Tesla's Board To Elon Musk: Hit These Milestones, And We'll Make You A Trillionaire

It's September 2025, and things are looking peachy keen. Sure, nan US occupation marketplace has taken a nosedive. And yeah, only one successful 4 Americans believes they person a bully chance of improving their modular of living. But hey, Tesla's committee has proposed a salary package that could make Elon Musk nan world's first trillionaire. What really matters is that someone is having a bully time, right?

Tesla's committee laid out what's by acold nan biggest CEO compensation package successful history connected Friday. It sounds for illustration nan eventual dangled carrot for a leader who is some driven by wealth and power and besides prone to distraction.

The compensation scheme is based connected capacity metrics that, astatine slightest for now, look far-fetched. First, nan Tesla leader would person to stay astatine nan institution for 7 and a half years to rate successful immoderate shares. To person nan afloat payout, he'd person to enactment for a afloat decade. Musk besides runs a rocket company and an AI company (which besides operates the erstwhile Twitter, aka X). So, supra each else, nan connection is designed to support his attraction connected nan institution that made him nan world's richest person.

For Musk to person nan afloat payout of astir $900 billion, Musk would person to summation Tesla's marketplace worth to $8.5 trillion. It's worthy astir $1.1 trillion today. Other capacity requirements see deploying a cardinal Tesla robotaxis and a cardinal AI robots. Musk would besides beryllium incentivized to participate successful nan company's semipermanent CEO succession plans. The package besides includes structural protections to minimize banal value volatility, which nan institution has go well-acquainted pinch successful 2025.

"We judge that Elon's singular imagination is captious to navigating this captious inflection point," Tesla committee leaders Robyn Denholm and Kathleen Wilson-Thompson wrote successful nan shareholder letter. "We besides admit nan formidable quality of this undertaking and, arsenic a result, nan value of having a leader who is not only consenting and tin but eager to meet this challenge. Simply put, retaining and incentivizing Elon is basal to Tesla achieving these goals and becoming nan astir valuable institution successful history."

Denholm and Wilson-Thompson implied nan package was astatine slightest partially motivated by nan CEO threatening to jump ship. "Mr. Musk besides raised nan anticipation that he whitethorn prosecute different interests that whitethorn spend him greater power if he did not person specified assurances," they wrote. "Ultimately, nan Special Committee believed it to beryllium captious to Tesla to unafraid Mr. Musk's committedness and attraction to lead Tesla."

Tesla shareholders will person to o.k. nan salary package. They're expected to ballot connected it connected November 6. A Delaware judge struck down a (similarly performance-based) 2018 package, and Tesla appealed. The caller plan, if approved, would switch nan older 1 if nan entreaty fails.

If Musk deed each of nan required benchmarks, his liking successful Tesla would turn from 13 percent to 29 percent. Who says nan American Dream isn't live and well?