Large tech groups including Meta, Alphabet and Nvidia have significantly increased their spending on personal security as tech bosses play an ever more public role in US politics and confront hostility towards corporate executives.
The security budgets for the CEOs of 10 big tech companies analysed by the Financial Times rose to more than $45mn in 2024. Alphabet, Amazon, Meta, Nvidia, and Palantir all increased their protection budget by more than 10 per cent year on year.
Security experts say the spending and concern around threats to tech bosses has only increased this year after high-profile attacks in the US targeting corporate executives.
“I’ve never seen the threat or the concern higher than it is today,” said James Hamilton, founder of Hamilton Security, a former FBI agent and ex vice-president of Gavin de Becker and Associates, which has provided private security services for Tesla boss Elon Musk and Amazon founder Jeff Bezos.
“People are fixating on the leader of a company as the representation of all that is wrong with the world,” he added.
An outpouring of support online for Luigi Mangione, who was charged with the fatal shooting of United Healthcare chief Brian Thompson last year, prompted widespread concerns among business leaders of new attacks and forced companies to re-evaluate their security protocols, according to security experts.
They also cited another wave of demand after four people were fatally shot in a New York office building in July. The attacker targeted the National Football League over a grievance he had with the organisation, according to city officials.
“The first half of this year was as busy for us than all of 2024,” said Joe LaSorsa, founder of LaSorsa Security & Associates, an executive protection firm.
The company has received five times as many inquiries for risk assessments in the past few months and recorded a “remarkable increase” in attacks on executives’ homes, he added.
Tech chiefs are particularly vulnerable because of their fame as well as public hostility about corporate profits, lay-offs, data misuse and their increasing political role since the 2024 presidential election campaign.
The tech sector had the biggest increase in companies implementing security measures for executives, with a 73.5 per cent jump in those receiving the benefits from 2020 to 2024, according to a report by Equilar.
Meta has long had the highest security bill of the Big Tech companies. The Facebook parent paid more than $27mn in 2024, up from $24mn a year earlier, for Mark Zuckerberg and his family’s personal security including at their residences and while travelling, according to disclosures.
Meta’s costs are much higher than its peers because the group has agreed to provide security directly for members of Zuckerberg’s family, and not just the executive himself.
As both the chief executive and founder of Facebook, Zuckerberg has maintained majority voting power giving him greater influence over board decisions than his counterparts.
Other high-profile figures like Bezos and Musk pay large sums for their own security that is separate from the publicly disclosed spending by their companies.
Extremely high and publicly reported pay and share awards also make tech bosses particularly vulnerable. A boom in tech stocks over the past few years has resulted in multibillion-dollar payouts for some executives.
Palantir chief executive Alex Karp’s personal fortune soared by almost $7bn in 2024. Karp has received death threats citing the data intelligence group’s work for the Israeli military and its Silicon Valley offices have been vandalised during protests over Palantir’s contracts with US immigration authorities, according to people with knowledge of the matter.
Karp has a 24/7 security detail and has been seen with as many as four bodyguards at a time. Palantir declined to comment.
Nvidia chief executive Jensen Huang’s wealth has climbed to more than $153bn as the chipmaker grew to become the first $4tn company last month. Nvidia spent $3.5mn on Huang’s security in 2024, up from $2.2mn in 2023.
A person close to Nvidia said Huang’s security had increased as his fame rose, boosted by his high-profile role lobbying the Trump administration about exports of AI chips to China and the group’s soaring stock price.
Huang has emerged as one of the faces of the hype around the AI boom and is known for engaging with his fans, which can increase his risk, the person said. Fans were spotted mobbing him in the bathroom of the company’s annual GTC conference in California in March.
Meanwhile, Musk, chief executive of Tesla and the world’s richest man, has expanded his personal security in recent years owing to death threats and stalkers.
His public profile grew even greater last year after he became President Donald Trump’s largest donor and championed right-wing activists in Germany and the UK on his social media platform X.
“We actually did have two homicidal maniacs in the last roughly seven months come to aspirationally try to kill me,” he told Tesla shareholders last year.
Musk now travels with as many as 20 security professionals, according to people with knowledge of the matter. Last year, he started his own security company, Foundation Security.
Tesla disclosed that it spent $2.4mn on Musk’s security in 2023 and had engaged his security company. It disclosed just $500,000 in security costs in 2024 but added this represented only a fraction of the total cost of Musk’s security.
Musk’s private companies, including SpaceX and xAI, do not disclose what they spend on protection.
Amazon has paid $1.6mn towards Bezos’s security each year since at least 2010. Last year, it also paid $1.1mn for chief executive Andy Jassy, up from $986,000 the year before.
Bezos has frequently been the subject of public ire over his personal wealth, tax arrangements and the company’s approach to issues including workers’ rights. The ecommerce giant installed 1.5-inch thick bulletproof panels in its Seattle head office in early 2019, a few years before Bezos stepped down from his post as chief executive.
However, not all tech bosses increased their security last year. Palo Alto Networks doubled its security spend on chief executive Nikesh Arora in 2023 to $3.5mn, but cut it back to $1.6mn in 2024. Apple’s security costs for chief Tim Cook also fell from a high of $2.4mn in 2023 to $1.4mn last year.
The heightened security concerns have affected businesses across all sectors. In the wake of the Thompson killing, companies including CVS Pharmacy and Anthem Blue Cross Blue Shield removed photographs and biographies or their executives from their websites, according to a report by shareholder advisory firm Glass Lewis.
Companies have also implemented stricter travel policies for bosses. For example, defence contractor Lockheed Martin mandated its CEO exclusively used corporate private aircraft.
JPMorgan spent $882,000, on Jamie Dimon’s security in 2024, up from $866,000 in 2023 and $761,000 in 2022, according to disclosures.
Media group Fox has reported an annual increase in home security costs for CEO Lachlan Murdoch since 2020, citing the strong public feeling around its broadcasting business, particularly during election years.
“Previously we’d see executives targeted by someone with a personal grievance against them, such as a disgruntled employee or former business partner, but the direction of violence towards the top of company leadership has changed,” said Lianne Kennedy-Boudali, a consultant for executive security at global risk consultancy, Control Risks.
As well as assassination threats, security firms are being asked to help guard against kidnap attempts, home invasions and stalking. Executives also face cyber threats including the use of AI to create voice deep fakes to approve transfers of funds to places where the money can’t be recovered, such as cryptocurrency wallets.
Roderick Jones, founder of Concentric, an executive security group, said any company that combines “deep public resentment with a large retail shareholder base and visible executives now faces a structurally higher tail‑risk profile.”
Crypto founders and investors have been among the earliest and most enthusiastic adopters of security measures. Coinbase spent $6.2mn on personal security for its chief executive Brian Armstrong last year.
A recent series of kidnapping attempts on crypto chiefs and their families has increased the sense of risk in Europe and the US.
The threat is partly driven by a “continuous negative narrative around tech-bros and the politicisation of tech in general”, according to Konstantin Richter, founder of $3.3bn crypto company Blockdaemon. “Every time the market pumps things get weird,” he added. “Keeping a low profile is key.”
Additional reporting by Hannah Murphy, George Hammond, Stephen Morris, Rafe Uddin, Michael Acton. Data visualisation by Maya De Souza in London.
