Norway’s $2 trillion sovereign wealth fund said it will vote against Elon Musk’s trillion-dollar pay package at Tesla‘s annual shareholder meeting this week, rebelling against management guidance and threats from Musk to step down if the deal is rejected.

Norges Bank Investment Management (NBIM), which manages the fund — the largest of its kind in the world, and a major shareholder in Tesla — said on Tuesday that it had already cast its vote against Musk’s remuneration package as CEO of the carmaker.

“While we appreciate the significant value created under Mr. Musk’s visionary role, we are concerned about the total size of the award, dilution, and lack of mitigation of key person risk- consistent with our views on executive compensation,” NBIM said in a statement.

“We will continue to seek constructive dialogue with Tesla on this and other topics,” the fund’s managers added.

Norway’s wealth fund holds a 1.14% stake in Tesla, according to its half-year filings in June. The value of that investment was last declared to be 118.3 billion Norwegian kroner ($11.6 billion).

Tesla shares were 2.5% lower in premarket trade.

Tesla’s Board of Directors is asking shareholders to approve a pay plan for Musk that could see him granted almost $1 trillion in stock and expand his voting powers at the company. The full award would be contingent on Tesla hitting certain milestones over the next 10 years.

The proposals have raised eyebrows and been met with opposition from some company watchers. Last month, the Take Back Tesla campaign — a coalition of unions and corporate watchdogs — urged shareholders to reject the deal, while proxy advisories Institutional Shareholder Services and Glass Lewis have also recommended investors vote against the compensation package.

Musk has hit back at those recommendations, labeling ISS and Glass Lewis “corporate terrorists” on an analyst call.

“Tesla is worth more than all other automotive companies combined,” Musk wrote in a post on X last month in response to a critic of the pay proposal. “Which of those CEOs would you like to run Tesla? It won’t be me.”

Representatives for Musk and Tesla were not immediately available to comment on NBIM’s vote against the proposed CEO compensation package.

However, Musk has butted heads with NBIM over his pay in the past.

Last year, NBIM voted against reinstating Musk’s $56 billion pay deal after it was rescinded by a U.S. judge. The package — the largest public executive compensation plan in U.S. history — was ultimately approved by Tesla’s shareholders.

Following the vote, the Financial Times and Norwegian newspaper E24 published text messages exchanged between Musk and NBIM Chief Executive Nicolai Tangen, which showed the Tesla CEO declining an invitation to a dinner in Norwegian capital Oslo.

“When I ask you for a favor, which I very rarely do, and you decline, then you should not ask me for one until you’ve done something to make amends,” Musk reportedly wrote. “Friends are as friends do.”

Musk is the world’s wealthiest person, according to Forbes, with a net worth of $504.1 billion.

— CNBC’s Lora Kolodny contributed to this report.

Binance CEO Richard Teng has dismissed claims that the cryptocurrency exchange helped boost a Trump-backed stablecoin before former CEO Changpeng Zhao received a presidential pardon.

The claims in question relate to a $2 billion investment Binance received from Abu Dhabi’s state-owned investment firm MGX. The deal was settled using USD1, a stablecoin created by the Trump family’s crypto venture, World Liberty Financial. 

MGX’s investment and Binance’s subsequent listing of USD1 on its exchange helped bolster the stablecoin’s usage and credibility, with some lawmakers and reports suggesting this may have influenced the pardon of Zhao, commonly known as CZ.

However, in a CNBC interview on Monday, Teng rejected the notion that Binance — the world’s largest cryptocurrency firm — had given USD1 any preferential treatment.

“First of all, the usage of USD1 [for the] transaction between MGX as a strategic investor into Binance, that was decided by MGX … We didn’t partake in that decision,” Teng said. 

He noted that USD1 had already been listed on other exchanges before Binance, adding that, as the “largest crypto ecosystem in the world,” the company regularly engages with promising new projects.

“Sometimes it works out. Sometimes it doesn’t. In the case of USD1, I’m glad that both parties worked it out.” 

Teng’s denials come after the Wall Street Journal reported last week that Binance not only facilitated the settlement of MGX’s investment using USD1, but also assisted in building the technology behind the stablecoin, citing anonymous sources familiar with the matter.

The Journal also previously noted that World Liberty Financial benefited greatly from the listing of its USD1 token on Binance and a partnership with Pancake Swap — an online marketplace for cryptocurrencies said to be associated with Binance. 

Meanwhile, scrutiny of CZ’s pardon and Binance’s ties to the Trump-linked World Liberty Financial has continued to mount from opposition leaders on Capitol Hill.

Among the most prominent voices has been Sen. Elizabeth Warren, ranking member of the Senate Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs Committee, who has accused Binance and the Trump administration of corruption.

In a statement last month, the vocal critic of the crypto industry said: “First, Changpeng Zhao pleaded guilty to a criminal money laundering charge. Then he boosted one of Donald Trump’s crypto ventures and lobbied for a pardon,” with the President later doing “his part.”

Binance did not respond immediately to a request for comment.

Critics have long questioned World Liberty Financial’s open connections to the Trump administration as it seeks new partnerships and investors overseas.

According to World Liberty Financial’s website, a Trump-affiliated firm called DT Marks DEFI LLC, along with members of the Trump family, receives a major share of the platform’s revenue and holds digital tokens backing the company, known as WLFI. The firm has reportedly netted the Trump family hundreds of millions to billions in profits.

However, it also states that Trump, his family or any members of the Trump Organization or DT Marks DEFI LLC are not an “officer, director, founder, or employee of, or manager, owner or operator of World Liberty Financial or its affiliates.”

MGX’s purchase of $2 billion in USD1 tokens has also raised eyebrows after a New York Times report in September noted that it occurred two weeks before the White House signed a major agreement with the U.A.E. on access to hundreds of thousands of American microchips.

In a conversation with CNBC last month, Donald Trump Jr., the U.S. president’s eldest son and a co-founder of World Liberty Financial, dismissed the reports and broader concerns about potential conflicts of interest.

He was joined by the firm’s CEO, Zach Witkoff, son of U.S. Special Envoy to the Middle East Steve Witkoff, who said their fathers were not focused on nor directly involved in the business. 

Zhao was forced to step down from his role at Binance in 2023 after pleading guilty to enabling money laundering through the cryptocurrency exchange.

White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said in a statement on Oct. 23 that Zhao had been prosecuted under the Biden administration “despite no allegations of fraud or identifiable victims.”

Trump later said he pardoned Zhao “at the request of a lot of very good people” and that he knew nothing about him.

Since returning to office, Trump has embraced the crypto sector, proposing new crypto legislation while rolling back enforcement actions that targeted crypto exchanges such as Coinbase and Ripple during the prior administration.

Speaking Monday, Teng said that Binance and the crypto industry “were very thankful” to the president for CZ’s pardon and for signaling that the U.S. will be the “global crypto capital of the world.”

As companies pour billions into artificial intelligence, HSBC CEO Georges Elhedery on Tuesday warned of a mismatch between investments and revenues.

Speaking at the Global Financial Leaders’ Investment Summit in Hong Kong, Elhedery said the scale of investment poses a conundrum for companies: while the computing power for AI is essential, current revenue profiles may not justify such massive spending.

Morgan Stanley in July estimated that over the next five years, global data center capacity would grow six times, with data centers and their hardware alone costing $3 trillion by the end of 2028.

McKinsey said in a report in April that by 2030, data centers equipped to handle AI processing loads would require $5.2 trillion in capital expenditure to keep up with compute demand, while the capex for those powering traditional IT applications is forecast at $1.5 trillion.

Elhedery said that consumers were not ready to pay for it, and businesses will be cautious as productivity benefits will not materialize in a year or two.

“These are like five year trends, and therefore the ramp up means that we will start seeing real revenue benefits and real readiness to pay for it, probably later than than the expectations of investors,” he said.

William Ford, chairman and CEO of General Atlantic, speaking at the same panel, agreed: “In the long term, you’re going to create a whole new set of industries and applications, and there will be a productivity payoff, but that’s a 10-, 20-year play.”

Big Tech firms Alphabet, Meta, Microsoft and Amazon have all lifted their guidance for capital expenditures and now collectively expect that number to reach more than $380 billion this year.

OpenAI, which set off the AI frenzy with the launch of ChatGPT in November 2022, has announced roughly $1 trillion worth of infrastructure deals with partners including Nvidia, Oracle and Broadcom.

Ford said that the huge expenditure that is going into the sector shows that people recognize the long-term impact of AI. This sector, however, will be capital-intensive initially, he said adding that “you need to, sort of, pay up front for the opportunity that’s going to come down the road.”

Ford warned there could be “misallocation of capital, destruction, overvaluation… [and] irrational exuberance” in the initial stages, and also added that it can be difficult to pick winners and losers at the moment.

“You’re really betting on this being a broad based technology, more like railroads or electricity, that had profound impacts over over time, and reshaped the economy, but were very hard to predict exactly how in the first few years.”