Google's cricket-loving CEO has just become a billionaire
With Alphabet's shares approaching an all-time high, Pichai, 53, is now worth $US1.1 billion, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index. That's a rare feat for a non-founding chief executive officer, especially in a tech industry where many top executives — including Meta's Mark Zuckerberg and Nvidia's Jensen Huang — owe their fortunes to founding equity stakes in their companies.
Although he wasn't there for the company's creation in 1998, Pichai became its longest-serving CEO this month. August will mark his 10th anniversary since assuming the role.
A spokesperson for the California-based company declined to comment on Pichai's net worth.
Modest background
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Born into a middle-class family, Pichai grew up in a two-room apartment in the southern Indian state of Tamil Nadu. The family didn't own a car and only got its first telephone when he was 12. When Pichai won a graduate scholarship to Stanford University in 1993, his family spent more than his father's annual salary — $USUS1000 — to buy a plane ticket to California.
After being hired in 2004 by Google — as the company was then known — Pichai spent more than a decade working his way up the ranks, helping to develop the Chrome browser and leading the Android division before he was tapped as CEO in 2015.
That was the same year Google restructured itself to become a subsidiary of parent company Alphabet and began more heavily emphasising components of its business beyond its core search function. Pichai was also named CEO of Alphabet in 2019.
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