The CEO of the company that makes stun guns raked in $165 million last year — dwarfing the payouts handed out to the better-known bosses of Apple, Meta, Nvidia and all other executives in the S&P 500.
Rick Smith — co-founder Axon Enterprises, whose Tasers and body cameras are used by police forces across the country — was the only executive to receive a pay package that eclipsed $100 million, according to The Wall Street Journal’s annual analysis.
General Electric’s Larry Culp trailed behind at $89 million, followed by Blackstone’s Steve Schwarzman ($84 million) and Apple’s Tim Cook ($75 million).
Smith’s windfall from the publicly traded company was granted under a new program open to all Axon employees that allows them to convert some or all of their pay over seven years into restricted shares, he told the Journal.
“One of the things I love about the design is I can make zero — I feel better about making a lot if I can also make zero,” Smith said. “For me it creates that startup kind of vibe.”
His 2024 payout was a steep jump from the $40,000 he earned the year before, according to the Journal.
But shares in Axon surged more than 170% over the past 12 months, trading at $758 after Monday’s closing bell.
Half of the executives in the analysis made $17.1 million or more last year – up from $15.8 million the year before, according to the MyLogIQ data.
Netflix’s co-CEOs Theodore Sarandos and Greg Peters took the No. 8 and 10 spots at $62 million and $60 million, respectively.
Other notables included Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff ($55 million), Nvidia boss Jensen Huang ($50 million), Uber’s Dara Khosrowshahi ($39 million), JPMorgan CEO Jamie Dimon ($38 million) and Meta leader Mark Zuckerberg ($27 million). Tesla’s Elon Musk – the richest person in the world – was last on the list at $0, as his most recent pay package remains ensnared in court battles.
The Journal report uses data from MyLogIQ and includes CEOs on the job for at least a year across more than 400 of the S&P 500 companies.
Most of Smith’s high-dollar compensation package came from a stock award, not annual salary, as is common for S&P 500 CEOs.
Smith, who has led the company since 1993, received $246 million in compensation in 2019.
He has an estimated net worth of $2.4 billion, according to Forbes.
Several executives outside the S&P 500 also breached the $100 million line, including Peter Gassner of cloud-computing company Veeva Systems at $172 million and Shopify’s Tobias Lutke at $150 million.
But last year marked the smallest number of CEOs making nine figures since 2016, according to the Journal.
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