Nvidia employees are about to get richer after the company decided to boost their compensation.
Staffers are getting a “Jensen special grant” — an additional amount of restricted stock units (RSUs) named after CEO Jensen Huang —three people with knowledge of the matter, who did not want to be identified because they were not authorized to speak to the media, told Business Insider.
Huang is worth $75 billion and is in 20th position on the Bloomberg Billionaires Index.
The one-off grant is an extra 25% of the initial amount of stock units given to employees when they joined.
The $2.1 trillion company kicked off its annual performance review cycle on April 1 and workers were told about the grant in appraisal meetings with managers.
The number of RSUs staffers get is determined by a share price of $898.20, which was Nvidia’s average closing price of its stock for the 30 calendar days ending March 29.
The grant will vest over a four-year period, with the first 6.25% portion of the vesting on September 18 and the remainder in equal quarterly installments, the people said.
Many hires in recent years were given stock options worth $200,000 that would vest over four years, according to the people BI spoke to.
Those employees will get an extra $50,000 of RSUs. The grant is in addition to any annual equity refreshers employees get each quarter that are based on individual performance.
One person suggested the special Jensen grant is being handed out to ensure employees still benefit even if the share price falls back in the coming years.
Nvidia stock has soared by more than 200% over the past 12 months, leaving the company behind only Microsoft and Apple in terms of market value.
The chipmaker, which has consistently crushed earnings estimates, has become a big beneficiary of the generative AI boom because its chips are critical for applications such as ChatGPT. It posted revenues of $22.1 billion in the fourth quarter, beating estimates.
Nvidia could become the world’s first $6 trillion company if it follows Cisco’s trajectory during the dot-com bubble, Jeremy Siegel said last month.
However, it dipped as much as 5% on Tuesday as competition in the AI chips market heats up.
Nvidia declined to comment.
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