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Journalism of Courage
Microsoft Chief Executive Officer Satya Nadella’s annual compensation jumped to $96.5 million, as the company’s stock price continued to rise, fueled by the boom in artificial intelligence.
Nadella, who took over Microsoft in early 2014 and has since rapidly transformed the company’s fortunes, saw his total pay for fiscal year 2025 climb 22 percent to $96.5 million, up from $79.1 million last year, Microsoft said in a proxy filing after the close of regular trading on Wednesday.
The $96.5 million compensation package includes more than $84 million in stock awards and over $9.5 million in cash incentives. Nadella’s pay is tied to the performance of the company’s stock. As of 2025, Microsoft’s stock price has risen by 23 per cent.
Nadella’s growth mindset has helped Microsoft stage a strong comeback building on its core strengths while adapting to a rapidly changing tech landscape.
“If you take two kids at school, one of them has more innate capability but is a know-it-all. The other person has less innate capability but is a learn-it-all. The learn-it-all does better than the know-it-all,” Nadella said in 2019 on the podcast Hello Monday.
He has positioned Microsoft as an innovator, placing early bets that paid off including the acquisitions of LinkedIn and GitHub, as well as a strategic shift to cloud computing. Under Nadella’s leadership, Microsoft has also made bold moves in artificial intelligence, including a $13 billion investment in OpenAI, the company behind ChatGPT.
Born to a Sanskrit scholar mother and an IAS officer father, Nadella has been with Microsoft since 1992. The company’s market capitalisation has ballooned from well under $400 billion when Steve Ballmer stepped down, to over $3.9 trillion today. Microsoft’s revenue has also nearly tripled in recent years.
Nadella is an alumnus of the Manipal Institute of Technology, where he earned his bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering, and the University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee, where he completed his master’s in computer science. He also earned a Master’s in Business Administration from the Booth School of Business at the University of Chicago.
