For nearly four years, technology leaders have preached that AI will transform every aspect of work. One of the most measurable changes so far, however, has come to their own paychecks.

Median reported compensation for executives with "technology" in their title reached $2.6 million in the most recent fiscal year, a 45.4% increase from 2021, according to data compiled for Fortune by executive pay analytics firm C-suite Comp. That surge far outpaced other C-suite roles: median compensation rose 18.3% for COOs, 17.2% for CEOs, 15% for CFOs, and 9.2% for chief information officers.

The dollar gain was larger as well—something even more unusual. Median pay for chief technology officers climbed $809,587 between 2021 and 2025, while median CEO pay—typically the role most likely to reap the largest pay rewards—rose only $698,399, and that was from a starting point twice as high as CTOs. COOs, CFOs, and CIOs combined gained $725,584 at the median.

"Strategic CTOs are a real value-add for these companies," said Dan Laddin, founding partner at consulting firm Compensation Advisory Partners, who advises boards on pay programs. "So people who can do that, and lead that side of the business—you are seeing a dramatic increase."

Telehealth platform Hims & Hers demonstrated its pay priorities in a series of compensation moves last year. In May 2025, the board approved two new-hire awards for incoming executives. The award to new COO Nader Kabbani was 216,333 restricted stock units (RSUs) valued at $13.5 million. The award to incoming CTO Mohamed Elshenawy was 1,036,339 RSUs valued at $57.2 million—more than four times as much. (Kabbani left the company six months later.)

The board explained the discrepancy in its annual proxy report to shareholders. "Competition for experienced talent in the AI space during 2025 was intense," the report states, noting that Elshenawy's award reflected the "unique competitive circumstances for AI talent" when he was hired. No equivalent justification was given for Kabbani.

Elshenawy brought strong credentials: he came from Cruise, the General Motors-owned self-driving vehicle company, where he had been president and CTO. His reported 2025 compensation was $60.9 million, more than 2.5 times the $23 million Hims & Hers reported for CEO and co-founder Andrew Dudum.

Figures in proxy statements are grant-date values, calculated when a board approves an award, not take-home pay. None of Elshenawy's RSUs had vested by the end of 2025, and with the stock falling since the award, the $57.2 million was worth $33.6 million on the last trading day of the year, according to Hims & Hers. That gap between grant-date value and realized value is worth keeping in mind across the examples in this story: large equity awards can shrink—or grow—depending on where the share price goes. It is also the kind of disclosure shareholders weigh in the annual say-on-pay votes that most large US public companies hold on executive compensation.

A New C-Suite Order

The four-year ramp in CTO pay has reshuffled the C-suite hierarchy. In fiscal 2021, the median CTO earned roughly $176,000 less than the median COO; by the most recent year, CTOs earned about $275,000 more. A clear hierarchy remains versus CEOs—CTOs are nowhere close to catching up—but the signal about the role's priority is clear. The typical CEO earned $2.27 million more than the typical CTO in 2021, and about $2.16 million more in the most recent year. Notably, the data also shows CIO pay lagging far behind CTO pay over the same period—a distinction that reflects how boards have separated roles focused on running internal IT infrastructure from those charged with building external technology strategy.

The AI Talent Factor

The timing of the CTO pay surge tracks closely with the rapid expansion of ChatGPT. The AI chatbot launched in November 2022 and reached 100 million users roughly two months later, the fastest consumer adoption on record at the time. OpenAI launched an enterprise product in August 2023, and much of the Fortune 500 was piloting its platform features by that fall and winter. Microsoft began selling Copilot to enterprise customers in fall 2023, with Pfizer and Chevron among its earliest users. During this cycle, median technology compensation surged 28.9%—the largest single-year move for any role in the data across 2021 to 2025.

As companies invested in AI platforms and the AI race began in earnest, hiring new talent became significantly more expensive. While headlines focused on mega-packages at frontier labs competing for talent with $100 million sign-on bonuses, hiring CTOs for smaller marquee Nasdaq- and NYSE-listed companies also got pricey.

James Kuffner joined warehouse robotics company Symbotic as CTO in January 2025 with an initial equity award targeting $18 million, plus another $3 million to make him whole for cash awards left behind at his previous employer. The board cited his three decades in robotics at Toyota, Google, and Carnegie Mellon, along with "the value his experience commands in the competitive market for such talent." His reported 2025 pay totaled $37 million.

Workday hired Gerrit Kazmaier as president of product and technology in March 2025 after his predecessor retired, with a pay package targeting $31 million. The board said the package was "both competitive and necessary to attract a proven industry leader" like Kazmaier.

Even where companies were not recruiting new CTOs, pay rose. Walmart increased the target value of Suresh Kumar's annual equity award by $1 million, which the company said produced a 7.1% increase in his target compensation, placing him slightly above the 75th percentile of his peer group. That move signals Walmart's regard for its CTO—and makes Kumar more expensive for rivals to poach.

What Boards Are Buying

The rationale behind the median rise is that the CTO role itself has changed dramatically at some companies.

"Historically, I think a lot of times [the CTO] was keeping the systems running and thinking about how we can be more efficient from a process standpoint," said Laddin. He now sees the role taking on far more strategy involving workflows, customers, and data, enabling companies to leverage AI to streamline operations or go to market differently. Companies are also willing to look outside their direct peers for talent, he added. And because large awards are not unusual in tech, there has been a slight "acceleration and expansion" as companies recruit new tech talent or retain existing staff, Laddin said.

Because the role varies widely company-to-company and sector-to-sector, boards often apply a wider market range and more discretion, said Kyle Eastman, a CAP partner specializing in technology. "Judgement plays probably more of a role in benchmarking CTO compensation than it does CFO compensation," he said.

Tanvir Hossain, founder of C-suite Comp, which analyzed the data, attributes the increase to at least two drivers. First, tech officers started from a lower baseline, making growth appear more pronounced. Second is how boards and CEOs now value the role. "Technology leadership has evolved from back-office utility into a primary engine of business strategy and revenue," said Hossain.

He described 2021 through 2023 as a period of cost discipline—until things changed around AI. "ChatGPT was the catalyst that ignited an aggressive C-suite arms race for engineering visionaries," Hossain said. "The year 2024 was the pivot point where boards recognized that failing to capitalize on generative AI meant risking rapid obsolescence."

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com.