This Indian-origin CFO's salary was higher than Sundar Pichai and Satya Nadella in 2024

May 20, 2025 07:41 PM IST

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Tesla CFO Vaibhav Taneja received a remarkable $139 million salary in 2024, outpacing top executives like Satya Nadella and Sundar Pichai.Who is Vaibhav Taneja?

Tesla CFO Vaibhav Taneja received a remarkable $139 million salary in 2024, outpacing top executives like Satya Nadella and Sundar Pichai.

Indian-origin business executive Vaibhav Taneja, who took over as Tesla Chief Financial Officer (CFO) in 2023, was paid a staggering $139 million as yearly salary in 2024, according to a report by The Telegraph.

Vaibhav Taneja has significantly increased his earnings since becoming Tesla’s CFO in 2023,(LinkedIn/VaibhavTaneja)

Thanks to stock options and equity awards after his promotion, Taneja’s base salary of $400,000 was compounded, even surpassing the salaries of Satya Nadella and Sundar Pichai.

According to a US SEC filing, Microsoft Chairman and CEO Nadella received a $79.106 million paycheck in 2024 while Pichai took home $10.73 million, as per Alphabet’s 2025 Proxy Statement.

The Telegraph reported that his bumper pay for last year is thought to be the highest pay for a finance chief in decades.

Taneja’s high salary raised eyebrows, as EV maker Tesla has witnessed a slump in sales after backlash against CEO Elon Musk, whose actions while running the Trump administration’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) have come under fire.

Taneja’s rising pay comes even as Musk continues to receive no salary from the carmaker, which marked the biggest annual decline in sales since 2012.

Who is Vaibhav Taneja?

With a Bachelor’s of Commerce degree from Delhi University, Vaibhav Taneja is a Chartered Accountant by training. He worked at PricewaterhouseCoopers in India and the US between July 1999 and March 2016.

From March 2016, Taneja served in various finance and accounting roles at SolarCity Corporation – a US-based solar panel developer acquired by Tesla in 2016.

He joined Tesla in 2017 as a Corporate Controller and soon became the Chief Accounting Officer. He served in that role from March 2019 to 2023, when he was made the Chief Financial Officer.

He has held the position for over two years and is spearheading Tesla’s entry into the Indian market. In January 2021, he was appointed as the director for Tesla’s Indian arm, Tesla India Motors and Energy Private Limited.