Elon Musk Got Rs 14,000 Crore Salary In 2018, More Than 65 CEOs Of Other Companies Combined

CEOs of major companies make a lot of money, and tech CEOs in particular do.

But last year, one CEO in particular blew the others out of the water as far as raking in the big bucks is concerned. That title goes to Elon Musk, founder of Tesla.

In a new study, The New York Times looked at the salaries of CEOs of 200 large publicly-traded companies. According to the report, Elon Musk pulled in $2.3 billion last year, mostly as stock options. The next-highest on the list, Discovery's David M Zaslav, made a comparatively paltry $129 million.

In fact, Elon Musk earned a fraction more than the next 65 top-paid CEOs on the list cumulatively in 2018. Compare that to the median salary of a Tesla employee, which is $56,163 a year. That's over 40,000 times more.

Musk's package was approved by the Tesla board back in March last year. It awards him stock options if the company hits certain milestones, an incentive sort of defeated by the fact that he already owns about 20 percent of Tesla stock. Meaning he would already be working to improve the company's market cap in order to improve his earnings.

This is also despite the fact that Tesla isn't exactly doing well at the moment, and bleeding tons of cash.

In the first quarter of this year, it's already lost $700 million, and stands to lose more in the near future, unless it finds a way to move large number of its cars.