CEO vs CFO Pay: Is AI Widening the Gap?

The pay gap between chief executives and their finance chiefs has held steady for a decade, but it is widening where AI expectations have pushed valuations highest.

Amy Hood has run Microsoft’s finances through the cloud transition and into the AI buildout, and she is one of the highest-paid finance executives in the world. For fiscal 2025 she received $29.5 million in total compensation, against $96.5 million for Satya Nadella, which puts her package at roughly 31% of his. That proportion is not a Microsoft quirk. Across large US companies, CFO pay has sat at about one-third of CEO pay. That has held for ten years.

So, the question is not whether a gap exists. It is where the gap is growing. It is not growing everywhere. The widening shows up in companies where AI expectations have produced the largest valuation gains, because chief executives hold far more equity than their finance chiefs and capture more of the upside. That answer feeds into what a board offers a new finance chief. It also sets what a sitting CFO can reasonably ask for.

How Much Do CFOs Earn Compared to CEOs?

The most consistent measurement comes from Compensation Advisory Partners. The firm is an independent adviser on executive compensation. Each year it compares CFO and CEO pay at some 140 companies with median revenue of $15.6 billion, and over ten years of the study CFO total compensation has averaged one-third of CEO total compensation. At the 25th percentile it sits at 29% of the CEO figure. At the 75th it reaches 41%. The band has barely moved. The mix behind those totals differs too, with long-term incentives making up 73% of CEO pay in 2025 against 63% for CFOs.

Canadian data suggests the headline ratio may not tell the whole story. Southlea Group reviewed early 2026 proxy filings from eighteen large Canadian public companies. Median total direct compensation rose 19% for CEOs in 2025 against 13% for CFOs. On the levels, the median chief executive took C$16.03 million against C$4.65 million for the median finance chief, which is a multiple of roughly 3.4. The mix looks much like the US. Long-term incentives make up 72% of CEO pay. For CFOs the figure is 60%. Both groups did well in a year when the S&P/TSX Composite returned about 29%, and the CEO simply held more of the instrument that rewards a year like that.

A six-point difference in annual increases may not look like much. It reinforces the pattern, though. The gap is not widening across the whole market. It is widening at the upper end. Equity-heavy structures meet rising valuations there. The Canadian numbers make the mechanism unusually clear. On cash alone, the CFOs did better. Their actual total cash rose 22% against 13% for CEOs. Only once long-term incentives enter the calculation does the order reverse.

On the surface, 2025 even looked like a year of convergence in the US, where increases for the two roles nearly matched for the first time in several years, at roughly 8% for CFOs against 9% for CEOs. CFOs were also more likely to receive a salary increase, at 75% against 56% of CEOs. Median base salaries moved 3.7% for CFOs against 2.1% for CEOs, and among those who did receive an increase the two were close, at 4.5% against 4.1%.

Viewed through that lens, there is little evidence that CFO compensation is falling behind. Finance leaders remain highly valued. Their total compensation rose 8% at the median in 2025. Pay keeps climbing across most industries, and the competition for experienced finance leaders has not eased. The headline ratio, however, tells only part of the story.

Where Is the CEO-CFO Pay Gap Widening Most?

The picture changes as you move up the market, where median pay for S&P 500 chief executives reached $17.7 million in 2025, up 5.9%, the slowest growth since 2022. Among the hundred highest-paid CEOs at companies with at least $1 billion in revenue, the median reached $29.4 million. That was a rise of 23.2%, the sharpest since 2021. Equilar attributes the surge partly to what boards now expect of chief executives. Much of that expectation is about artificial intelligence.

Equity did the lifting. Among that group of a hundred, the median value of stock awards rose 38.8% in a single year, from $15.7 million to $21.9 million. Base salaries moved 5.3%. Bonuses rose 17.2%. The pattern is not a broad market phenomenon. It is concentrated in a small set of companies with extraordinary growth, many of them in sectors where investors have attached a high value to future AI earnings, and those are the sectors where the two roles separate fastest.

The UK is heading the same way from a different starting point. WTW notes that FTSE 100 long-term incentives have typically run through a single performance share plan, while US packages in the same period have combined performance shares with restricted shares. A handful of British companies have now adopted the US-style hybrid model, and Glass Lewis reports it spreading to companies below the FTSE 100. As more of a package arrives as equity, UK boards inherit the same sensitivity to valuation. That sensitivity is what widened the gap in America.

None of this means CFOs are underpaid. Demand for experienced finance leaders is high. The better reading is that the market prices the two roles differently, and in a year of exceptional growth leading the value-creation story pays more than stewarding it.

How Does Equity Widen the CEO-CFO Pay Gap?

The divergence happens in wealth creation rather than in annual compensation. Most public company CEOs take a larger share of their pay in long-term equity than their CFOs do, so periods of exceptional value creation do not treat the two roles equally.

The AI cycle shows this plainly. Investors have rewarded companies seen as well placed to capture value from artificial intelligence. Market capitalizations have climbed steeply for a small group of them. Where valuations rise that fast, the largest equity holder gains most. Salaries and bonuses may move in tandem while long-term wealth diverges.

The point is less about annual pay. It is about who participates most fully in the value being created. Compensation structures behave differently in a run like this one. The effect builds over a multi-year vesting period.

Which Industries Have the Widest Gap Between CEO and CFO Pay?

The size of the gap usually reflects how an industry creates value. Equilar’s 2026 CEO pay study puts communication services ahead of every other sector for the seventh year running, at a median of $33.9 million, with technology behind it at $22.5 million and financial services at $21.3 million. Real estate came last. Its median was $13.6 million.

Growth and market expectations drive performance in some sectors. There the premium sits with the chief executive, and boards weigh the part played in setting direction and attracting investment. Those industries also lean harder on equity. The distance widens whenever the market runs. The mechanism works in reverse too. The gap narrows in capital-intensive, operationally complex, or heavily regulated industries. Execution and risk management carry more of the value there. So do cost discipline and balance sheet strength. The CFO’s contribution ties more directly to reported results, and the ratio compresses.

There is also a broader change across the C-suite. As companies put more weight on capital allocation, transformation, risk management, and finance strategy, the CFO role keeps expanding. Its scope and influence have grown with it. Median CFO compensation now sits slightly above that of chief operating officers, at $3.86 million against $3.8 million in the most recent proxy year. Median CFO pay has risen 62% since 2019. The COO role has narrowed toward execution while many CFOs have taken on work once handled by operational leadership, and the center of gravity for the number two seat keeps moving toward finance. The money has come with less security. Average CFO tenure is now 2.1 years, the shortest in the C-suite.

Is the CEO-CFO Pay Gap Still Aligned with the CFO Role?

The question worth asking is not whether CEOs deserve more, since boards have long recognized that the role carries a broader mandate, greater accountability, and more direct responsibility for enterprise value. The harder question is whether pay structures still match the job.

Today’s CFO role looks little like it did a decade ago. Beyond stewardship and reporting, many CFOs now lead on capital allocation, investor relations, corporate planning, M&A, financing, risk management, technology investment, and enterprise transformation, and in many organizations the finance chief is now the chief executive’s most important partner. As that mandate grows, boards may ask whether their compensation frameworks still reflect it, and the question bites hardest where financial leadership has a direct hand in value creation.

What Should Boards Do About the CEO-CFO Pay Gap?

The first lesson is that not every gap needs correcting. Boards should look past the ratio. Benchmark by company size, growth profile, sector, and ownership structure rather than by title. The second is that the mix deserves as much attention as the total. Two packages with the same headline value can carry very different retention potential. The difference only shows up when the market turns.

Where the CFO is seen as a possible successor, the ratio carries a message. A gap that keeps widening may say something the board never intended. None of that is visible in a ratio. Sector, growth profile, ownership structure, and incentive design each move the number. A mature industrial business will produce different outcomes from a high-growth technology company. Privately held and private equity-backed companies behave differently again. They often put more weight on shared value creation.

For CEOs, directors, and compensation committees, the task is making sure pay programs keep attracting and retaining exceptional leaders across the whole executive team, not only at the very top. The market for financial leadership is repricing quickly. The companies that read it well will recruit better.

Demand for CFOs is high. Their pay keeps rising. What the AI era may be changing is where the largest wealth-creation opportunities accrue. Equity ownership is the mechanism. The better question for boards is whether their compensation structures reflect how far the CFO role has moved into strategy, capital allocation, transformation, and enterprise value creation.

Stanton Chase’s CFO and Financial Executives Practice works with boards and chief executives on these decisions. That runs from CFO succession and appointment to assessment. The question is whether a finance leader is ready for what the role now demands, and it sits alongside our advisory services in board effectiveness, executive assessment, leadership development, and succession planning.

About the Authors

Cathy Logue, FCPA, FCA, is a Managing Director at Stanton Chase Toronto. She is also the firm’s Global Functional Leader for CFO and Financial Executives. She has more than 30 years of experience in executive search and financial leadership. Her appointments span CFO, CEO, COO, and board roles. The sectors run from consumer products to private equity. Cathy qualified as a Chartered Accountant with Ernst & Young. She was awarded the FCPA, FCA designation in 2017 and is certified in Hogan Assessment. She sits on the board of the Association of Executive Search and Leadership Consultants.

Paul Duffy is a Director at Stanton Chase Perth. He has more than 30 years of experience placing C-suite and general manager level executives across mining, energy, agribusiness, manufacturing, financial services, IT&T, FMCG, defense, utilities, and infrastructure. Before joining Stanton Chase he owned and ran a boutique executive search firm in Perth, working with clients in Australia, Southeast Asia, and Canada. Paul holds a Bachelor of Commerce from the University of Western Australia, and he works closely with clients on the questions that sit behind an executive appointment.