It turns out that stepping away from the job does not always mean stepping away from the payroll.
While Elon Musk is still awaiting a mammoth payout from Tesla depending on specific performance targets, Apple's lesser-known co-founder Ronald Wayne continues to quietly collect modest royalties from the company he famously sold his stake in for just $800.
Along similar lines, Amazon founder Jeff Bezos has a net worth of $254 billion, making him the world’s third-richest man, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index.
But despite founding one of the most valuable companies on the planet and leading it for 25 years, more recently, his plans to launch Blue Origin's New Glenn rocket, Bezos' salary is surprisingly not in the six-figure range.
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In fact, the 62-year-old earns only about $81,400 in salary from Amazon. According to Amazon’s 2026 proxy statement, filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission: “Mr. Bezos requested not to receive additional compensation and has never received annual cash compensation in excess of his current amount.”
However, Bezos keeps his wage pretty modest and refuses stock compensation because of his large slice of the Amazon pie.
“I already owned a significant amount of the company, and I just didn’t feel good about taking more,” Bezos previously said during a New York Times DealBook Summit interview (as shared by Fortune). “I just felt, ‘How could I possibly need more incentive?’ I just would have felt icky about it.”
Andy Jassy took over as Amazon's CEO in 2021 after Bezos stepped down. The executive chairman now remains Amazon's largest individual shareholder, with an approximately 8 percent stake worth approximately $225 billion, Fortune noted.
Because so much of his wealth is tied up in stock and other assets rather than income, a 2021 ProPublica investigation reported that Bezos had historically paid tax at a rate well below what his true wealth might suggest.
Meanwhile, Jassy earned the 'base salary' of all Amazon's executive officers last year, which is around $365,000.
Bezos still receives a few extras courtesy of his role as executive chairman, however. For example, the e-commerce giant covered $1.6 million in security expenses and business travel for Bezos.
“We believe that all company-incurred security costs are reasonable and necessary and for the company’s benefit, and that the amount of the reported security expenses for Mr. Bezos is especially reasonable in light of his low salary and the fact that he has never received any stock-based compensation,” the company reportedly wrote in the proxy statement.