Who Is Nikesh Arora? Born In India, He Is The 2nd Highest Paid CEO In US

Washington: Nikesh Arora, the India-born CEO of Palo Alto Networks, has been ranked America’s second-highest paid CEO in 2023.  

Shantanu Narayen of Adobe is the second-highest paid Indian-descent CEO, ranked 11 overall. Arora and Narayen earned $151.43 million and $44.93 million, respectively, more than Tesla’s Elon Musk, who did not receive any compensation in 2023, according to the report. Meta’s Mark Zuckerberg earned $24.40 million, while Alphabet’s India-born head Sundar Pichai earned $8.80 million during the period under review.

Who Is Nikesh Arora, Palo Alto Networks CEO?

A product of Delhi’s Air Force Public School, Arora first drew international attention as the chief business officer at Google, which he left in 2014 to head SoftBank with a reported compensation that was said to be a record for Japan. 

Arora has been heading Palo Alto Networks, a cybersecurity company, since 2018. His compensation at Palo Alto Networks consists mostly of equity awards that include shares granted over three years.

17 Indian-descent CEOs in top 500 rankings

A total of 17 Indian-descent CEOs are in the top 500 rankings, according to an analysis published by The Wall Street Journal on Tuesday. Shantanu Narayen, who was born and raised in Hyderabad, has been the CEO of Adobe since 2007 after joining the company in 1998.

Hock Tan of Broadcom topped the list with an earning of $162 million.

Ranked third, fourth, and fifth among Indian Americans were Sanjay Malhotra of Micron Technology (63rd, $25.28 million), Ajei Gopal of Ansys (66th, $24.63 million), and Reshma Kewalramani of Vertex Pharmaceuticals (118th, $20.59 million).

Others included Arvind Krishna of IBM (123rd, $20.40 million), Badrinarayn Kothandaraman of Enphase Energy (135th, $19.53 million), Sanjiv Lamba of Linde (143rd, $19.20 million), Surendralal Karsanbhai of Emerson electric (158th, $18.32 million), Anirudh Devgun of Cadence Design Systems (172nd, $17.34 million), Shankha Mitra of Wellflower (174th, $17.20 million), Sumit Roy of Realty Income (268th, $13.13 million), Satish Dhanasekaran of Keysight Technologies (319th, $10.75 million), Prahlad Singh of Rewity (357th, $9.13 million), Sundar Pichai of Alphabet (364th, $8.80 million), Udit Batra of Waters (367th, $8.74 million), and Sundarrajan Nagarajan of Nordson (389th, $6.98 million).