Paranoid tech bosses are pouring millions into beefing up their personal security details as hostility over Big Tech’s role in shaping global politics continues to reach fever pitch.
Security budgets for the CEOs of ten big tech companies have risen by more than $45 million in 2024, according to research by the Financial Times, with some upping their spending by more than 10 percent.
“I’ve never seen the threat or the concern higher than it is today,” former FBI agent and private security specialist James Hamilton told the FT. “People are fixating on the leader of a company as the representation of all that is wrong with the world.”
But while security budgets were already on the rise throughout last year, they ballooned in December with the murder of UnitedHealthcare chief Brian Thompson and the outpouring of support for Luigi Mangione, along with the outsized role figures like Jeff Bezos, Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg played in the 2024 presidential election.
Musk, officially the least popular man in America, now travels with up to 20 security professionals following his stint at the White House, and started his own security company, Foundation Security, last year.
“We actually did have two homicidal maniacs in the last roughly seven months come to aspirationally try to kill me,” he told Tesla shareholders last year, after the company disclosed it spent $2.4 million on Musk’s security in 2023 and $500,000 in 2024, with Musk’s other companies SpaceX and xAI refusing to disclose how much they spent on his security.
Mark Zuckerberg, meanwhile, has the highest security bill of any of the tech billionaires, with Meta splashing out $27 million a year on protection for both Zuckerberg and his family, up from $24 million a year ago. The boost in security came after the company sacked 11,000 employees, around 13 percent of workforce, back in 2023 following the disastrous failure of Zuckerberg’s pet project, the Metaverse.
Amazon pays $1.6 million towards Jeff Bezos’ security every year and increased spending on current CEO Andy Jassy from $986,000 to $1.1 million last year.
Nvidia’s Jensen Huang, executive of the world’s first $4 trillion company, also increased his security spending from $2.2 to $3.5 million in 2024, citing concerns about his growing fame and lobbying of the Trump administration over exports to China.
“Previously, we’d see executives targeted by someone with a personal grievance against them, such as a disgruntled employee or former business partner, but the direction of violence towards the top of company leadership has changed,” security consultant Lianne Kennedy-Boudali told the FT.
But it’s not just assassination attempts that tech CEOs need to be wary of, with security firms also being asked to deal with kidnapping attempts, home invasions, stalking and cyber threats.
Nor is it just tech firms who are feeling the risk—following the killing of Brian Thompson, health insurance companies such as CVS Pharmacy and Anthem Blue Cross Blue Shield removed pictures and biographies of their CEOs from their websites, fearing further retribution.
The post Rattled Tech Bros Splurge Millions Boosting Their Personal Security appeared first on The Daily Beast.
