incentive Plan’ and $169,791 through ‘All Other Compensation.’

This is all despite the fact that Nadella himself personally asked to have his remuneration reduced due to cybersecurity challenges such as the “Blue Screen of Death” fiasco which happened in July this year.

What was Microsoft’s “Blue Screen of Death” debacle all about?

On July 19, 2024, multiple businesses and private users experienced a “Blue Screen of Death” on their devices which led the systems to shut down or restart.

This was because of a technical issue from the side of US-based cyber security firm Crowdstrike employed Microsoft.

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What were the other cybersecurity challenges faced by Microsoft this year?

The US Department of Homeland Security in April announced the need to prioritise security following breaches from Russian and Chinese sources for which Nadella took personal accountability and asked to adjust the budget change for increasing security with his own compensation. Microsoft went on to completely overhaul its cybersecurity measures.

What were Satya Nadella’s achievements for 2024 as listed by Microsoft?

Microsoft listed the following achievements of Nadella as the reason for his increased pay driven by bonuses up to 142.16%, with an upper limit of 200%:

• That he drove innovation across CoPilot, Copilot+PCs, and Copilot stack with “incredible vision, agility, and speed.”
• That he pioneered artificial intelligence (AI) development, deploying it responsibly along with cloud resources, pioneered its role across Microsoft’s customer solution areas, and adapted the organisation amid cybersecurity challenges.
• That he successfully grew the offerings of the gaming company Activision Blizzard, which Microsoft acquired for $68.7 billion in 2022.

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