Executive compensation is being split into two tracks.
One track follows the familiar public-company playbook, with total pay rising and equity doing most of the heavy lifting. The other track is the AI talent market, where compensation has started to behave like a retention weapon, built for a world where a small number of people can move product velocity, model performance, and enterprise revenue at once.
Below is a grounded view of what is happening, what it signals, and how leaders can design pay that actually holds talent.
With these dynamics in mind, it is clear that AI talent premiums are setting a new ceiling.
The market for senior AI leadership has compressed into a small set of roles that carry both technical authority and delivery responsibility. That combination is pushing compensation into territory once reserved for public-company C-suite packages.
Recent benchmarks and reporting put the total packages for the Head of AI and VP of AI in the range of about 700,000 to 2 million dollars, depending on scope, company maturity, and proximity to revenue ownership.
At the same time, broader wage premiums tied to AI skills remain structurally high. PwC’s 2025 Global AI Jobs Barometer reports an average wage premium of 56 percent for workers with AI skills in its analysis.
What that means in practice:
- Base salary is rising, but it rarely decides offers at the top.
- Equity, vesting, refresh, and scope are now central to negotiations.
- Companies are paying for “time to impact” more than for years of experience.
The new center of gravity is equity and long-term incentives.
The clearest signal lies in how AI executive packages are structured.
Equilar’s analysis of AI executive pay puts median total compensation around 1.6 million dollars, with a median base salary of 439,375 dollars, a median annual cash bonus of 191,307 dollars, and meaningful stock awards as a major component of the overall package.
This is a design pattern:
- Cash anchors the offer.
- Equity drives retention and alignment.
- The size of the equity grant reflects competitive pressure and the cost of replacing the person.
OpenAI sits at the extreme end of this approach. Reporting based on financial data reviewed by The Wall Street Journal points to average stock-based compensation of about 1.5 million dollars per employee in 2025, used as a retention mechanism in a high-intensity talent market.
The takeaway: Companies paying for top AI impact make leaving economically irrational.
Sign-on and retention incentives are becoming standard, not special.
Sign-on bonuses are returning in force, especially in venture-backed markets where equity is meaningful but liquidity is distant.
Riviera Partners reports that sign-on bonuses for Series A plus stage executives average about 14 percent of initial salary, reinforcing a broader shift toward front-loaded incentives paired with equity-heavy offers.
For boards and compensation committees, this matters because sign-on cash is easy to approve, easy to explain, and fast to feel. It also creates a subtle trap. If the job scope and operating environment do not support early wins, the company ends up paying for arrival rather than outcomes.
A more durable pattern is a three-layer incentive stack:
- A modest sign tied to a clear 90-day delivery plan
- A first year milestone bonus tied to business outputs, not activity
- Equity refreshers tied to staying power and compounding impact
Public company CEO pay is rising, and equity remains the core lever.
On the public markets side, the pattern is consistent: higher totals, with equity incentives leading the way.
Bank of America raised CEO Brian Moynihan’s total compensation to 41 million dollars for 2025, with a base salary of 1.5 million dollars and the remainder largely in equity incentives, according to reporting from Reuters.
At the sector level, the Financial Times reported that the CEOs of the six largest US banks each earned more than 40 million dollars in 2025, with a combined total exceeding 250 million dollars, reflecting the same equity-forward incentive model.
This reinforces a key parallel with AI pay design. In both cases, boards are expressing a view that value creation is long-term, and equity remains the cleanest way to align behavior with multi-year outcomes.
Disclosure and regulation may shift the visibility of pay structures.
The next phase of this story is not only about compensation levels. It is about transparency.
Reuters reported that SEC Chair Paul Atkins has called for scaling back the scope of detailed executive compensation disclosures, including reconsidering how many top executives fall under the most detailed reporting requirements.
The SEC has also held public discussions on executive compensation disclosure requirements, including a roundtable transcript published on SEC.gov, which provides additional context on how the agency is reviewing the current regime.
If the disclosure scope narrows, two things follow:
- Investors may have less standardized detail on how pay is allocated across base, bonus, and equity beyond the CEO.
- Private-market benchmarking may become even more important, as public comparables may offer less granularity.
For AI talent markets, where many leading companies are private, benchmarking already relies heavily on third-party surveys, recruiter data, and selective reporting. A thinner public disclosure layer amplifies that trend.
What this means for pay strategy in 2026
The most effective compensation strategies now treat AI leadership pay as an operating model design, not as HR administration.
1) Pay for ownership, not titles
A Head of AI who owns model roadmap, evaluation, deployment, and enterprise adoption should be priced differently from a research leader with a limited product scope.
2) Make equity refresh a policy, not an exception
In fast-moving AI markets, refreshers are part of retention math. The absence of a refresh cadence creates a predictable poaching window.
3) Tie variable pay to business outputs that leaders respect
Good examples include revenue influenced, cycle time reduction, incident rate, or deployment frequency. These measures translate across finance, product, and engineering.
4) Use sign-on bonuses as a bridge, paired with an outcome plan
The cash solves the immediate switching cost. The plan creates accountability and reduces the risk of paying for arrival.
Summary
Senior leadership compensation continues to rise, with equity accounting for the largest incentive weight, evident across major public companies and top AI organizations.
AI talent premiums are pushing packages into the high six- and low seven-figure range for leadership, while AI skill wage premiums remain elevated.
Sign-on bonuses and equity-rich offers are becoming standard tools for attracting and retaining strategic talent, and possible SEC disclosure changes may reshape how much of this design remains visible through public filings.