Elon Musk is now Highest-Paid CEO

Elon Musk, CEO of Tesla and SpaceX, topped the list of Fortune 500's highest-paid CEOs in 2021. After Musk, the 10 Fortune 500 CEOs in 2021 are CEOs of all technologies and biotechnology companies, including  Apple (Tim Cook), Netflix (Reed Hastings), and Microsoft (Satya Nadella).

In 2021, Musk "realized" nearly $23.5 billion in compensation through the exercise of several Tesla stock options granted in 2018 under a multi-year "moonshot" grant. Tesla ranked 65th in this year's Fortune 500. The company was a big hit in 2021 and increased 71% from 2020 to $53.8 billion in revenue.

Meanwhile, Apple's CEO earned $770.5 million in 2021 alone, primarily as part of a $1.7 billion share grant over a decade. The tech giant is ranked third in the Fortune 500. The company faced challenges due to a global chip shortage, but the report said it had successfully started manufacturing its devices in-house. NVIDIA co-founders Hang and Netflix's Reed Hastings came in third and fourth, respectively.