Mark Zuckerberg goes to great lengths to protect himself. It makes sense: Critics say his social networks are bad for your mental health; he’s aggressively hiring people across Silicon Valley to staff up his ambitious AI projects (which are, unto themselves, polarizing); and he owns wide swaths of land in Hawaii, which has rankled residents and activists alike. It makes sense that he might want to shield his livelihood, considering he’s almost certainly the target of public ire.
According to a new Financial Times analysis, security budgets for the chief executives of 10 major tech companies climbed above $45 million in 2024—but still, nobody protects their boss more than Meta does for Zuckerberg.
Across the board, companies like Alphabet, Amazon, Nvidia, and Palantir all increased protection budgets by more than 10% year over year, driven by heightened threats and a worsening security environment for public-facing business leaders. But Meta’s security allocation for Zuckerberg reached more than $27 million in 2024, up from $24 million the previous year.
This dwarfs the amount spent by peers: In 2024, Nvidia spent $3.5 million to secure CEO Jensen Huang, an increase from $2.2 million the previous year. Amazon allocated $1.1 million for CEO Andy Jassy, while former CEO Jeff Bezos continued to receive $1.6 million annually toward his personal security. Apple spent $1.4 million to protect Tim Cook in 2024, which was actually lower than the $2.4 million spent in 2023. Alphabet’s security spending for Sundar Pichai reached $6.8 million, according to public data, and Tesla disclosed it spent just $500,000 to protect Elon Musk, although industry experts emphasize that this sum represents only a small portion of his actual security expenses as the world’s richest man has his own security companies like Foundation Security.
