Sundar Pichai runs Alphabet, the parent company of Google. Carl Icahn has spent sixty years buying stakes in other companies and pushing their boards to change course. The two have never worked together, and Icahn has never held a position in Alphabet stock.
In November, Pichai told the BBC that being a chief executive might eventually be a job artificial intelligence could do. Four months later, Alphabet’s board handed him a pay package worth up to $692 million, a bet that he, specifically, was still the right person for the job. Icahn has spent his career arguing that when a company’s stock keeps falling, something is wrong with how it is being run, and an outside investor willing to buy in and push back can force a fix. His own company has fallen a long way since 2015, and he has not applied that argument to himself.
Table of Contents
Where they stand right now
| Sundar Pichai | Carl Icahn | |
|---|---|---|
| Role | Chief executive, Alphabet and Google | Founder and chairman, Icahn Enterprises |
| Age | 54 | 90 |
| Net worth (Forbes, real-time) | $1.6 billion | $3.8 billion |
| How he built it | Stock pay after 22 years as an employee | Six decades of activist stakes |
| What he did this year | Accepted pay tied to unproven units | Kept buying shares in a falling stock |
Pichai’s own words are catching up with him
Pichai has run Google since 2015 and Alphabet since 2019, after joining the company in 2004. In November, he told the BBC that being a chief executive might eventually be a job artificial intelligence could do.
“I think what a CEO does is maybe one of the easier things maybe for an AI to do one day.”
By March, Alphabet’s board had approved a pay package for him worth up to $692 million over three years, much of it tied to the future value of Waymo, the self-driving unit, and Wing, the drone delivery arm, neither of which has proven it can stand alone yet.
Google’s flagship AI model, Gemini 3.5 Pro, was due in June. It did not arrive. Bloomberg reported in July that the model was running months behind schedule, and Alphabet’s shares fell four per cent the day that story ran. In August, Jeff Dean, the company’s chief scientist and a 27-year employee, left to start his own venture. Pichai thanked him publicly the same week he moved Demis Hassabis out of DeepMind’s day-to-day leadership and into a chairman role.
Smaller updates have kept arriving. Gemini 3.7 Flash launched on 22 August, and Pichai said it broke the company’s previous growth records. On 2 September, he introduced Gemini 3.8 Flash, calling it Google’s third Flash release in six weeks. The flagship model promised for June still has not shipped.
Carl Icahn built the rule he won’t follow now
Icahn’s approach to investing rests on one argument that has defined his career for sixty years: when a company’s stock falls and stays down, something in its management is broken, and an outside investor willing to buy in and push back can force the fix. He helped make that kind of investing mainstream, beginning with the hostile takeover of TWA in the 1980s and continuing through fights with Yahoo, Apple, Dell and Netflix.
Forbes valued his own fortune at more than $23 billion in 2015. By September 2024 it had dropped to $5.8 billion. Today, on Forbes’ real-time tracker, it stands at $3.8 billion, a fall of more than 80 per cent from the peak.
Much of that came after May 2023, when the short seller Hindenburg Research published a report alleging that Icahn Enterprises was funding its dividend from new investor money rather than actual profit. Shares fell sharply and the dividend was cut within months. In 2024, Icahn and the company paid $2 million to settle SEC charges over loans he had taken against his own stock without fully disclosing them. Icahn disputed the underlying allegation at the time, saying the settlement “makes no claim that IEP or I inflated NAV or engaged in a ‘Ponzi-like’ structure.”
He has not restructured the company or replaced its leadership, the kind of moves he has spent decades demanding from other boards. Instead, in the second quarter of 2026, he added more than 68 million shares of his own company, a 12.5 per cent increase in his position, according to regulatory filings.
His account on X still carries a line he has used for years to describe himself.
“Some people get rich studying artificial intelligence. Me, I make money studying natural stupidity.”
Quick answers
Is Sundar Pichai richer than Mukesh Ambani?
Not close. Ambani, chairman of Reliance Industries, has been worth somewhere between $84 billion and $100 billion through 2026, depending on the index and the day. That is more than fifty times what Forbes currently credits Pichai with.
How much of Google does Sundar Pichai actually own?
About 0.02 per cent of Alphabet, according to Forbes. Almost all of his wealth comes from stock pay built up over 22 years as an employee, not from founding the company.
Has Carl Icahn ever targeted Google or Alphabet directly?
No. His activist campaigns in technology have gone after Apple, Yahoo, Dell and Netflix, never Alphabet. The investor who pushed Pichai hardest on cost cutting was Chris Hohn of the UK hedge fund TCI, in letters sent in 2022 and 2023, a separate campaign with no connection to Icahn.
What’s still unresolved
Neither situation is finished. Gemini 3.5 Pro could still ship and prove worth the wait. Icahn Enterprises could still recover. As of this week, the flagship model still had not shipped, and Icahn Enterprises’ most recent quarterly results still showed the decline continuing.
Sources: Forbes, Sundar Pichai profile ยท Forbes, Carl Icahn profile ยท Fortune, “Google’s Sundar Pichai says the job of CEO is one of the ‘easier things’ AI could soon replace” ยท U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, press release on the Icahn settlement
