Good morning. Executive pay packages are increasingly being reengineered around explicit, measurable performance targets, sometimes including stock price gains.
Take Christy Schwartz, who became Opendoor’s CFO on Jan. 1 after serving as interim CFO, chief accounting officer, and VP of corporate control. Her initial base salary is $1.2 million through May 15, then drops to $500,000 annually, plus a $100,000 sign-on bonus.
But the larger story lies in her long-term incentives. Schwartz received about 1.7 million performance-based stock units, which vest only if Opendoor shares reach $9, $13, $17, $21, $25, $29, or $33 over a 30-day period between April 2026 and October 2030, according to an SEC filing. This ties a substantial portion of her pay directly to the company’s stock performance over several years—a clear reflection of a broader trend toward performance-driven compensation across Opendoor’s leadership.
Riot bets on AI
Riot Platforms is taking a similar approach but with a focus on its evolving business model from a pure-play bitcoin miner into a broader power-and-infrastructure company focused on AI and high-performance computing data centers. There was an update in the pay program disclosed alongside the company’s Jan. 2 announcement that it promoted Jason Chung to CFO, effective March 1.
Riot recalibrated its 2026 pay program to better align with the company’s strategic priorities, shifting away from bitcoin-centric compensation. SEC filings reveal that once Riot secures a data center tenant, executive incentives will focus on revenue and net operating income tied to those operations. Specifically, “Data Center Revenue” and “Data Center NOI” will each account for 15% of the annual incentive plan, with payouts ranging from zero to 200% depending on results. At the same time, the adjusted EBITDA metric will drop to 25% weighting. Riot didn’t respond to a request for a comment.
In connection with his promotion, Chung’s annual base salary rose to $550,000 from $500,000. Meanwhile, CEO Jason Les and Executive Chairman Benjamin Yi will see base salaries increase to $900,000 from $600,000, eliminating the portion previously paid in bitcoin. Their target bonus opportunities under the annual incentive plan also increased to 125% of base salary from 100%, and their employment agreements were extended through Jan. 10, 2031.
Shawn Cole, president and founding partner of executive search firm Cowen Partners, told me that Les’s base salary increase “functions as a buffer against variability in incentive compensation, particularly if performance-based payouts are reduced or less certain.”
Aligning executive incentives with company performance and long-term shareholder value can be an effective approach, Cole said. However, he cautioned that it can also create unintended consequences in some cases. The same structures can encourage risk avoidance when missing targets carries immediate downside, while potential rewards are delayed or capped, he added. This is particularly relevant in evolving sectors such as AI, where strategic investments are becoming essential for sustainable growth, but accurately gauging how long they will take to generate financial returns is challenging.
As Opendoor, Riot, and other companies recalibrate executive pay, the trend toward tying compensation to long-term performance is clear.
Sheryl Estrada
sheryl.estrada@fortune.com
Leaderboard
Jeffrey Lee was appointed EVP and CFO of ProAmpac, a flexible packaging and material science company, effective Feb. 9. Lee succeeds Eric Bradford, who has served as ProAmpac’s CFO since 2012. Lee joins ProAmpac from Cornerstone Building Brands, where he served as EVP and CFO for more than six years. Before Cornerstone, Lee was SVP and CFO of Wilsonart International, and EVP and Corporate CFO of Contech.
Jean-Frédéric Viret was appointed CFO of SpyGlass Pharma, a late-stage biopharmaceutical company. Viret brings over two decades of corporate finance experience. His most recent roles include serving as CFO of NGM Biopharmaceuticals, Inc. and Blade Therapeutics, Inc. Before Blade, Viret was CFO at Coherus BioSciences, Inc., now Coherus Oncology.
Big Deal
Provident Bank has released the results of its annual “Economic Outlook Survey.” While business owners remain mindful of inflation and trade tensions, there are plans for active expansion and investment for 2026, according to the bank.
Over 50% of respondents believe the U.S. economy will be in a better position this year, and over 60% expect their own business to be in better shape. Seventy percent of businesses plan to increase capital expenditures in 2026, up from 68% last year. The number of businesses planning a “significant increase” rose from 11% last year to 19% this year.
The survey finds that younger leaders are driving the optimism, with 44% of Gen Z owners expecting their business to be in “much better shape” next year, compared to just 14.5% of Boomers. And 58% of businesses are either already using or planning to adopt AI tools this year, an increase from 41% in last year’s survey.
The findings are based on a survey of 1,000 business owners and senior executives in the U.S. working for companies with over $1 million in annual revenue.
Going deeper
"How JPMorgan CEO Jamie Dimon notched $770 million in gains for his work in 2025" is a Fortune article by Amanda Gerut.
Gerut writes: "Last year was a roller coaster ride, but a market rebound has pushed mega banks’ stock growth nearly 30% and record compensation and bonuses are likely to follow. Leading the charge is JPMorgan Chase CEO and chairman Jamie Dimon, one of the last sitting Wall Street leaders to have navigated the 2008 financial crisis, the subsequent passage of the Dodd-Frank reform act, and now the AI boom. Dimon has spent the past 20 years atop JPMorgan and is known for rarely cashing in his stock." You can read the complete article here.
Overheard
"If you’re tech-savvy, you use a password manager that generates strong and secure passwords that are saved in the cloud. But have you heard of or used a passkey?"
—Rishi Bhargava, co-founder at Descope, writes in a Fortune opinion piece that most people have probably been using the same password for their online accounts and apps for years. However, passkeys are not yet widely used. “Tech giants like Amazon, Apple, Google, Meta, and Microsoft have all benefited from instituting passkeys, and industry associations have pushed to make passkeys the standard,” he writes.
