The chief executive of the world’s biggest chipmaker is getting his first raise in a decade.
Nvidia (NVDA) CEO Jensen Huang’s total pay rose to $49.9 million in 2025, according to an SEC filing first spotted by CNBC. His base salary increased 49% to $1.5 million, his variable cash rose by 50% to $1 million, and his stock awards grew to $38.8 million.
It’s Huang’s first base salary increase in 10 years, according to the filing, which also noted that Nvidia’s compensation committee “believed this was appropriate in consideration of internal pay equity with the base salaries” of other top executives.
Huang, who co-founded Nvidia in 1993, owns an approximately 3.5% stake in the company for a value of about $94 billion. That helps explain why his 2025 pay also includes $3.5 million in residential security and consultation fees as well as driver services. Those fees totaled $2.2 million in 2024, according to the filing.
Nvidia’s market capitalization has ballooned in recent years as the Santa Clara, California-based firm leads the charge in AI chipmaking. The company’s full-year revenue reached $130.5 billion in the 2025 fiscal year, a 114% jump year-over-year. Its stock price multiplied ninefold between the end of 2022 and the end of 2024.
Still, the company has faced headwinds in recent months. Under both President Joe Biden and President Donald Trump, the U.S. has tightened restrictions that limit chip exports to China, thereby limiting Nvidia’s potential market. Nvidia designed its H20 chip, in particular, to comply with U.S. export rules — but those rules became even stricter and barred Nvidia from selling them in China.
Huawei, one of China’s biggest tech companies, is getting ready to test powerful, new AI chips that could rival Nvidia’s, according to a report last month. The firm will receive its first shipment of Ascend 910E chips, its most powerful AI semiconductor to date, from manufacturers as soon as the end of May. Huawei has made persistent technological advances in recent years despite U.S. sanctions against it and could threaten Nvidia’s AI chipmaking dominance.
Shares of Nvidia were up 2.3% Friday morning but are down 17.4% since the start of the year.
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