Google CEO Sundar Pichai has turned 52 years today i.e. June 10. Born in a small city of Madras (now Chennai), Tamil Nadu in India, Pichai has now become the CEO of one of the world’s biggest tech giant in the Silicon Valley. Pichai has even steered Google quite close to making it a trillion dollar corporation by focusing on AI boom and even layoffs, when required.
Pichai was born to Regunatha Pichai, an electrical engineer at the British conglomerate GEC, and Lakshmi, a stenographer back in 1972. Pichai has often talked about how he grew up in a two-room apartment in Chennai where he and his younger brother slept on the living-room floor. The Pichais didn’t have a television or a car, at times, they didn’t even have running water. A rotary telephone his father got when Pichai was 12 introduced him to technology.
He finished his metallurgical engineering degree from IIT Kharagpur and then pursued MS material science and engineering from Stanford University, followed by an MBA from the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania named a Siebel Scholar and a Palmer Scholar.
He interviewed at Google on an April Fool’s Day in 2004 at Googleplex. This was the same day Google launched one of its major products called Gmail, which was invite-only at that time. Pichai has revealed that he even thought that Gmail was just an elaborative prank. However, the interview went well and he managed to get hired as Vice President of product management.
One of the major contributions of Pichai to Google was convincing Sergey Brin and Larry Page that Google needed to create its own browser. This was the time when Microsoft’s Internet Explorer dominated the market. Fast forward to 2024, Internet Explorer is almost dead, but Chrome is one of the most used browsers across the globe.
Pichai, later started leading the Android division in 2013, and then moved to becoming the CEO in 2015. Since Pichai took the helm as CEO, Google has seen a continued emphasis on Artificial Intelligence. A prime example was Google I/O 2024, where advancements in the Gemini AI suite took center stage. This included the release of Gemini 1.5 Pro and 1.5 Flash, along with teasers for future expansions. Another major announcement was the unveiling of the Trillium chip, Google's next-generation Tensor Processing Unit designed to accelerate AI performance.
According to Bloomberg Billionaires Index, The recent rally in Google’s stock has propelled Pichai’s wealth to nearly $1 billion. Notably, his current net worth is made up of $424 million in share holdings, and around $600 million in share sales since he became Google CEO, reported Bloomberg.