Data analytics company Palantir's CEO is the highest-paid executive in history
Karp received compensation valued at $1.1 billion last year, including $798 million in options and $296 million in restricted stock
Alex Karp, the chief executive of data analytics company Palantir, has become one of the highest-paid executives in history. Karp received compensation valued at $1.1 billion last year, including $798 million in options and $296 million in restricted stock.
Palantir is a company founded by Peter Thiel and conducts secretive data-processing work for US government agencies and corporate clients like Morgan Stanley and Airbus.
Karp’s stock-heavy compensation was supercharged by Palantir going public in September of last year with a valuation of nearly $22 billion. The pay represents a roughly ninety-fold increase from his $12.1 million compensation in 2019.
This has made Alex Karp the highest-paid CEO of the year in history.
Tony Xu, who co-founded delivery app Doordash is the second-highest-paid CEO. Xu received shares of his company worth more than $400 million shortly before it went public in December, according to December Securities and Exchange Commission filings.
According to a Wall Street Journal analysis, the world’s two highest-paid chief executives made far more than any CEO of an S&P 500 company in 2020.
Karp’s 2020 compensation was the third-highest for any CEO since 2007, behind Elon Musk’s $2.3 billion in 2018 and Stephen Schwarzman’s $1.4 billion from Blackstone in 2007, the Journal reported.