Meta offers stock awards, options for executives, aggressive timing

Meta It is granting stock options to key leaders in a bid to retain talent as pressure intensifies for the company to strengthen its position in artificial intelligence.

Executives in the incentive plan include CFO Susan Li, chief technology officer Andrew Bosworth, chief product officer Christopher Cox and chief operating officer Javier Olivan, according to SEC filings released Tuesday evening. CEO Mark Zuckerberg, whose net worth is over $200 billion, is not part of the plan.

The high strike price and relatively short timeline to achieve targets are indicative of Meta’s urgency to make headway in the rapidly growing AI market. OpenAI, Anthropic and Google Meta, which has introduced popular AI models and features, has struggled to find a coherent strategy even as it plans to cut as much as $135 billion in capital spending this year.

“This is a big bet,” a Meta spokesperson said in a statement. “These compensation packages will not be implemented unless Meta achieves great success in the future, benefiting all our shareholders. As with all stock options, there is value only if the share price meaningfully exceeds the strike price, in which case it should be on an extremely aggressive 5-year timeline.”

Meta’s stock price has fallen nearly 4% in the past year, lagging behind its megacap tech peers. MicrosoftIt decreased by 5%. Meanwhile, Alphabet is up 73%, driven by the success of its Gemini AI portfolio.

For the first tranche of options to pay off, Meta’s shares must reach $1,116.08, an 88% increase from Tuesday’s closing price, equating to a market cap of approximately $2.82 trillion based on outstanding shares.

The next tranche requires a stock price of $1,393.87. The price increases significantly for each additional slice; The highest figure is $3,727.12, which would increase the company’s value to over $9 trillion. The most valuable company in the world today Nvidia approximately $4.3 trillion.

Meta spent 2025 overhauling its AI unit after the launch of the Llama 4 family of AI models failed to attract interest from third-party developers. As part of its AI revamp, Meta invested $14.3 billion in Scale AI in June and hired the startup’s CEO, Alexandr Wang, to become its chief AI officer and lead its AI unit, now known as Meta Superintelligence Labs.

CNBC reported in December that Meta was pursuing a new Llama successor and pioneering AI model codenamed Avocado.

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