$1 trillion salary for Elon Musk? Tesla board makes insane pay offer

Hold onto your hats — and your stock portfolios — because Tesla's latest move is nothing short of jaw-dropping.

Share price is up 64% over the last 12 months (but down 16% in 2025). Over the last 5 years, however, it's up 149%.

Now, the company’s pay committee just pitched a mind-blowing $1 trillion compensation package for its wildly controversial Elon Musk to keep him locked in as CEO for the long haul.

Yes, you read that right: one trillion dollars. This isn’t your run-of-the-mill salary or bonus plan.

Fortune reported that Tesla’s board just threw Wall Street the equivalent of a fireworks show wrapped in a proxy filing.

Forget ordinary CEO bonuses. The plan? Elon Musk only gets paid if he turbocharges Tesla’s value by trillions.

Right now, that's shooting for something beyond the Moon.

But Tesla, and other Musk ventures, thrive on impossible odds.

This isn’t Musk’s first wild ride with pay deals. In 2012, Tesla tied his paycheck to production and stock hurdles, which he crushed. In 2018, the board dangled a $55.8 billion jackpot.

People scoffed — until Tesla broke the trillion-dollar mark. Then a Delaware judge torched the deal as “governance gone wild.”

Musk, furious, eventually ditched Delaware altogether.

Now comes the trilogy: Tesla’s special pay committee, with Elon and brother Kimbal recused, wants shareholders to greenlight a package louder, bigger, and far more insane.

Think EBITDA targets 28x higher than before, fleets of robotaxis, and millions of AI-powered bots.

Tesla's shares are up 64% over the past 12 months (to September 5, 2025)

The gamble is clear: Musk is both Tesla’s magic and its migraine. His relentless drive built the company, but his side hustles — SpaceX, Neuralink, X, and now xAI — make investors twitchy.

Add in his Twitter storms and regulator showdowns, and the risk/reward calculus is dizzying.

Musk’s new reward hinges on Tesla pulling off a Herculean feat:

Tesla’s board, after a long court battle that scrapped Musk’s previous $55.8 billion plan, is betting big that keeping their visionary (and famously unpredictable) leader onboard is worth the cosmic price tag.

Musk’s compensation is tightly linked to Tesla smashing these ultra-ambitious milestones — and he only cashes in if Tesla does the same.

Of course, not everyone’s throwing confetti.

Some analysts are scratching their heads, asking, "Is one guy really worth this much?"

They point to Musk’s controversies, his political escapades, and Tesla’s growing competition from big players around the world who are nipping at its heels.

Still, Tesla fans argue that Musk is the driving force behind the company’s future breakthroughs in electric vehicles and AI-driven tech.

In true Musk fashion, this plan isn’t just about money — it’s about legacy and innovation on a sci-fi scale.

If he hits these targets, he won’t just be the richest man alive; he could be the world’s first trillionaire CEO, leading Tesla into the autonomous, robotic future faster than anyone dared imagine, leaving the legacy technologies to eat its dust.

Tesla’s new pay pact is rewriting the rules of corporate compensation — with Musk's new Mars-shot (he's way past "Moon-shot").

Once again, it's betting the house on its improbable chief showman. First billions, now trillions. And if Musk pulls it off, the payday will be as outrageous as the man himself.