Did Google offer Neal Mohan $100 mn to stop him from joining Twitter? What YouTube CEO said on Nikhil Kamath's podcast

YouTube's CEO allegedly received an offer of $100 million from the US-based Big Tech firm Google, trying to keep the Indian-American from joining Twitter (now X). Zerodha co-founder Nikhil Kamath, in his podcast with Mohan, recalled this topic, which may have happened nearly 15 years ago. 

“I remember reading this thing about Google offering you $100 million not to quit. Not today, but 15 years ago, which was a lot of money,” said Nikhil Kamath.

However, the YouTube executive told Kamath not to believe every headline he read, even if it was from 15 years ago.

“I'm not very sophisticated in masks. So I always like to think that it's what you see is what you get. And by the way, don't believe every single headline that you read, even if it was 15 years old,” said Mohan, responding to Kamath's mention of a report on Google's $100 million retention offer.

Did Google really offer $100 million?

According to a TechCrunch report from April 2011, citing multiple people aware of the development, Google might have paid as much as $150 million in stock grants in an attempt to retain important product employees, including Sundar Pichai (now CEO of Google) and Neal Mohan (current CEO of YouTube).

There were reports that these key executives were offered a chief product role at Twitter earlier that year. The report further highlighted that Google offered Sundar Pichai $50 million and Neal Mohan $100 million to stay in the tech giant.

Back then, both Twitter and Google refused to comment on this development. Even now, both Mohan and Pichai are at the top, heading the biggest content platform and the biggest search engine, respectively.

Neal Mohan's career

YouTube CEO Neal Mohan started out working for the IT firm Accenture as a Senior Analyst in 1996, then went on to work for Microsoft and Google. He also served as a Stanford University board member and a board member at Starbucks, among other key roles, before joining YouTube as Chief Product Officer.

Mohan spent over seven years in the role, after which he was appointed as the CEO of the world's largest content consumption platform.

He used to work as a Senior Vice President of Display and Video Ads at Google.

Mohan holds a Bachelor of Science (BS) in Electrical Engineering from Stanford University and an MBA in General Management.