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Meta spends more than any other US public company on keeping its boss safe outside of work

The murder of Brian Thompson has sent shock waves through the security industry.

12/6/24 9:37AM

New Yorkers woke up on Wednesday morning to the shocking news of the murder of UnitedHealthcare’s top insurance executive, Brian Thompson, in Midtown Manhattan ahead of the company’s investor day.

Online reaction to the murder revealed a deeply rooted frustration — at times spilling into morbid glee, per The New York Times — with America’s healthcare system. It’s also prompted large US companies to reevaluate their security protocols. Indeed, according to The Wall Street Journal, dozens of security chiefs joined a call on Wednesday to discuss safety measures, with some even looking to send armed guards to accompany executives attending conferences this week in New York and other US cities.

The price of safety

Presumably, UnitedHealthcare will now be reviewing its safety protocols, but it’s also likely that other public companies — many of which already spend millions of dollars on security for their top bosses — will consider upping their protection in a permanent way.

For business-related outings, companies don’t need to disclose the cost of security. But if protection is provided outside of work and is deemed to be a perk or personal benefit, that has to be disclosed in SEC filings, and there’s been a major uptick in personal-security outlays: the median amount spent by S&P 500 companies that disclosed security spending doubled from 2021 to 2023 to nearly $100,000, according to an analysis by executive-compensation data provider Equilar cited by Bloomberg.

This includes a whopping $23 million compensation for Meta’s $1 salary CEO Mark Zuckerberg. That’s more than 3x the not-so-close runner-up, Alphabet’s Sundar Pichai, and, as mentioned, doesn’t include any security spending during work travels or at offices. The social-media giant is obviously concerned about protecting its chief executive, who “is synonymous with Meta” and as a result is exposed to any “negative sentiment” associated with the company, per its SEC filing.

Elon Musk also owns a security company tasked with protecting... Elon Musk. Tesla has paid this security company nearly $3 million since December 2023.

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Demis Hassabis, Google DeepMind’s CEO and founder, was also an early Anthropic investor

A chess prodigy and an actual a knight of the realm in the UK, it’s perhaps no surprise that Demis Hassabis has made some strategic moves about his exposure to AI upside. According to people familiar with the matter, the influential AI architect became an angel investor in Anthropic, currently behind many of the leading AI models, per Arena AI leaderboards.

The Nobel Prize winner’s position in the Claude creator was previously undisclosed and, per the Financial Times, highlights Hassabis’ “growing influence across the AI industry.”

Google, which bought DeepMind, the company that Hassabis cofounded and heads to this day, for a reported ~$400 million in 2014, is also a key Anthropic investor. The tech giant reportedly plans to invest up to $40 billion in the AI company as part of the mutually beneficial relationship the pair have forged, with reports that Anthropic has committed to spending $200 billion in the other direction on Google’s cloud services over the next five years.

I’m playing all sides, so I always come out on top

In addition to his financial support for Anthropic, Hassabis has also invested in a range of AI startups launched by colleagues, such as Inflection AI, a company set up by DeepMind cofounder Mustafa Suleyman (who is now CEO of Microsoft AI), as well as efforts from other collaborators, like David Silver’s Ineffable Intelligence.

Hassabis also emerged as a recurring figure on the fringes of the recent Elon Musk v. Sam Altman trial, cropping up repeatedly in testimonies and court documents and appearing to live, as The Verge put it, “rent-free” in Musk’s head.

Founded in 2021, Anthropic has recently raised funding at a reported $900 billion valuation, sending it soaring ahead of competitor OpenAI.

Google DeepMind’s Demis Hassabis emerges as early Anthropic investor

The Nobel Prize winner’s position in the Claude creator was previously undisclosed and, per the Financial Times, highlights Hassabis’ “growing influence across the AI industry.”

I’m playing all sides, so I always come out on top

Founded in 2021, Anthropic has recently raised funding at a reported $900 billion valuation, sending it soaring ahead of competitor OpenAI.

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In a unanimous verdict reached after less than two hours of deliberation, the Oakland jury found that Musk had waited too long to bring his case forward, exceeding the statute of limitations.

Musk had alleged that OpenAI abandoned its founding mission as a nonprofit dedicated to developing AI for humanity and instead became a profit-driven company closely tied to Microsoft.

The verdict caps off a three-week blockbuster tech trial that could have seen Altman and Brockman removed from OpenAI leadership.

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Musk had alleged that OpenAI abandoned its founding mission as a nonprofit dedicated to developing AI for humanity and instead became a profit-driven company closely tied to Microsoft.

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