Silicon Valley Funding News - Week of November 23, 2020. PingCAP Raised $270M Series D

The Information had an interesting article this past week on CEO compensation.

Based on their analysis of security filings, the average CEO’s salary for the 41 companies which went public this year averages about $422,000. The highest-paid CEO in this group is Palantir's Alexander Karp, with a salary of $1.1 million.



Bloomberg also tracked the top 100 highest-paid executives at companies that submit yearly compensation details to U.S. regulators. The most highly paid is Tesla CEO, Elon Musk, whose salary is $0, but his option awards compensation valued out at $595.3 million.



CEO compensation consists of salaries, bonuses, stock awards, option awards, dividends, carried interest, and of course, perks. In Elon's case, he receives no compensation from Tesla aside from huge grants of stock options tied to performance goals. The securities are meant to pay him for a decade. But in cases where the targets are met ahead of schedule, the options were vested.

Most executives on the Bloomberg index aren’t guaranteed to pocket all of their packages. Stock awards, which make up the bulk of their pay, are often contingent on performance conditions, and payouts are usually reduced or eliminated if those goals aren’t met.

On the other hand, if the goals are exceeded, the windfall could be significant.

This week a total of 29 startups raised $1.14B in funding, 2 M&As:

• $499.5M goes to 10 Enterprise startups
• $103.2M goes to 2 Healthcare startups
• $171.5M goes to 4 BioTech startups
• $35M goes to 3 FinTech startups
• $74M goes to 2 Mobile startups
• $42M goes to 2 AI startups
• $38.5M goes to 1 Hardware startup
• $2.8M goes to 1 Gaming startup
• $175M goes to 1 Marketplace startup
• $7.9M goes to 1 Food Delivery startup
• $13M goes to 1 FoodTech startup
• $40M goes to 1 Other startup