Meta boosts top executives' pay by hundreds of millions with stock options
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Contribution by
Izabelė Pukėnaitė
Meta Platforms is increasing compensation for top executives, including its first-ever offer of stock options. The move is aimed at keeping key leaders at the company and staying competitive in the AI race.
The pay boost comes as Meta, like other major tech firms, races to gain an edge in AI, and its battle for senior talent intensifies. The company’s CEO, Mark Zuckerberg, has been pushing the company to compete more forcefully in the field of generative AI.
Meta hopes to achieve this by offering large pay packages tied to the company's long-term performance. Employees or executives only get full returns if Meta achieves very strong future success, which would also benefit shareholders.
Meta executives would need the company's stock to rise by at least 88.2% to $1,116.08 to unlock the lowest-priced tranche of stock options.
Regulatory filings late on Tuesday showed that the leadership positions eligible for the stock options are:
- Chief Financial Officer Susan Li
- Chief Technology Officer Andrew Bosworth
- Chief Product Officer Chris Cox
- Chief Operating Officer Javier Olivan
- President Dina Powell McCormick
- Chief Legal Officer Curtis Mahoney
Meta's plan does not include its CEO, Mark Zuckerberg.
All executives except McCormick and Mahoney, who joined Meta in January, will also receive additional stock-based compensation, totaling about $170 million.
Chief Accounting Officer Aaron Anderson will only receive restricted stock.
Meta’s stock options for executives only fully take effect if the company meets certain stock price goals by February 14th, 2028. If those goals aren’t met, the executives can still receive some options gradually in installments through August 15th, 2030. Any options they don’t use by March 2031 will expire.
On Tuesday, Meta shares closed at $592.92, meaning a more than six-fold jump would be needed to unlock the most aggressive tranche, requiring the company's stock price to rise as high as $3,727.12, according to the filings.
At that level, Meta would have a market value of more than $9 trillion, much higher than Nvidia - currently the world's most valuable company with a valuation of $4.257 trillion.
In the past, Tesla has offered similar options to CEO Elon Musk that will pay out around $1 trillion if some operational targets are hit.
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