Elon Musk, CEO of Tesla, speaks through the 2025 Annual Shareholder Assembly on Nov. 6, 2025.
Courtesy: Tesla
Tesla stated shareholders voted in favor of CEO Elon Musk’s virtually $1 trillion pay plan, with 75% assist amongst voting shares.
Board members beneficial shareholders approve the pay plan, which they launched in September. High proxy advisors Glass Lewis and ISS beneficial voting in opposition to it.
Outcomes of the vote had been introduced on Thursday on the firm’s annual shareholders assembly in Austin, Texas.
A separate proposal referred to as for Tesla to have the ability to put money into xAI, Musk’s synthetic intelligence startup fashioned in March 2023 to compete with OpenAI. Brandon Ehrhart, basic counsel at Tesla, stated on the assembly that the corporate had “obtained extra votes in favor than we did in in opposition to,” however that there have been a lot of abstentions and that Tesla is contemplating subsequent steps.
The pay package deal for Musk, already the world’s richest individual, consists of 12 tranches of shares to be granted if Tesla hits sure milestones over the following decade. It could additionally give Musk elevated voting energy over the corporate, acceding to calls for that he is made publicly since early 2024. His possession would improve from about 13% to 25%, including greater than 423 million shares to his holdings.
The primary tranche of inventory will get paid out if Tesla hits a market capitalization of $2 trillion. Tesla’s present market cap is $1.54 trillion.
The following 9 tranches could be awarded if Tesla’s worth will increase by increments of $500 billion, as much as $6.5 trillion. Musk would earn the final two tranches if the market cap rises by increments of $1 trillion, which means it will have to hit $8.5 trillion for Musk to get the complete package deal.
Tesla additionally laid out a collection of earnings milestones for Musk, starting with $50 billion in annual adjusted revenue and transferring as much as $400 billion. Within the third quarter, Tesla reported adjusted EBITDA of $4.2 billion.
Different targets tied to the newly permitted pay plan embody reaching 20 million car deliveries, 10 million lively FSD (Full Self-Driving) subscriptions, 1 million bots (Optimus humanoid robots) delivered and 1 million robotaxis in industrial operation. To this point, Tesla has delivered greater than 8 million autos, in response to its September proxy assertion.
The proposed plan would not specify whether or not the FSD subscriptions should be bought or may embody free trials. Tesla at the moment offers partially automated driving methods, which it markets as “FSD Supervised” within the U.S. The corporate intends to enhance its FSD Supervised methods so they do not require human supervision on board.
On the assembly, Musk claimed that Optimus robots “will eradicate poverty,” “give everybody superb medical care,” and will likely be “greater than cell telephones, greater than something.” He additionally stated the robots might be used for “containment of future crime” by following criminals round and stopping them from “doing crime.”
There’s at the moment no Optimus robotic in the marketplace, and Musk did not present a goal date for reaching these targets.
As Reuters beforehand reported, Musk may nonetheless rating tens of billions of {dollars} with out assembly a lot of the targets laid out for him by the board, accumulating greater than $50 billion simply by hitting a handful of the extra attainable targets.
There are additionally an inventory of “coated occasions” within the award phrases that may enable Musk to earn shares with out assembly the required operational milestones.
Coated occasions embody pure disasters, wars, pandemics, and adjustments to “worldwide, federal, state and native regulation, rules or different governmental motion or inaction,” that would hamper the corporate’s means to design, manufacture or promote its merchandise down the road.
Shareholders voted on the brand new plan after the Delaware Court docket of Chancery dominated final yr that Musk’s earlier 2018 pay plan was improperly granted by the Tesla board and should be rescinded. Musk appealed that ruling and the matter will likely be determined by the Delaware State Supreme Court docket.
Along with main Tesla, Musk runs xAI which has merged with X, leads SpaceX and its satellite tv for pc web enterprise Starlink, and is a founding father of mind pc interface firm Neuralink and tunneling enterprise The Boring Firm.
He is additionally been closely engaged in politics, most notably working to propel President Donald Trump again to the White Home, after which main a sweeping effort to slash the federal authorities originally of his second time period.