Amid AI boom, Google CEO Sundar Pichai close to becoming a billionaire

The Artificial Intelligence growth has been a great boon for Google CEO Sundar Pichai. The 51 year old non-founder tech executive is now on the cusp of achieving billionaire status. According to Bloomberg Billionaires Index, Pichai's fortune is close to $1 billion.

Pichai's wealth grows

Sundar Pichai took over the reins of Google in 2015. Since then, the tech giant's stock has surged more than 400%, outperforming the S&P 500 and Nasdaq over the same period.

On Friday, the stock hit a fresh record after the company's first-quarter earnings beat expectations. The boost in the quarter earnings comes with the AI-driven growth in its cloud computing unit. For the first time, Google also introduced a dividend.

Along with the rally, the hefty stock awards have made him one of the world's highest-paid executives.

Sundar Pichai who grew up in a two-room apartment in Chennai, once in an interview mentioned that 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 when he won a scholarship to Stanford university.

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.

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