Why some of the world’s richest business moguls chose a $1 salary or less

To most employees, a salary is survival. It pays rent, buys groceries, covers school fees, and keeps life moving. 

So when headlines announce that a chief executive of a billion-dollar company earns just $1 a year, or no salary at all, it sounds either heroic or surprising.

How can the person running one of the world’s biggest companies earn less than an intern?

The answer is simple ,they usually don’t.

Many of the world’s most famous CEOs, from Elon Musk to Mark Zuckerberg and Larry Page, have at various times taken symbolic salaries while building extraordinary personal wealth.

The salary may be tiny. The real money is somewhere else and that “somewhere else” is where the real story is.

The symbolic $1 salary has become almost a badge of honour in corporate leadership.

At Tesla, Elon Musk famously took no traditional salary for years. Instead, his compensation depended almost entirely on performance milestones. If Tesla hit aggressive growth targets, he earned stock options worth billions.

At Meta, Mark Zuckerberg has long maintained a base salary of just $1. His wealth comes from owning a huge share of the company he founded.

Steve Jobs also took a $1 salary when he returned to Apple in the late 1990s, a move that became legendary in executive compensation culture.

Even legacy executives have used the strategy. Larry Ellison at Oracle and other founders have often preferred stock-based compensation over large monthly paychecks.

Others who also belonged to the same club include former U.S. Ambassador to Kenya  Meg Whitman, who was CEO of Hewlett-Packard, Susan K. Barnes, the former Chief Financial Officer (CFO) and Executive Vice President of Pacific Biosciences of California, Inc, and Larry Page, the former CEO of Alphabet (Google's parent company).

To the public, it sounds like sacrifice bu to finance experts, it sounds like tax planning.

Most people think CEOs get rich through monthly salaries. In reality, for elite executives, salary is often the smallest part of the package.

Their real wealth comes from:

1. Shares in the Company

Founders like Zuckerberg and Musk own large portions of the companies they run.

As of April 2026, his net worth is approximately $243 billion, driven by his 13% ownership stake in Meta Platforms

When the company’s stock price rises, his wealth can increase by billions in a single day, without receiving a single pay slip.

2. Stock Options

These give CEOs the right to buy shares later at a fixed price. If the company performs well, those options become extremely valuable.

This is how Musk’s compensation plan became one of the largest in corporate history.

Tesla shareholders approved a record-breaking, roughly $1 trillion compensation package for CEO Elon Musk in November 2025, with over 75% approval.

The 10-year, all-stock deal grants 424 million shares if Musk meets aggressive milestones, including increasing Tesla's market cap to $8.5 trillion and achieving $400 billion in cumulative earnings. 

3. Bonuses Tied to Performance

Some executives receive payouts only if the company hits revenue, profit, or market value targets.

This allows boards to argue that pay is linked to results, not guaranteed.

4. Dividends

If a CEO owns enough shares, they can earn huge sums simply when the company distributes profits to shareholders.

In short, the salary may be small, but the wealth machine is still running.

To some, this model gives confidence to investors that the boss is betting on the business, not just collecting a paycheck.

Critics, however, call it a public relations trick. A CEO earning $1 while holding billions in shares is not exactly living like the average worker.

The trend of CEOs taking little to no salaries is less common in Kenya and Africa at large, but founder-led businesses often follow a similar pattern.

Many startup founders, especially in the early growth stages, take very small salaries, choosing instead to preserve cash and retain equity.

The logic is to keep the company alive now, get rewarded later.

However, apart from salaries, other compensation plans such as bonuses, stock options, and dividends are quite popular, especially in the banking and fintech sectors. 

In 2025, CEOs of top NSE-listed companies pocketed nearly Sh1.2 billion in income.