Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella earned $79.1m (£61m) last year, a 63% increase on his pay the year before.
This is despite Mr Nadella's request to reduce an element of his compensation due to cybersecurity breaches at the tech giant – resulting in him receiving $5 million less than he otherwise would have gotten .
Like many tech companies, Microsoft has cut thousands of jobs this year, including many in its gaming division.
But in a proxy statement filed with the U.S. financial regulator, the board said the company's revenue grew 16% in the fiscal year ending June 30, 2024.
“Mr. Nadella acknowledged that the Company's performance was extremely strong,” Microsoft's compensation committee wrote in a letter to shareholders.
He added that he had asked them to “consider deviating from established performance indicators and reducing his cash incentive to reflect personal responsibility” in the face of a number of cyberattacks.
One such attack was reported in July 2023 by Microsoft, where hackers gained access to the email accounts of around 25 organizations, including government agencies.
Microsoft said the attack originated in China, although the Chinese embassy in London called it “disinformation.”
The fiscal year runs through June 30, 2024, just weeks before the massive internet outage that affected Microsoft Windows PCs, causing chaos around the world.
Although it was not a cyberattack, Microsoft later apologized in July for another outage caused by a cyberattack.
The compensation committee said it cut Mr. Nadella's cash salary by more than half, to $5.2 million.
This represents less than 7% of his total compensation.
Most of his salary, $71.2 million, was in stock options.
High Pay Center director Luke Hildyard said “superficially” that the profits made sense given Microsoft's strong financial performance.
“However, we might also question whether the additional $79 million, on top of last year's $49 million, for someone already worth hundreds of millions, with more money than they are worth could spend over several lifetimes of absolute luxury, are very much needed as an incentive reward,” he told the BBC.
“None of Microsoft's successes would be possible without workers, customers and society as a whole, so perhaps the benefits of that success should be shared a little more equitably,” he added.
Elsewhere in big tech, Apple boss Tim Cook earned $63.2 million in 2023, while the CEO of the world's most valuable company Nvidia, Jensen Huang, received $34.2 million dollars in fiscal year 2024.
But none of them come close to Tesla boss Elon Musk, whose compensation could reach $56 billion.
