The global cloud computing market has seen a double-digit growth rate for years and that's brought tremendous wealth to executives in the industry.
While the base salary for most executives has held steady, bonuses and stock awards brought key CEOs millions of dollars. Some have risen to become the wealthiest people in the world.
The top 10 highest-paid people in cloud includes some legacy names who've run computing companies for decades and others who got eye-popping paydays for making inroads in the cloud market.
10. Arvind Krishna, CEO, IBM – $18 million
Krishna saw his total pay get a slight boost as IBM hit milestones for growing its hybrid cloud and artificial intelligence (AI) divisions, according to the company’s annual letter to stakeholders. He’s credited with helping get hybrid cloud revenue for IBM to over $20 billion in 2021, making it more than a third of the company’s total revenue. Krishna’s base pay is $1.5 million and had nearly $16 million in IBM stock, according to SEC filings.
9. Bret Taylor, co-CEO, Salesforce – $22.8 million
Taylor has a base salary just over $1 million and, like Marc Benioff, got awards for growing Salesforce. Taylor is set to get a salary increase this year for being named co-CEO and became eligible for even more in bonuses. Taylor was once the CTO of Facebook, and came to Salesforce through its acquisition of Quip, Inc., a business collaboration software company.
8. Marc Benioff, co-CEO, Salesforce – $28.6 million
Benioff is touted by the company he founded as a pioneer of cloud computing, putting Salesforce near the top of enterprise cloud platforms. He had a base salary of $1.5 million and got stock awards and other performance bonuses that brought his annual salary much higher.
7. Philipp Schindler, SVP and chief business officer, Google – $28.7 million
Schindler may be the least connected to cloud on this list, but as chief business officer he’s undoubtedly driven revenue to parent company Alphabet as its cloud computing arm has grown. He’s known as a master deal-maker in Silicon Valley. Schindler received nearly $28 million in stock awards in 2021 and had a base salary of $650,000.
6. Satya Nadella, chairman and CEO, Microsoft – $54.9 million
Nadella replaced long-time Microsoft CEO almost a decade ago, after putting his stamp on the company’s cloud and enterprise computing arm. He’s been credited with building the company Azure cloud into the second-largest player in the industry. Nadella has held his $2.5 million per year salary since 2020 but his stock awards grew to $42.2 million in 2022, likely thanks to the value of Microsoft’s stock doubling from the start of 2020 to the start of 2022.
5. Adam Selipsky, CEO, Amazon Web Services – $81.5 million
Amazon pays its cloud executives well and that’s why two of them are on this list: Selipsky helped launch Amazon Web Services (AWS) back in 2006, then left to join Tableau Software, which was later acquired by Salesforce. Selipsky reported $81 million in stock awards in 2021 and a salary plus bonuses of $158,722, according to SEC reports. When Jassy became the CEO of Amazon, Selpisky took over as head of AWS, the world’s leading cloud computing firm.
4. Yancy Spruill, CEO, DigitalOcean – $82.5 million
Spruill has been the top executive at DigitalOcean since 2019 and recorded a big payout recently, getting more than $81 million in stock awards. His base salary was $503,000 in 2021. Headquartered in New York, DigitalOcean was founded when cloud first started taking off and now boasts of a customer base exceeding 600,000.
3. Safra Catz, CEO, Oracle – $138.2 million
Like Larry Ellison, Catz got a huge stock award in 2022 which raised her annual pay from $10.6 million in 2021. Catz and Ellison were rewarded for bringing software-as-a-service (SaaS) revenues at Oracles $10 billion per year and hitting other cloud-related revenue measures. Unlikely she’ll return to this list in future years, unless another major payout comes her way.
2. Larry Ellison, chairman and CTO, Oracle – $138.7 million
Ellison received a major payout of stock awards in 2022 which caused his pay jump from $11.7 million in 2021. The reason for the big payday? Ellison and Oracle CEO Catz (No. 3 on this list) were granted stock awards for helping Oracle become the largest enterprise SaaS company, according to a letter to stockholders. The pair have contracts that garnered them a payout for goals like hitting $20 billion in total cloud revenues in a fiscal year. Bloomberg ranks Ellison as one of the wealthiest people in the world. He founded Oracle in 1977.
1. Andrew Jassy, CEO, Amazon – $212 million
Jassy tops the list as the top executive at Amazon and the former CEO of AWS' cloud technology business. He’s held various roles at AWS in the 26 years he’s been with the company. In 2021 Jassy earned close to $212 million large in stock awards, according to the latest SEC filings. His salary that year was $175,000 and he earned $592,000 in other compensation, a category that generally represents bonuses and other perks.
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