Amazon CEO Andy Jassy received a pay package valued at $212.7 million in 2021, marking a substantial compensation increase for the executive during his first year running the tech giant, according to a company filing with the US Securities and Exchange Commission.
Nearly all of Jassy’s compensation comes in the form of stock options that will vest over 10 years, according to the filing. Jassy’s 2021 compensation marks a sixfold increase to his pay in 2020, when he was head of Amazon’s profit-generating cloud-computing arm AWS.
Jassy became Amazon CEO last summer, replacing Jeff Bezos, who continues to serve as executive chair of Amazon’s board but stepped down as chief executive to focus on his space-faring company Blue Origin and other ventures. Bezos’ pay remained unchanged at nearly $1.7 million, though his holdings of Amazon stock make him the second-richest person in the world, per the Bloomberg Billionaires Index.
Amazon’s disclosure on April 1 notably came the same day that workers at a Staten Island, New York, warehouse made history by voting to form the first US union in the tech giant’s 27-year history. It also comes amid a separate union election vote count at an Amazon warehouse in Bessemer, Alabama, concluding on Thursday with the results of the vote too close to call — as the number of ballots challenged by either the union or Amazon is large enough to sway the final results.
Massive stock awards are not unusual for incoming CEOs as they are intended to give the executives an even greater stake in the companies’ performance right away. For example, when Sundar Pichai took over as CEO of Google parent Alphabet’s in 2019, he was given one-time stock awards that vest over time worth a combined total of some $240 million, according to a company SEC filing. However, Pichai received no stock awards as part of his compensation in 2020, per a subsequent filing.
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