On February 25, local time, Apple held a shareholders' meeting and voted to approve the salaries of executives including the company's CEO Cook. Cook's salary, stock awards and bonuses in 2024 totaled $74.61 million, an 18% increase from his salary of $64.21 million in 2023.
Cook's salary consists of a base salary of $3 million, a stock award of $58.1 million and approximately $13.5 million in additional compensation. The increase in Cook's salary in 2024 mainly came from the increase in the value of stock awards. Apple's board of directors said that there will be no change in Cook's total target salary amount or structure in 2025.
Although Cook's salary in 2024 increased significantly from the previous year, it is still far from the total salary in fiscal 2021. In fiscal 2021, Cook's salary hit a record high of nearly $100 million, also benefiting from stock awards.
Other Apple executives, including the head of retail, former chief financial officer, chief operating officer and general counsel, will also receive more than $27 million in compensation in 2024, a slight increase from the previous year.
In the past year, Apple's stock price has risen by nearly 35%, and its current market value exceeds $3.7 trillion, ranking first in the US stock market value list, and is expected to become the first listed company to enter the "4 trillion US dollar club".
In his letter to shareholders, Cook said that Apple has ushered in an exciting time in the past year. "We have opened a new era of Apple Intelligence and launched the first batch of products designed from the bottom up and built specifically for artificial intelligence." He wrote.
Artificial intelligence is becoming an area where Apple is betting hard. Last month, Apple began to integrate OpenAI's ChatGPT into its iPhone and other devices. Apple also cooperated with China's Alibaba (134.01, 4.97, 3.85%) and is expected to release the Chinese version of Apple Intelligence AI model in April this year.
According to Apple, Apple Intelligence combines personal context with powerful generative models, deeply integrated into Apple's products, and endows the technology with more sensitive responsiveness and auxiliary functions. At the same time, Apple Intelligence has also set new industry standards in privacy protection, extending local privacy protection to the cloud through private cloud computing technology to ensure the security and privacy of user data.
Apple also discussed the company's measures in AI at its latest shareholders' meeting. After discussion, shareholders rejected an external proposal to create ethical use of AI data for the company, saying that information about its AI data privacy practices had been provided.
