Tesla’s nearly $1 trillion new pay plan for Musk would expand his voting power
Tesla is asking investors to approve yet another outsized pay plan for CEO Elon Musk, according to a financial filing out Friday.
The total package is worth about $975 billion based on the maximum payout, assuming share count remains.
The proposed plan for Musk, already the world’s wealthiest individual, consists of 12 tranches of shares to be granted if Tesla hits certain milestones over the next decade. It would also give Musk increased voting power over the EV maker and aspiring robotics titan, which he has publicly demanded since early 2024.
Tesla Chairwoman Robyn Denholm told CNBC’s Andrew Ross Sorkin the plan was designed to keep the CEO “motivated and focused on delivering for the company.”
“If he performs, if he hits the super ambitious milestones that are in the plan then he gets equity — it’s 1% for each half a trillion dollars of market cap, plus operational milestones he has to hit in order to do that,” Denholm said on CNBC’s “Squawk Box.”
The full award would give Musk more than 423 million additional shares. He currently holds about a 13% stake in the company.
Tesla one-day stock chart.
Denholm confirmed that the Tesla CEO pay plan, if approved by shareholders, would not put any limit on where and how Musk spends his time or require him to spend any minimum number of hours per week on Tesla business.
To obtain the first award in the plan, Musk and Tesla would need to almost double their current market cap to reach $2 trillion. The final benchmark is reaching an $8.5 trillion market cap.
The operational milestones in the 2025 CEO Performance Award include: 20 million Tesla vehicles delivered, 10 million active FSD Subscriptions, 1 million robots delivered, 1 million Robotaxis in commercial operation and a series of adjusted EBITDA benchmarks.
Musk has remained politically embroiled, while also running a collection of companies, including aerospace and defense contractor SpaceX, drilling venture The Boring Company, health tech company Neuralink and the artificial intelligence venture, xAI, which has merged with his social network, X.
Tesla also said in the filing Friday that it will ask shareholders at the Nov. 6 meeting to vote on whether the company should invest in Musk’s newest venture, xAI.
Musk first floated the idea publicly with an informal poll on X last July, asking whether Tesla should invest $5 billion into xAI.
Founded in early 2023 in Nevada, xAI merged with Musk’s social network X earlier this year. The company now operates a massive data center in Memphis, and plans to build out another facility there to help train and run its large language models and a chatbot called Grok.
Pay plan controversy
The new pay proposal for Musk comes after the Delaware Court of Chancery ruled last year that his 2018 pay plan was excessive, had been improperly granted by the Tesla board and must be rescinded.
In that case, Tornetta v. Musk, a judge found that the Tesla CEO had controlled pay negotiations at the automaker, and his board of directors failed to give shareholders information that they were legally entitled to before telling them they should vote to approve Musk’s performance-based pay plan.
The case is now on appeal.
CEO of Palantir Technologies Alex Karp attends the Pennsylvania Energy and Innovation Summit, at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, U.S., July 15, 2025.
Nathan Howard | Reuters
It’s been a tough November for Palantir.
Shares of the software analytics provider dropped 16% for their worst month since August 2023 as investors dumped AI stocks due to valuation fears. Meanwhile, famed investor Michael Burry doubled down on the artificial intelligence trade and bet against the company.
Palantir started November off on a high note.
The Denver-based company topped Wall Street’s third-quarter earnings and revenue expectations. Palantir also posted its second-straight $1 billion revenue quarter, but high valuation concerns contributed to a post-print selloff.
In a note to clients, Jefferies analysts called Palantir’s valuation “extreme” and argued investors would find better risk-reward in AI names such as Microsoft and Snowflake. Analysts at RBC Capital Markets raised concerns about the company’s “increasingly concentrated growth profile,” while Deutsche Bank called the valuation “very difficult to wrap our heads around.”
Adding fuel to the post-earnings selloff was the revelation that Burry is betting against Palantir and AI chipmaker Nvidia. Burry, who is widely known for predicting the housing crisis that occurred in 2008 and the portrayal of him in the film “The Big Short,” later accused hyperscalers of artificially boosting earnings.
Palantir CEO Alex Karp vocally hit the front lines, appearing twice in one week on CNBC, where he accused Burry of “market manipulation” and called the investor’s actions “egregious.”
“The idea that chips and ontology is what you want to short is bats— crazy,” Karp told CNBC’s “Squawk Box.”
Despite the vicious selloff, Palantir has notched some deal wins this month. That included a multiyear contract with consulting firm PwC to speed up AI adoption in the U.K. and a deal with aircraft engine maintenance company FTAI.
But those announcements did little to shake off valuation worries that have haunted all AI-tied companies in November.
Across the board, investors have viciously ditched the high-priced group, citing fears of stretched valuations and a bubble.
In November, Nvidia pulled back more than 12%, while Microsoft and Amazon dropped about 5% each. Quantum computing names such as Rigetti Computing and D-Wave Quantum have shed more than a third of their value.
Apple and Alphabet were the only Magnificent 7 stocks to end the month with gains.
Sill, questions linger over Palantir’s valuation, and those worries aren’t a new concern.
Even after its steep price drop, the company’s stock trades at 233 times forward earnings. By comparison, Nvidia and Alphabet traded at about 38 times and 30 times, respectively, at Friday’s close.
Karp, who has long defended the company, didn’t miss an opportunity to clap back at his critics, arguing in a letter to shareholders that the company is making it feasible for everyday investors to attain rates of return once “limited to the most successful venture capitalists in Palo Alto.”
“Please turn on the conventional television and see how unhappy those that didn’t invest in us are,” Karp said during an earnings call. “Enjoy, get some popcorn. They’re crying. We are every day making this company better, and we’re doing it for this nation, for allied countries.”
Palantir declined to comment for this story.
WATCH: Palantir CEO Alex Karp: We’ve printed venture results for the average American
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