Google's CEO is set to see a huge pay-out this week from shares he received five years ago.
Sundar Pichai was given an award of just over 350 000 restricted shares in 2014 when he was promoted to senior vice-president of products. His shares will vest this week and could be worth about $380 million (R4.6 billion).
According to Bloomberg, this is one of the biggest single pay-outs to a public company executive in recent years. Bloomberg says the value of the Google shares increased by 90% since they were first given, and Pichai has received two more large stock grants since then.
Pichai has been a long-time executive at Google, which he joined in 2004.
In 2015, when Google overhauled its operating structure to create the holding company Alphabet, Larry Page moved to head up Alphabet and Pichai was appointed as Google CEO.
As senior vice-president of products, he oversaw Google's Android and Chrome units, including search, maps, Google+, commerce, advertising and infrastructure.
In his time as CEO, he has been enthusiastic about moving the company from a mobile-first to artificially intelligent (AI)-first.
"When I look at where computing is heading, I see how machine learning and AI are unlocking capabilities that were unthinkable only a few years ago," said Pichai in 2016.
At the launch of Google Assistant, the company's smart AI-driven platform, he said: "In the next 10 years, we will shift to a world that is AI-first, a world where computing becomes universally available, be it at home, at work, in the car, or on the go, and interacting with all of these surfaces becomes much more natural and intuitive, and above all, more intelligent."
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