Tesla’s board is asking shareholders to sign off on a massive, unprecedented pay package that could turn its CEO, Elon Musk, who is already the world’s richest man, into the first trillionaire.
If the plan is approved, Musk would need to reach several performance benchmarks over the next 10 years to get the full payout.
The board said in a securities filing on Friday that the pay package’s primary goal is to retain “Mr. Musk to lead Tesla through its next phase of transformational growth.” In other words, the board wants Musk’s full attention on Tesla. But Musk, who’s been running the company since 2008, is also juggling four other ventures: SpaceX, xAI, Neuralink, and the Boring Company.
Musk’s ruinous forays into politics have also hurt Tesla’s brand. In 2024, he endorsed Donald Trump for president, poured millions into Trump’s campaign, and led a shakeup of the federal government via the new Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE). Musk’s politics triggered backlash that included incidents of arson and vandalism at Tesla stores and charging stations. Meanwhile, Tesla logged two of its worst quarters in years, with global vehicle deliveries down 13%. In Europe, sales are especially dire.
The new pay proposal follows a Delaware judge’s decision to block Musk’s previous $55 billion compensation plan from 2018, siding with shareholders who said the deal was unfairly approved. Tesla has appealed the ruling. And in August, the company offered Musk about $29 billion in stock if he agreed to stick around for two more years.
How the new plan would work
Under the new plan, Musk could be awarded up to 423 million shares, worth about $143 billion at today’s prices and equal to roughly 12% of Tesla’s stock. Musk already owns about 13% of the company. To cash in, he has to stay on as CEO or hold another executive office and hit a series of production and market-cap milestones.
The award is split into 12 tranches. The first unlocks if Tesla’s market cap, currently hovering around $1 trillion, doubles to $2 trillion. The next nine tranches require an extra $500 billion each, and the final two require a trillion-dollar jump each.
For Musk to take home the full payout, Tesla would need to hit a market value of $8.5 trillion within the next decade, about eight times higher than its current assessment. That would make Musk’s stock haul worth more than $1 trillion.
The plan also ties his payout to some ambitious operational goals, including delivering 20 million vehicles, putting a million robotaxis on the road, and rolling out a million Optimus humanoid robots.
