The CEO of Reddit darling Palantir was the highest paid chief executive of a public company last year
- Alexander Karp was awarded a compensation package worth $1.1 billion in 2020.
- The CEO has sold more than $300 million of Palantir stock in 2021 alone.
- Karp's total compensation was roughly 8,943 times greater than that of his average employee.
Alexander Karp, the CEO of Reddit favorite Palantir, was the highest paid chief executive of a public company last year, new survey data shows.
The CEO raked in $1.1 billion in total compensation in 2020, including $798 million in options, $296 million in restricted stock, and $1.1 million in salary, according to the company's 2020 annual proxy statement.
Data from Payscale shows the average Palantir employee makes $123,000 per year, meaning CEO Alex Karp's total compensation in 2020 was roughly 8,943 times greater than the salary of his average worker.
Palantir's co-founder and president Steven Cohen also received an epic pay package from the data mining company in 2020, receiving some $192 million, compared to $16.1 million in 2019, filings show.
In its proxy statement, Palantir said senior executive compensation is "designed to attract, retain, and motivate our leadership team in a highly competitive technology talent market while simultaneously aligning executive interests with those of our stockholders."
Palantir is a data mining powerhouse that was founded by Peter Thiel, Nathan Gettings, Joe Lonsdale, Stephen Cohen, and Alex Karp in 2003. The company generates roughly half of its revenue from government sources and recently inked contracts with the Centers for Disease Control and US Special Operations Command. Palantir also provides services to clients like IBM, Amazon, and Airbus.
CEO Alex Karp is known for his wild hair, brightly colored wardrobe, and for his time pursuing a Ph.D. in philosophy before starting Palantir. In 2021, Karp has been selling shares to lock in profits from his record compensation package. This year alone, the CEO has cashed out $309,906,961 worth of Palantir stock, according to SEC filings.
The second-highest-paid CEO in the world in 2020, DoorDash's Tony Xu, was awarded total compensation of $413 million in 2020, less than half of Karp's earnings, according to a comprehensive survey of the 200 highest-paid chief executives at public companies conducted for The New York Times by Equilar.
In 2020, CEOs in the Equilar survey earned an incredible 274 times the pay of their median employee and CEO pay jumped 14% year-over-year in 2020 amidst the pandemic.
Just 13 female CEOs made Equilar's list of the 200 top paid chief execs, with AMD's Dr. Lisa Su coming in as the highest-paid woman with a total compensation package of $40 million.