- Nvidia is increasing employee compensation with a stock grant named after CEO Jensen Huang.
- The “Jensen special grant” awards an additional 25% of the initial stock grant given to employees.
- Three people told Business Insider it’d vest over four years, with the first portion coming in September.
Nvidia employees are about to get richer after the company decided to boost their compensation.
Staffers are getting a “Jensen special grant” — an additional amount of restricted stock units, or RSUs, named after CEO Jensen Huang — according to three people with knowledge of the matter who spoke with Business Insider but didn’t want to be identified as they weren’t authorized to speak with the media.
Huang is worth $75 billion and is in 20th position on the Bloomberg Billionaires Index.
The one-off grant is an extra 25% of the annual equity refreshers employees get that vest each quarter, which is based on individual performance.
The $2.1 trillion company kicked off its annual performance-review cycle on April 1, and workers were told about the grant in appraisal meetings with managers.
The number of RSUs staffers get is determined by a share price of $898.20, which was Nvidia’s average closing price of its stock for the 30 calendar days ending March 29.
The people BI spoke with said the grant would vest over a four-year period, with the first 6.25% portion of the vesting on September 18 and the remainder in equal quarterly installments.
That means, for example, if an employee received an equity refresher of $200,000, then they are set to get an extra $50,000 worth of stock that vests over four years.
One person suggested the special Jensen grant was being handed out to ensure employees would still benefit even if the share price were to fall back in the coming years.
Nvidia stock has soared by more than 200% over the past 12 months, leaving the company behind only Microsoft and Apple in terms of market value.
The chipmaker, which has consistently crushed earnings estimates, has become a big beneficiary of the generative-AI boom because its chips are critical for applications such as ChatGPT. It posted revenues of $22.1 billion in the fourth quarter, beating estimates.
Jeremy Siegel said last month that Nvidia could become the world’s first $6 trillion company if it followed Cisco’s trajectory during the dot-com bubble.
But it dipped as much as 5% on Tuesday as competition in the AI chips market heats up.
Nvidia declined to comment.
Are you an Nvidia employee? Got a tip? Get in touch at jmann@businessinsider.com
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