Google CEO Sundar Pichai Approaches Billionaire Status During AI Boom

Alphabet Inc. Chief Executive Officer Sundar Pichai is on the cusp of achieving a rare milestone for a non-founder tech executive: a 10-figure fortune. It hit a fresh record Friday after the company’s first-quarter earnings beat expectations, boosted by AI-driven growth in its cloud computing unit.

It also introduced a dividend for the first time in its history. That rally, alongside hefty stock awards that have made him one of the world’s highest-paid executives, has boosted Pichai’s fortune to nearly $1 billion, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index.

It’s a remarkable rise for the native of Chennai, India, who grew up in a two-room apartment where he and his younger brother slept on the living room floor. During much of his childhood, the Pichais didn’t have a television or a car, he has said in interviews.

At times, they didn’t even have running water. The family got their first rotary telephone when he was 12, which he said introduced him to the conveniences of technology.

That, along with a healthy curiosity about his father’s job as an electrical engineer for the British conglomerate GEC, attracted the young Pichai to the tech industry. He excelled at school, eventually landing a spot at the prestigious Indian Institute of Technology in Kharagpur, where he studied engineering.

When he won a scholarship to Stanford University, his father withdrew $1,000 from the family’s savings – more than his annual salary – to cover the cost of Pichai’s plane ticket and other expenses. After earning another advanced degree at the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School and a stint as a consultant at McKinsey, he joined Google in 2004 as a product manager, leading the development of major projects like the Google Toolbar and Google Chrome.

Pichai was selected in 2015 by co-founder Larry Page to be Google’s CEO, while Page became CEO of newly formed holding company Alphabet. Pichai took over that role as well in 2019 when Page and co-founder Sergey Brin – two of the 10 richest people in the world, according to Bloomberg’s wealth index – stepped back from day-to-day management.

In his time as CEO, Pichai has overseen a major expansion of the company’s product line with the addition of Google Assistant, Google Home, Google Pixel, Google Workspace and more. He was also an early adopter of artificial intelligence, calling it a “once-in-a-generation opportunity.”

While Alphabet has been criticized for its AI offerings and some investors have questioned its ability to compete with OpenAI, last week’s earnings provided reassurance that its spending on the technology is starting to pay off. Pichai’s net worth includes $424 million in current shareholdings as well as roughly $600 million from share sales since he became CEO.

Bloomberg’s wealth index assumes those sales were taxed and reinvested in the stock market. Pichai’s status as a near-billionaire is a reminder of the value that he has created during his time at the helm of Google.

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