Satya Nadella replaced Steve Ballmer in February 2014, and since then he has tried to push the company towards a slightly different approach, one with more openness towards rival platforms.
His fresh strategy certainly brings him a sweet sum for the work he does at Redmond.
According to a new study commissioned by The New York Times, statistics provided by Equilar show that Nadella is now the highest paid CEO in the United States, after only one year with the software titan. His total compensation for 2014 totaled $84,308,755.
This includes his base salary of $918,917, a cash bonus of $3.6 million as well as his stock awards.
Which came in at $79.7 million.
His cash compensation however only reaches $4.5 million for the year, though, and the bulk of his compensation is now represented by stock awards.
Other big technology executives in the list include Lawrence J. Ellison (the former CEO of Oracle) making $67 million and Steven M. Mollenkopf (the new CEO of Qualcomm) coming in with $60 million. All big amounts for some of the biggest decision makers in the world of computing technology.
Nadella, on the other hand, is tasked with a difficult job of ensuring that Microsoft competes with both Google and Apple in the mobile world.
And attain similar leadership positions the company enjoys in the cloud and enterprise fields.
