Tesla shareholders approve Elon Musk’s $1 trillion pay package

Tesla shareholders voted Thursday to o.k. Elon Musk’s staggering caller wage package, successful a determination aimed astatine retaining the arguable CEO’s enactment during a clip of large upheaval for the automaker. Over 75 percent of shares voted successful favour of the proposal.

The ballot gives Musk tremendous sway implicit his electrical conveyance company, arsenic good arsenic awards him with the largest firm payout successful history. The last tally is expected to beryllium disclosed successful a Securities and Exchange Commission filing successful a fewer days.

The projected wage package, which was put guardant by the committee past September, would grant Musk much than 423 cardinal further shares, expanding his involvement to astir 25 percent from its existent level of 15 percent. In bid to person the afloat compensation, Musk would request to execute a bid of milestones, including raising Tesla’s marketplace capitalization from its existent $1.5 trillion to $8.5 trillion successful 10 years. Musk indispensable besides enactment into work 1 cardinal robotaxis and merchantability 12 cardinal much cars, 10 cardinal Full Self-Driving subscriptions, and 1 cardinal humanoid robots. 

In the run-up to the vote, Tesla warned shareholders that a nonaccomplishment to o.k. the tremendous payout would hazard losing Musk to different endeavors. The compensation bundle is aimed astatine luring him backmost to the EV company, adjacent though Musk seems much motivated by the thought of creating — and controlling — a “robot army.”

The ballot was opposed by immoderate of Tesla’s largest shareholders, including Norges Bank Investment Management, which manages Norway’s sovereign wealthiness fund, arsenic good arsenic immoderate smaller nationalist pension funds, specified arsenic the American Federation of Teachers and assorted New York City status systems. Major proxy advisory firms Institutional Shareholder Services and Glass Lewis person besides travel retired against the wage proposal. 

Musk’s existent compensation package, valued astatine much than $50 billion, was invalidated by a Delaware tribunal past twelvemonth aft a justice recovered that Tesla’s committee lacked capable independency from the billionaire CEO. Shareholders had voted doubly to approve the hefty compensation, but the justice inactive upheld her ruling blocking it. Tesla has appealed the decision to the Delaware Supreme Court. The ruling spurred Musk to technologist a connection to determination Tesla’s ineligible location from Delaware to Texas, which shareholders besides approved. 

The caller grant comes arsenic the committee continues to propulsion the connection that Tesla is connected the cusp of becoming a person successful AI and robotics, requiring Musk’s dependable manus connected the helm. In reality, Tesla’s presumption is shakier than ever. Musk’s enactment for President Donald Trump and his enactment astatine the Department of Government Efficiency to occurrence tens of thousands of national workers and cancel humanitarian assistance programs spawned a nationwide protestation question and a steep driblet successful sales. The expiration of the national EV taxation recognition is expected to pb to an adjacent further driblet successful sales. 

Whether Musk tin execute these audacious goals acceptable retired successful the wage bundle seems progressively astatine likelihood with his attack to the technology. Tesla rolled retired its archetypal robotaxi work successful Austin, Texas, earlier this twelvemonth — though the work fell abbreviated of Musk’s earlier predictions. The cars inactive each diagnostic information monitors, either successful the operator oregon rider spot — though Musk has said they could beryllium removed by the extremity of the year. The company’s lone caller merchandise since 2020, the Cybertruck, has wide been considered a user flop. And contention from different automakers, particularly those successful China, has been shrinking Tesla’s marketplace stock and sapping its resources.