Tesla shareholders just voted to give Elon Musk the biggest pay package in corporate history. More than 75 percent of voting shareholders approved a deal that could be worth up to $1 trillion over the next ten years. When the results were announced at Tesla’s annual meeting in Austin, Texas, the crowd broke into cheers and started chanting Musk’s name. He came on stage flanked by dancing Optimus robots and thanked everyone for their support.
This isn’t money that Musk gets right away. The deal is structured so that he only gets paid if Tesla hits extremely ambitious goals. The company needs to reach a market value of $8.5 trillion for Musk to earn the full package. Right now, Tesla is worth about $1.5 trillion. That means the company would need to grow more than five times its current size. For context, the most valuable company in the world right now is Nvidia at around $5 trillion. Tesla would need to be worth almost twice that.
The pay package is divided into twelve separate pieces called tranches. Each tranche gets unlocked when Tesla hits certain targets. The first tranche kicks in when Tesla reaches a $2 trillion market value. After that, Musk earns additional tranches as the company grows by $500 billion increments up to $6.5 trillion. The last two tranches require the company to jump by $1 trillion each time. Along with these market value goals, Tesla also needs to meet specific business targets like selling a certain number of cars or hitting profit goals.
Musk doesn’t take a regular salary from Tesla. Instead, his wealth comes entirely from owning Tesla stock. Right now he owns about 13 percent of the company. This new pay package would give him an additional 12 percent, bringing his total ownership to around 25 percent. That’s actually what Musk really wants from this deal. He’s said repeatedly that it’s not about the money. He wants more control over Tesla so that nobody can push him out or overrule his decisions.
Earlier this year, Musk made it pretty clear that he might leave Tesla if he didn’t get this pay package approved. He told investors that he was uncomfortable leading Tesla without at least 20 percent voting control. Tesla’s board chair Robyn Denholm backed him up, warning shareholders that the company could lose Musk to his other businesses if they didn’t approve the deal. Musk runs several other companies including SpaceX, xAI, Neuralink, and The Boring Company. He’s also been heavily involved in politics and working with the Trump administration.
The vote to approve this package comes after a messy legal situation with Musk’s previous pay deal. Back in 2018, Tesla gave Musk a compensation package worth about $56 billion. That seemed like a lot at the time, but it turned out to be even more valuable as Tesla’s stock price shot up. Then in 2024, a judge in Delaware said that pay package wasn’t done properly. The court found that Tesla’s board hadn’t given shareholders enough information when they voted on it, and the deal got thrown out. Musk is appealing that decision, but while the legal fight continues, Tesla needed to come up with a new compensation plan.
Not everyone was happy about this new trillion dollar package. Glass Lewis and ISS, two firms that advise investors on how to vote, both recommended voting against it. They said the amount was way too high and the structure wasn’t good. Norway’s sovereign wealth fund, which owns more than one percent of Tesla, also voted against it. They were worried about how much the pay package would dilute existing shares and give too much power to one person. But clearly most shareholders disagreed and voted yes anyway.
Tesla and its board campaigned hard for this vote. They ran television ads asking shareholders to approve the package, which is something Tesla doesn’t even do for its actual cars. Denholm did multiple media interviews explaining why the package was necessary, even though she usually avoids talking to the press. The company’s investor relations department set up a website urging people to vote yes, arguing that Musk only gets paid if he creates massive value for shareholders.
At the shareholder meeting, Musk spent most of his time talking about robots rather than cars. He’s betting big on Tesla’s Optimus humanoid robot, claiming it will be bigger than any product in history. He said every person on Earth will eventually want their own personal robot, comparing it to having an R2D2 or C3PO from Star Wars. Musk thinks these robots could sell for about $20,000 each, roughly the price of a car. He even made wild predictions that the robots will eliminate poverty, provide amazing medical care, and help contain crime by following criminals around.
Tesla announced at the meeting that it will build production lines capable of making millions of Optimus robots. The first line will make one million units at the factory in Fremont, California. Eventually they want to build a ten million unit production line in Austin, Texas. One of the milestones in Musk’s pay package is selling one million robots. The problem is that Optimus isn’t even available to buy yet. Nobody knows when it will actually go on sale or if people will want to buy millions of them.
The company also shared updates about its robotaxi plans. Tesla will start making the Cybercab robotaxi in April 2026 and plans to test the service in Miami, Dallas, Phoenix, and Las Vegas. Musk has been promising self driving cars for years, but they still haven’t delivered a vehicle that can actually drive itself without a human ready to take over. The cars have something called Full Self Driving, but despite the name, it’s really just an advanced driver assistance system that requires constant human supervision.
Musk’s focus on robots and self driving taxis is interesting because Tesla’s actual car business has been struggling. Sales and profits dropped significantly in the first half of 2025. The company’s brand has taken a hit because of Musk’s political activities. He’s been working closely with President Trump and leading efforts to cut government spending through something called the Department of Government Efficiency. A lot of people who used to buy Teslas because they cared about the environment and progressive politics are now avoiding the brand because they disagree with Musk’s political views.
Despite these challenges, Musk remains incredibly wealthy. He’s already worth about $473 billion according to Bloomberg’s tracking, making him by far the richest person in the world. Most of that wealth comes from his Tesla shares and his ownership of SpaceX. If this new pay package works out and Tesla hits all the targets, Musk could become the world’s first trillionaire. That’s a thousand billion dollars, an amount of money so large it’s hard to even comprehend.
Some people think this pay package makes sense because Musk has proven he can build Tesla into something huge. When he took over the company, electric cars were a joke. Now Tesla is one of the most valuable car companies ever, even though it sells way fewer vehicles than traditional automakers like Toyota or Volkswagen. Supporters argue that Musk’s vision and relentless drive are the only reasons Tesla exists as a major company, so he deserves whatever compensation he can negotiate.
Critics see things differently. They point out that Musk could earn hundreds of billions even if he only hits a few of the easier targets. The structure of the deal includes something called covered events that would let him earn shares without meeting all the required goals if certain things happen like natural disasters, wars, pandemics, or changes in laws. That seems like a lot of loopholes for someone who’s supposed to only get paid for exceptional performance.
There’s also the question of whether one person should have this much wealth and power. Pope Leo XIV recently spoke about income inequality and specifically mentioned Musk becoming a trillionaire as an example of what’s wrong with the system. The Pope noted that CEOs used to make maybe six times what their workers earned, but now it’s more like 600 times. Having one person accumulate a trillion dollars while many people struggle to pay rent or afford healthcare doesn’t sit right with a lot of people.
The other concern is what happens if things don’t work out. Tesla has committed to building massive robot factories and developing self driving technology that doesn’t exist yet. If the robots don’t sell, or if self driving never actually works, or if competition from other car companies intensifies, Tesla could be in serious trouble. The company has been profitable in recent years, but it’s also gone through long periods of losses. There’s no guarantee that Tesla will keep growing forever.
Musk himself acknowledged some of these risks during an earnings call last month. He said he needs the extra voting control in case he goes insane. His logic is that having 25 percent of the voting shares gives him enough power to run the company the way he thinks is best, but not so much power that the board couldn’t fire him if he completely lost his mind. It’s an unusual way to think about corporate governance, but then again, nothing about Elon Musk is conventional.
The shareholder vote happened despite Tesla being at what the board called an inflection point. The company is trying to shift from being primarily a car maker to being a robotics and AI company. That’s a huge pivot that could work out brilliantly or fail completely. Shareholders are basically betting that Musk can pull off another miracle like he did when he built Tesla into the electric car leader. They’re giving him the money and control to try, and they’ll either get incredibly rich if it works or watch a lot of value disappear if it doesn’t.
Looking at the details of what needs to happen for Musk to earn the full trillion dollars, the goals seem almost impossible. Tesla needs to sell 20 million vehicles in a year. That’s more than double what they sell now. They need to sell one million robots when they haven’t sold a single one yet. They need to have one million robotaxis operating commercially when the technology to do that safely doesn’t exist. And they need to grow the company’s value to $8.5 trillion, which would make Tesla worth more than most countries’ entire economies.
But Musk has a history of accomplishing things people said were impossible. He made electric cars desirable when everyone said it couldn’t be done. He built SpaceX into a company that lands rockets back on Earth after they go to space, something that seemed like science fiction. He’s won big bets before, which is why so many shareholders are willing to bet on him again with this trillion dollar package.
The next ten years will determine whether this pay package turns out to be brilliant or disastrous. If Musk can actually deliver on the promises about robots, self driving cars, and massive growth, Tesla shareholders will make enormous amounts of money and Musk will become incomprehensibly wealthy. If the promises don’t pan out and Tesla struggles, shareholders will have given away billions worth of the company for nothing. Either way, this vote marks one of the most significant moments in corporate history. No other CEO has ever been offered anything close to a trillion dollars. Whether Musk earns it or not, the fact that shareholders approved it shows how much faith people have in his ability to do the impossible. Time will tell if that faith is justified or misplaced.
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