Alphabet handed Sundar Pichai a $692M pay package

The new deal ties Google’s CEO to the future of its most ambitious bets, and signals that the board has finally decided they’re bets worth making.

Sundar Pichai has run Google since 2015 and Alphabet since 2019. In that time, the company’s market value has grown from roughly $535 billion to approximately $3.6 trillion. On Friday, Alphabet’s board decided what that performance is worth going forward: a three-year pay package that could reach $692 million, but only if Pichai actually earns it.

The deal was disclosed in an SEC filing and first reported by the Financial Times. Its structure is telling. The headline figure assumes maximum performance across every component.

Most of the value is tied not to Alphabet’s core search and advertising business, but to two subsidiaries that have spent years consuming capital without generating it: Waymo, the autonomous vehicle ...