The world's richest man Elon Musk was the highest-paid CEO of 2021

Elon Musk, the world's richest man, was the highest-paid CEO in 2021, according to Fortune 500. Musk received a salary of around $23.5 billion (approximately Rs 1,82,576 crore) after exercising some Tesla stock options granted in a giant multi-year "moonshot" in 2018. According to the Fortune 500, that was by far the largest paycheck a CEO has ever received.

Musk, who leads Tesla and SpaceX and could also soon own Twitter, is at the top of Fortune's list of highly paid CEOs. But the others also belong to the technology and biotech industries. Among these leaders are Tim Cook, who is the CEO of Apple, Satya Nadella, who is at the helm of Microsoft, and Reed Hastings, who is the head of Netflix.

Fortune revealed that Cook was paid $770.5 million in 2021 alone, which comprised a portion of a 10-year stock grant worth $1.7 billion. He secured the second position on the list. Apple's market value increased by $2.2 billion during his tenure, so his paycheck is justified. Apple ranks third on the Fortune 500 list.

While Cook cornered the latter, Nvidia's Jensen Huang received $561 million in compensation in 2021. A spokesperson told Fortune 500 that Huang "realized about $507 million from expiring options that had been granted in 2011 and 2012, reflecting the approximately 60x increase in the company's share price over the [past] decade."

In fourth place is Netflix's Reed Hastings, who recently announced several new measures to generate profits for the company that is plagued with problems such as account sharing and underwhelming content compared to its rivals. Hastings earned $453.5 million last year, according to the Fortune 500. However, a Netflix spokesperson disputed the report. "Per our proxy statement, his compensation in 2021 was $40.8 million, with $650,000 in cash and $39.7 million in stock options," the spokesperson said.

Microsoft's Satya Nadella secured a seventh place on the list with $309.4 million in compensation last year. He was also voted the "The most Underrated" CEO in 2021, allowing him to hold the title for six years in a row. Nadella has been at the helm of Microsoft since 2017.

A report by the Economic Policy Institute said that an average CEO of a "large company" earned 351 times the salary of an average worker on a realized basis in 2020. The Fortune 500 evaluated the salaries of 280 Fortune 500 CEOs, who "earned a median total compensation of $15.9 million", up 30 percent from the previous year.