Meta boosts top executives' pay with stock options as AI race heats up

By Mrinmay Dey and Katie Paul

March 24 (Reuters) - Meta Platforms has offered apical executives banal options that could wage retired hundreds of millions of dollars and are tied to ‌lifting its valuation six-fold to much than $9 trillion, successful a bid to clasp endowment and ‌spur assertive maturation successful the AI era.

The options are the societal media giant's archetypal for its apical brass and necessitate steep ​stock milestones. They suggest Big Tech is rethinking incentives arsenic it pours hundreds of billions of dollars into information centers and departs from its long-standing reluctance to rise indebtedness to summation an borderline successful the AI race.

Meta's banal volition person to emergence astatine slightest 88.2% from Tuesday's closing terms of $592.92 to $1,116.08 to unlock the ‌lowest-priced tranche of banal options.

A much than ⁠six-fold leap would beryllium needed to unlock the astir assertive tranche, requiring the company's shares to emergence arsenic precocious arsenic $3,727.12, regulatory filings precocious connected Tuesday showed.

At that ⁠level, Meta would person a marketplace worth of much than $9 trillion, overmuch higher than Nvidia - presently the world's astir invaluable institution with a valuation of $4.257 trillion.

Meta indispensable conscionable the terms targets by February 14, 2028, for the ​options ​to vest. If unsuccessful, Meta executives' unvested options would ​become disposable to them successful installments done August ‌15, 2030. The options volition expire successful March 2031 if they are unexercised.

Tesla has offered akin options to CEO Elon Musk that volition wage retired astir $1 trillion if immoderate operational targets are hit.

Meta's program does not see its CEO, Mark Zuckerberg.

CFO Susan Li, exertion caput Andrew Bosworth, merchandise main Chris Cox, operations brag Javier Olivan, President Dina Powell McCormick and Chief Legal Officer Curtis Mahoney are eligible for the ‌options, the regulatory filings showed.

All executives but McCormick and Mahoney, ​who joined Meta successful January, volition besides person an summation ​in restricted banal awards worthy a full $170 ​million astatine past close, which vest quarterly. Chief Accounting Officer Aaron Anderson volition lone ‌receive restricted stock.

The institution has offered immense ​pay packages, immoderate worthy hundreds ​of millions of dollars implicit the years, to tribunal apical AI researchers to a caller superintelligence team.

A Meta spokesperson said the wage packages correspond a "big bet" and that they "will not beryllium ​realized unless Meta achieves monolithic aboriginal ‌success, benefiting each of our shareholders."

(Reporting by Mrinmay Dey and Chris Thomas successful Mexico City, ​Katie Paul successful New York, Shubham Kalia, Shivani Tanna and Gursimran Kaur successful Bengaluru; ​Editing by Jacqueline Wong, Thomas Derpinghaus and Maju Samuel)