The targeted murder of United Healthcare CEO Brian Thompson last December put the business world on alert. Companies beyond the insurance and healthcare industries began ramping up security for founders and CEOs, worried that Thompson’s death (and some of the public’s reaction to it), along with rising cyberattacks and death threats, could increase real-world risks for any business leader.
That has led to a substantial increase in security spending, and a new study from the Financial Times finds that no company is spending more to protect its CEO than Meta. Security spending was up more than 10% last year at the parent company of Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp, with $27 million spent to protect Mark Zuckerberg—$3 million more than in 2023.
“We believe that Mr. Zuckerberg’s role puts him in a unique position: He is synonymous with Meta and, as a result, negative sentiment regarding our company is directly associated with, and often transferred to, Mr. Zuckerberg,” the company says in its 2025 proxy statement.
Google parent Alphabet and Amazon also saw increases of more than 10% in protection costs last year. Altogether, the 10 major tech firms spent more than $45 million to protect their leaders. Meta’s spending, however, greatly surpassed all others. The next highest was Alphabet, which allocated $6.8 million to protect CEO Sundar Pichai. Coinbase spent nearly as much, dedicating $6.2 million to guard CEO Brian Armstrong.
The big question on many minds, though, is how much is being spent to protect Elon Musk, arguably the most polarizing of the tech CEOs. The answer isn’t entirely clear. Only one of his companies, Tesla, is public, and it disclosed spending $500,000 to protect Musk last year (down from $2.4 million in 2023). SpaceX and xAI are private and did not disclose figures. Musk also owns his own security company, Foundation Security—described as a mini Secret Service, run in part by a former Army Special Forces weapons sergeant.
While some companies have boosted spending, others have scaled back, perhaps due to onetime expenses in previous years. Here’s what other corporations reported.
- Nvidia: $3.5 million to protect CEO Jensen Huang, up from $2.2 million in 2023
- Apple: $1.4 million for Tim Cook, down from $2.4 million in 2023
- Amazon: $1.1 million for CEO Andy Jassy, and $1.6 million for Jeff Bezos, an amount consistent for at least 15 years
- Palo Alto Networks: $1.6 million for CEO Nikesh Arora, down from $3.5 million in 2023
- JPMorgan Chase: $882,000 for CEO Jamie Dimon, up slightly from $866,000 in 2023
Some companies declined to give their security costs but offered hints. Fox Corp., for example, said it was spending more to protect CEO Lachlan Murdoch as partisanship grows. Lockheed Martin now requires its CEO, James Taiclet, to fly exclusively on private corporate jets. And Alex Karp, CEO of AI and military intelligence company Palantir, always travels with at least four bodyguards.
For some executives, the threat is very real, and not always tied to corporate activities. Musk, for example, told shareholders last year: “We actually did have two homicidal maniacs in the last roughly seven months come to aspirationally try to kill me.”
The number of businesses protecting their CEOs continues to rise. Intelligence firm Equilar found that 34.4% of companies in the S&P 500 offered executive security last year, compared with just 28.2% in 2023. Median spending rose 6% overall, with an average of $105,749.
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