To stop Neal Mohan for not Joining Twitter Google paid $100 million to him

In order to keep Indian-American executive Neal Mohan from leaving Google for a prominent position at Twitter, now known as X, more than ten years ago, the internet giant allegedly promised him an incredible $100 million. This revelation recently came to light again during an episode of entrepreneur Nikhil Kamath’s podcast, where the Zerodha cofounder highlighted the fierce competition among tech firms to retain high-level talent. Kamath recalled the incident, saying, “I read that Google offered you $100 million to stay on the job. Not recently, but 15 years ago – and that was a significant sum at the time.” Mohan did not refute the statement during the conversation.

As per a 2011 report by TechCrunch, the compensation was structured as restricted stock units that would vest over a period of several years. The offer came shortly after Twitter tried to recruit Mohan to serve as its Chief Product Officer. That recruitment effort was spearheaded by David Rosenblatt, Mohan’s former supervisor at the adtech company DoubleClick and a Twitter board member back then.

Neal Mohan, an electrical engineering graduate of Stanford University, began his career at Andersen Consulting, which is now part of Accenture. Later, he worked for NetGravity, an internet advertising business that DoubleClick subsequently purchased. Mohan worked his way up to the position of vice president of business operations. When Google acquired DoubleClick in 2007 for $3.1 billion, Mohan joined the tech giant and quickly became instrumental in shaping its advertising technologies and video product strategies.

By 2011, he had established himself as a key figure within Google’s product leadership. The massive retention package was considered a strategic effort by Google to retain top-tier executives during a time when competitors were aggressively attempting to lure them away.

Twitter’s hiring ambitions weren’t limited to Mohan. At about the same time, the corporation also tried to hire Sundar Pichai, who was then in charge of Chrome and Chrome OS. According to reports, Google replied by giving Pichai $50 million in stock to keep him on board.

Since then, both leaders have climbed to the highest positions in their respective organizations. Susan Wojcicki was replaced as CEO of YouTube in 2023 by Neal Mohan, while Sundar Pichai was appointed CEO of Google in 2015 before joining Alphabet Inc. in 2019.