Inside Apple boss Tim Cook’s extortionate salary including $12million in ‘rewards’ – but another CEO makes even more
TECH titan Tim Cook took home an unthinkable $770.5million in salary last year, including tens of millions in stock bonuses - but still fell short of being the highest-paid boss in Silicon Valley.
The Apple boss has boosted the company's value by $2.2 trillion since taking over from Steve Jobs, according to , and it seems he is being handsomely rewarded.
But he is still only the second-highest-paid CEO after Elon Musk, who netted a stunning $23.5billion in realized compensation in 2021 as he stormed to the title of world's richest man.
Fortune 500 CEOs are compensated by salary and stock worth more than the entire economies of small countries.
Many CEOs claim they don't do it for the money, including Mark Zuckerberg, who symbolically takes a salary of $1 from Meta (but Zuck is still very well taken care of).
Tim Cook calmly and charismatically steers Apple through invention after reinvention, and lives a reserved lifestyle in comparison to daily headliner Elon Musk.
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Cook is a health and fitness fanatic, and owns a $10million dollar, 10,000 square foot - he doesn't seek out fanfare and former employees have reviewed him as but .
Cook served in Steve Jobs' place and ran day-to-day operations at Apple when Jobs was on medical leave for his pancreatic cancer.
When Jobs died in 2011, Cook became the full-time CEO and in the years since, he has boosted Apple's stock price tenfold, gliding the company to a $2.4trillion dollar valuation.
Cook's nine-figure 2021 haul is pumped by a $3million base , $12million in rewards pay for surpassing company goals, and more than $80million in stock awards.
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But the real juice of Cook's year comes from his decision to part of a stock grant worth $1.7billion.
The gap between CEO compensation and median employee salary is .
Even inexperienced CEOs of companies that or do a big chunk of their business are taking home big paydays.
Apple wrote in a “2021 compensation of our named executive officers is commensurate with Apple’s size, performance and profitability, the significant scope of their roles and responsibilities, and their strong values-driven leadership."
The Biden administration has struggled to get its arms around the growing pay imbalance between CEOs and employees - the failed bid to raise the minimum wage to $15 was a high profile miscalculation that could hurt the Democrats in the midterm elections.
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Internally, Apple has a delicate employee dispute that's indicative of a continued trend in big business.
Apple store workers in Atlanta just pulled back their bid to unionize and that the company broke labor laws and busted their process.
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