Apple’s Tim Cook places second on FORTUNE’s list of the highest paid CEOs

Fortune has published its list of the top 10 highest-paid CEOs on the Fortune 500. Apple CEO Tim Cook placed second with 2021 income of US$770.5 million.

Elon Musk, the CEO of SpaceX and Tesla, came in first. Last year, heh ”realized” compensation worth almost $23.5 billion, from exercising some Tesla stock options awarded in a 2018 multiyear “moonshot” grant. 

Here’s what FORTUNE has to say about Cook: Cook has been CEO of Apple Inc. since 2011. He earned $770.5 million in 2021 alone, mostly as a part of a 10-year grant of shares worth $1.7 billion. But his incredible pay package may be justified by Apple’s stock market performance under Cook: The tech company’s market value during his tenure has increased by $2.2 trillion.

Apple ranks 3 on the Fortune 500. The company faced challenges because of the global chip shortage, but successfully began manufacturing the equipment in-house.  Apple finished the year with a gargantuan $95 billion in profits—outperforming every other U.S. company on that front.

Following Musk and Cook on the list, and their 2021 income, are: 

Jensen Huang, Nvidia ($561 billion); Reed Hastings, Netflix ($453.5 billion); Leonard Schleifer, Regeneron Pharmaceuticals ($452.9 billion); March Benioff, Salesforce ($439.4 billion); Satya Nadella, Microsoft ($309.4 million); Robert A. Kotick, Activision Blizzard ($296.7 million); Hock E. Tan, Broadcom ($288 million); and Safra A. Catz, Oracle ($239.5 million).