Shareholders must vote to pay Tesla CEO Elon Musk almost $1 trillion, or he might not stay, Board Chair Robyn Denholm warned in a letter Monday.
“Without Elon, Tesla could lose significant value, as our company may no longer be valued for what we aim to become,” Denholm wrote ahead of Tesla’s annual meeting on Nov. 6.
The shareholder vote for Musk’s pay and other proposals closes at 11:59 p.m. ET on Nov. 5.
Musk is key to the future of the EV maker as it moves beyond being “just another car company,” with a bigger focus on Full Self Driving and Optimus, Denholm argued.
Several groups have publicly opposed the pay package in recent days, with Institutional Shareholder Services, the biggest proxy advisory firm in the world, recommending against its “astronomical” value.
Last week, a group of unions and corporate watchdogs launched the Take Back Tesla website to oppose the pay package, noting Musk’s embracing of right-wing political movements and amplifying of conspiracy theories that have damaged the brand.
Musk lashed out at proxy firms as “corporate terrorists” on a post-earnings call with analysts last week.
Denholm told CNBC’s “Squawk Box” on Monday that the company is at an “important inflection point” with artificial intelligence at the forefront.
“The opportunity for Tesla in the future, given this AI focus and attention and the unique capabilities that we have as an organization, and that Elon brings to us, really does mean that the opportunity for the company ahead of us is significant,” she said.
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Tesla reported third-quarter financials last week, missing earnings expectations but posting a 12% increase in revenue after two straight periods of declines.
The proposed plan for Musk, which was outlined by the board in September, consists of 12 tranches of shares granted to Musk if Tesla hits certain milestones.
The first tranche milestone is a market capitalization of $2 trillion. The company is currently worth about $1.5 trillion.
The next nine tranches are awarded as the market cap increases by increments of $500 billion, up to $6.5 trillion. The last two tranches bump the increment to $1 trillion, putting a $8.5 trillion market capitalization as the last tranche.
Product goals tied to the pay package:
20 Million Tesla Vehicles Delivered
10 Million Active FSD Subscriptions
1 Million Bots Delivered
1 Million Robotaxis in Commercial Operation
There are also a series of adjusted EBITDA milestones, beginning at $50 billion and moving up to $400 billion.
The package would give Musk increased voting power over the company, which he has publicly demanded for the past year and mentioned again on Tesla’s earnings call last week in reference to the growth of Optimus robots.
“If we build this robot army, do I have at least a strong influence over that robot army?” Musk said to analysts. “I don’t feel comfortable building that robot army if I don’t have at least a strong influence.”
The full award would give Musk, who already holds about 13% of the EV maker, more than 423 million additional shares and take his stake to about 25%.
“He’s been very consistent in that view, in terms of having enough influence over the vote of Tesla in the future so that bad things can’t happen with the AI,” Denholm told CNBC. “So it’s less about compensation and more about the voting influence.”
Denholm, who noted that retail traders make up about 30% of Tesla’s shareholder base, said last year was a record turnout for the vote.
She also asked that shareholders vote to re-elect Ira Ehrenpreis, Joe Gebbia and Kathleen Wilson-Thompson to the board.
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Tesla year-to-date stock chart.
5 quotes from Denholm’s “Squawk Box” interview:
On Musk’s pay package and shareholder value:
“What we have done in the plan is we’ve bifurcated the voting rights versus the economic value. He doesn’t get those economic value till at least year seven and a half, even if he delivers them in the first five years. And so that’s one of the features of this plan. … Firstly, shareholders get their return much earlier than Elon would if he delivers against the plan. And secondly, it really does make sure that the economic value is an incentive for him to stay at the company and continue to deliver for quite some time in the future.”
On the upcoming Roadster:
“It’s on the roadmap.”
On autonomous driving and AI in vehicles:
“Leaning into FSD and actually AI in the vehicles has actually been the focus over this last period of time. The integration of that with a really purpose built vehicle for autonomy is actually really important, which is why you see the cyber cabs and, again, the vehicles that we have on the road today. Great vehicles using full self driving as well.”
On vote for Tesla to take a minority stake in xAI:
“It is a shareholder proposal, and what that means is that the company didn’t put the proposal on the proxy. It was actually submitted by shareholders. We received a number of them, and actually this was the most common proposal around x ai to take a minority stake, or at least vote on that.”
On Optimus robots:
“So I’ve been in the lab with Optimus. He can fold laundry. He can wipe the table down really well, where he can hand things to you, you can actually shake hands with him. The tactile nature of his hand is actually really very good. … He’s very mobile and very dexterous. He’s walking around the offices in Palo Alto all the time.”
Neptune and OpenAI have collaborated on a metrics dashboard to help teams that are building foundation models. The companies will work “even more closely together” because of the acquisition, Neptune CEO Piotr Niedźwiedź said in a blog.
The startup will wind down its external services in the coming months, Niedźwiedź said. The terms of the acquisition were not disclosed.
“Neptune has built a fast, precise system that allows researchers to analyze complex training workflows,” OpenAI’s Chief Scientist Jakub Pachocki said in a statement. “We plan to iterate with them to integrate their tools deep into our training stack to expand our visibility into how models learn.”
OpenAI has acquired several companies this year.
It purchased a small interface startup called Software Applications Incorporated for an undisclosed sum in October, product development startup Statsig for $1.1 billion in September and Jony Ive’s AI devices startup io for more than $6 billion in May.
Neptune had raised more than $18 million in funding from investors including Almaz Capital and TDJ Pitango Ventures, according to its website. Neptune’s deal with OpenAI is still subject to customary closing conditions.
“I am truly grateful to our customers, investors, co-founders, and colleagues who have made this journey possible,” Niedźwiedź said. “It was the ride of a lifetime already, yet still I believe this is only the beginning.”
A person walks by a sign for Micron Technology headquarters in San Jose, California, on June 25, 2025.
Justin Sullivan | Getty Images
Micron said on Wednesday that it plans to stop selling memory to consumers to focus on meeting demand for high-powered artificial intelligence chips.
“The AI-driven growth in the data center has led to a surge in demand for memory and storage,” Sumit Sadana, Micron business chief, said in a statement. “Micron has made the difficult decision to exit the Crucial consumer business in order to improve supply and support for our larger, strategic customers in faster-growing segments.”
Micron’s announcement is the latest sign that the AI infrastructure boom is creating shortages for inputs like memory as a handful of companies commit to spend hundreds of billions in the next few years to build massive data centers. Memory, which is used by computers to store data for short periods of time, is facing a global shortage.
Micron shares are up about 175% this year, though they slipped 3% on Wednesday to $232.25.
AI chips, like the GPUs made by Nvidia and AdvancedMicro Devices, use large amounts of the most advanced memory. For example, the current-generation Nvidia GB200 chip has 192GB of memory per graphics processor. Google’s latest AI chip, the Ironwood TPU, needs 192GB of high-bandwidth memory.
Memory is also used in phones and computers, but with lower specs, and much lower quantities — many laptops only come with 16GB of memory. Micron’s Crucial brand sold memory on sticks that tinkerers could use to build their own PCs or upgrade their laptops. Crucial also sold solid-state hard drives.
Micron competes against SK Hynix and Samsung in the market for high-bandwidth memory, but it’s the only U.S.-based memory supplier. Analysts have said that SK Hynix is Nvidia’s primary memory supplier.
Micron supplies AMD, which says its AI chips use more memory than others, providing them a performance advantage for running AI. AMD’s current AI chip, the MI350, comes with 288GB of high-bandwidth memory.
Micron’s Crucial business was not broken out in company earnings. However, its cloud memory business unit showed 213% year-over-year growth in the most recent quarter.
Analysts at Goldman on Tuesday raised their price target on Micron’s stock to $205 from $180, though they maintained their hold recommendation. The analysts wrote in a note to clients that due to “continued pricing momentum” in memory, they “expect healthy upside to Street estimates” when Micron reports quarterly results in two weeks.
A Micron spokesperson declined to comment on whether the move would result in layoffs.
“Micron intends to reduce impact on team members due to this business decision through redeployment opportunities into existing open positions within the company,” the company said in its release.
Microsoft pushed back on a report Wednesday that the company lowered growth targets for artificial intelligence software sales after many of its salespeople missed those goals in the last fiscal year.
The company’s stock sank more than 2% on The Information report.
A Microsoft spokesperson said the company has not lowered sales quotas or targets for its salespeople.
The sales lag occurred for Microsoft’s Foundry product, an Azure enterprise platform where companies can build and manage AI agents, according to The Information, which cited two salespeople in Azure’s cloud unit.
AI agents can carry out a series of actions for a user or organization autonomously.
Less than a fifth of salespeople in one U.S. Azure unit met the Foundry sales growth target of 50%, according to The Information.
In another unit, the quota was set to double Foundry sales, The Information reported. The quota was dropped to 50% after most salespeople didn’t meet it.
In a statement, the company said the news outlet inaccurately combined the concepts of growth and quotas.
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“Aggregate sales quotas for AI products have not been lowered, as we informed them prior to publication,” a Microsoft Spokesperson said.
The AI boom has presented opportunities for businesses to add efficiencies and streamline tasks, with the companies that build these agents touting the power of the tools to take on work and allow workers to do more.
OpenAI, Google, Anthropic, Salesforce, Amazon and others all have their own tools to create and manage these AI assistants.
But the adoption of these tools by traditional businesses hasn’t seen the same surge as other parts of the AI ecosystem.
The Information noted AI adoption struggles at private equity firm Carlyle last year, in which the tools wouldn’t reliably connect data from other places. The company later reduced how much it spent on the tools.