Key Takeaways
- Tesla investors approved CEO Musk’s record-high $1 trillion pay package at the company’s annual shareholder meeting on Thursday.
- Tesla said more than 75% of shareholders backed the plan.
- Musk must steer Tesla to meet certain financial targets to receive the pay.
On Thursday, at Tesla’s annual shareholder meeting in Austin, Texas, Tesla investors voted to approve a record-breaking $1 trillion compensation plan for CEO Elon Musk, the largest executive compensation proposal ever considered and approved in corporate history.
More than 75% of shareholders backed the plan, leaving room for Musk, 54, to become the world’s first trillionaire if he meets a series of milestones. Musk won’t take a salary; the pay will take the form of a stock grant worth about $1 trillion that would give him over 400 million additional Tesla shares over the next decade. His stake in Tesla would expand to 25% or more, up from 13% currently.
“It’s not just a new chapter for Tesla, it’s a new book,” Musk told the audience of investors at the meeting, per Bloomberg.
To receive the 12-part compensation package, Musk must steer Tesla to achieve ambitious product and financial targets, per CNBC. The first part requires that Tesla’s market value rise to $2 trillion (it stood at $1.4 trillion at the time of writing) and that the company deliver its 20 millionth vehicle, put one million robotaxis on the street or sell one million humanoid Optimus robots.
Tesla has delivered about 8.5 million vehicles to date, far short of Musk’s target of 20 million deliveries. In 2025, the electric vehicle maker delivered 1.2 million cars, with recent quarterly figures just under 500,000 units.
Meanwhile, Tesla’s robotaxi program is currently limited in scale. Musk said last month that he plans to deploy 500 robotaxis in Austin and 1,000 more in California’s Bay Area by the end of the year.
Related: Tesla Robotaxis Are Now Driving Themselves in Austin: ‘It Was Awesome’
As far as selling one million humanoid robots, Tesla has yet to bring one of its Optimus robots to market. Musk said earlier this year that Tesla plans to deploy Optimus robots within its own manufacturing facilities this year and make the robots more broadly available next year.
Tesla has to ultimately hit $8.5 trillion in market value for Musk to receive the full $1 trillion pay. He will receive a stock award tied to each $500 billion or $1 trillion jump in Tesla’s valuation.
No company has ever reached the $8.5 trillion mark. The closest so far is AI chipmaker Nvidia, which became the first company to cross $5 trillion in market value last month, but it saw its market capitalization dip afterwards. Nvidia was worth $4.58 trillion at the time of writing.
Musk is the richest person in the world, with a net worth of $461 billion, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index.
Key Takeaways
- Tesla investors approved CEO Musk’s record-high $1 trillion pay package at the company’s annual shareholder meeting on Thursday.
- Tesla said more than 75% of shareholders backed the plan.
- Musk must steer Tesla to meet certain financial targets to receive the pay.
On Thursday, at Tesla’s annual shareholder meeting in Austin, Texas, Tesla investors voted to approve a record-breaking $1 trillion compensation plan for CEO Elon Musk, the largest executive compensation proposal ever considered and approved in corporate history.
More than 75% of shareholders backed the plan, leaving room for Musk, 54, to become the world’s first trillionaire if he meets a series of milestones. Musk won’t take a salary; the pay will take the form of a stock grant worth about $1 trillion that would give him over 400 million additional Tesla shares over the next decade. His stake in Tesla would expand to 25% or more, up from 13% currently.
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