Tesla’s board of directors issued a stark warning to shareholders today: approve Elon Musk’s unprecedented $1 trillion pay package or risk losing him as CEO. It’s a familiar threat, one that the board has used before, and if history offers any clues, it’s likely to work again. Tesla’s executive team is in full lobbying mode in the run-up to the November 6th annual shareholder meeting, urging shareholders to approve their proposal to make Musk, already one of the world’s richest people, even more unfathomably wealthy. If they don’t, they are warning that he could leave the company for greener pastures. “Without Elon, Tesla could lose significant value, as our company may no longer be valued for what we aim to become: a transformative force reimagining the fundamental building blocks of mobility, energy and labor, with products such as FSD and Optimus, and working to better humanity in the process,” Tesla’s board chair Robyn Denholm said in a letter to shareholders on Monday. It was essentially, beat for beat, the same argument she made last year, when shareholders were being pressured to approve a $55 billion pay package for Musk. At the time, it was the largest compensation package ever considered for a CEO — one, of course, that has since been dwarfed by the current payday proposal. Read more: [https://www.theverge.com/news/806970/tesla-elon-musk-trillion-pay-shareholder-board-letter](https://www.theverge.com/news/806970/tesla-elon-musk-trillion-pay-shareholder-board-letter)
“Don’t threaten me with a good time”
For a pill addicted, part time CEO.
"Let's not be the reason why our stock price tanks, let the inevitable grind of reality whittle it away so we have time to jettison our earnings."
Why stop at a trillion? Why not a quadrillion? How much theoretical money can they milk out of this turd.
Without him, the stock will come back down to reality. They wanna ride for as long as possible.
Why don't they just count the votes with their eyes closed and call it a day. Is this audited?
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What Greener Pastures exactly? Is there a competing $975B offer out there?
As a Tesla owner who loves the car, but hates what this dickhead has done to Tesla's reputation, good fucking riddance!
So what if he comes out with a robot or a car it’s gonna be decades before they turn a profit will all be retired if not dead before they turn a profit
> and working to better humanity in the process Oh FFS, even if that were true, the BOD has no business worrying about the betterment of humanity.
> the Tesla team is making it happen Making what happen? FSD will never work, so it does make some degree of sense to keep the first class hype man around for as long as possible.
It’s gonna be a decade or two before he turns a profit from this stop the cost to build out is going to be astronomical
When blackmailing your shareholders is also a way to pump the stock
> “Without Elon, Tesla could lose significant value, as our company may no longer be valued for what we aim to become: a transformative force reimagining the fundamental building blocks of mobility, energy and labor, with products such as FSD and Optimus, and working to better humanity in the process,” Tesla’s board chair Robyn Denholm said in a letter to shareholders on Monday. I will never get used to how cringy Musk's sycophants are. There is still no working optimus, FSD is dogshit and what the hell is Tesla doing to reimagine the "fundamental building blocks of energy" anyway? Musk's erratic wishes to do everything his drug addled mind comes up with is sending Tesla in every directions. Pick a lane at some point.
The US Govt social security funds and aids, probably.
I hope they send him on his way in their finest self-driving vehicle
>Without Elon, Tesla could lose significant value I mean.. they're not wrong. If Tesla were priced on its fundamentals then it would be a LOT lower than it is now. Shareholders are likely to vote for this. One could argue they would be stupid not to. It's a choice between cratering their own investment, in the short to medium term, or voting to try and motivate someone to actually give a shit about the company they've invested in. It won't work, of course, it didn't work with the $29b offered, and it won't work with this. It's bonkers when you think about it - you'd think the wellbeing and profitability of a company would be what drives a CEO anyway, and that the compensation they'd get from that would be their reward. That's not enough for Musk though, he needs actual "cash in an envelope" payments just to not abandon the company. The last time there was a vote he publicly talked about how he'd be "forced" to concentrate on other things, or divert "AI" away from Tesla, etc - blackmail basically - when it is what he's done anyway. He's interested in xAI because his ego can't deal with not being considered a frontrunner in the AI space. He's interested in robots because other companies are miles ahead of him and he doesn't like that. He is very much not interested in cars - Tesla's primary business - unless they are dumb as fuck creations no one wants. Roadster 2.0 has been a concept since 2017 (hasn't stopped them taking deposits for it though), Model 2 was something they could have made and stolen market share, but missed the boat. Musk is a liability, but it would take a brave soul to vote in favour of nuking your own investment. Sadly very few people are going to think long term, and the long term reality is that Tesla would be better off without him.
Its a scam. These are not serious people and an offer like this should be reason enough to dump the stock. You dont see any other CEO getting such compensations, cause its fucking absurd. And if he leaves, there will be a big correction for the stock, but I bet it can become a much better company and one that can appeal to all demographics.
>Tesla without Elon may take a market reaction hit short term, but is definitely not nothing without him and may actually prosper incredibly well at this point with a more formal tight reasonable rational leadership. Tesla's market cap is larger than every other car company on earth... combined. Arguably, the only thing making it so is the snake oil salesman that ostensibly runs the place. If your goal is "a self sustaining company that makes a healthy profit" I would agree with you that "other leadership" is the path to that goal. If your goal is "keep the stock price propped up so you can sell to a bigger idiot than you and cash out" then there really is only one path forward.
Musk does so much more than just run the company. There is the stock manipulation, political manipulation, probable bribes in China, investment fund kickbacks and everything else he does to keep the stock price so high. This pay package is a tacit agreement to fund Musk’s non documented actions. All at the expense of the retail investors. If you look at it this is just a Ponzi scheme that keeps going. He just uses other people’s money to pay off the early investors namely himself.
Stock up 6% and on its way to the moon 🤣
The payment would be more than the entire US military budget.
Musk is using Trump’s negotiation technique of starting with a bombastic position (145% tariffs on China, turn Gaza into a luxury resort). If he eventually settles for half his request, he would come out a winner.
Without Musk - $20 Approve package - strong chance of $150 before any moonshot due to dilution, no profitable products at the moment, could lose S&P status = booted from ETFs. Bear case - all technical metrics. Brand damage due to politics, etc. Bull case - FOMO. And FOMO is extremely powerful. Elon is bored with cars and wants out if it can’t be his personal play pen again.
Who cares. Do you guys even think he’s gonna hit the targets? He’s pretty useless
I think you are giving Elon more credit than he deserves. He wants to be the first trillionaire. It’s that simple.
He's so unfathomably wealthy that it can no longer a motivating thing. If you own all the water in an ocean, what is it to own yet another similar sized volume of water? It is beyond comical that the board continue to gargle his balls. People like Elmo now just want to flex their ability to influence. Problem is, he's dangerously insecure and with skin so thin that it'll never be for a greater good.
This is more than 50% of the entire student loan debt crisis. If one excludes the interest rate on the student loans, its nearly 100% of the entire crisis. This is on top of whatever Musk already has, which is billions. This society has enough money not to saddle generations with debt and allow people to have decent lives, we choose not to do it.
That’s the real warning to “shareholders” (gamblers)
All these billionaires truly believe they are making humanity better. It’s hard to tell if they are so surrounded by sycophants they believe their own kool aid or if they just snicker and laugh at all of us every night from their golden ballrooms
Well, if he pulls it off, it's probably worth it. And the share price is already absurd, why not double down?
A bit of both, I think
Absolutely
You’re probably right
I know the common refrain is that the Board is a bunch of fElon's cronies, but they're starting to sound more like victims in an abusive relationship.
Shareholders should vote no just to troll. They’ll come back with another package, just slightly less egregious
Ah I'm starting to see his plan. Put together an insane pay package. When it's voted down leave. The cult valuations will hit the stock immediately. In the ongoing bad quarters for Tesla he will continue to shit talk talk them on Twitter. Within 6-12 months the stock will have tanked. Then he'll swoop in with xAI and buy Tesla.
>Musk is a liability, but it would take a brave soul to vote in favour of nuking your own investment. There is a viable third alternative - sell out now. I realize that FOMO is a hell of a drug, but sooner or later, a critical number of people are going to realize that Tesla's valuation is completely untenable.
His sole motivation the last time around was hitting the targets. Whether that was done honestly or not is another question...
Tesla as a company would be better off. From a stockholder perspective the time it would take for Tesla to actually be worth it current valuation would likely be decades so there's no reason a shareholder would ever want to vote Elon out and cause the stock to plummet
“Only I can bring you Fully Self Driving” (Supervised)…
we sold our Tesla stock as soo as he got into that doge thing
Whose most recent tangible contributions was a 10bn dollar failure in the Cyber Truck.
It's part of the pump at this point. Musk himself has kind of run out of juice when it comes to throwing out bigger numbers so having the BoD put this big number on his compensation package gives another 'independent' party that thinks all this bullshit is possible. At the same time though it needs to be a number that investors can at least wrap their head around in some manner or isn't so egregiously impossible as to illicit a harsh rejection at its very utterance.
That’s what’s so funny. The Board says Tesla needs him badly. Yet the ONLY thing he’s designed, beginning to end, is the Cybertruck.
Maybe if it was a trillion dollars to go away forever
I mean, I'd head up Tesla for just $100 billion. Big saving right there.
He's anchoring everyone to think he'll never collect for setting such a high target, but even the downside of him doing nothing over the next decade nets him an extra $50B. [https://www.reuters.com/legal/transactional/musks-record-tesla-package-will-pay-him-tens-billions-even-if-he-misses-most-2025-10-09/](https://www.reuters.com/legal/transactional/musks-record-tesla-package-will-pay-him-tens-billions-even-if-he-misses-most-2025-10-09/)
Problem also is he won’t walk away amicably either he’s probably go on X and trash the company like a spoiled child!
And you would likely do a better job lol
… And Tesla’s design department quit designing cars with the Model S. Every car since they just handed it off to an intern who knew how to use use the transform function in the software.
Depending on how you look at it, she's entirely correct. Tesla's valuation is entirely down to Musk hyping up those segments by using mostly falsehood and lies. So if they kick Musk, that house of cards fall apart and Tesla's stock will plummet. So it's vital to keep Elon around, because otherwise shit will hit the fan ***faster***
I wonder if he's deliberately doing this. He might be seeing dark clouds ahead this might be a clean getaway from receiving blame for that. "Well I left and then it all turned sour. If you had kept me on this wouldn't have happened." That kind of idea.
Help me out here. Tesla’s market cap is $1.45T. How could they pay him $1T?
Im sure business can proceed without him
Next Musk will want to put highways underground.
He was also in an Iron Man sequel, Rick and Morty, and Young Sheldon. There's nothing he can't not do!
Sounds boring.
this shows tsla is a real garbage since it has no value if they miss someone.
and removing the turn signal stalk from the Model 3. First principles!
Tesla's playing a confidence game and Elon's the con man.
an ounce of philanthropy can cover a pound of misanthropy
the idea is Elon gets 1% (of the market cap) of every $500B of market cap tranche over $2T. Plus other bullshit.
This may be his way of getting out of this mess. If this package isn’t approved he quits and when Tesla fails eventually he can say it’s because he left. And if they approve it the scam continues but the fall will be greater for him.
I'll do it for a measly $1B, not show up at all, and do a better job
Imagine if the BoD actually cared and found someone like Cook to run this company. Yeah, it wouldn’t be a Meme stock but it might actually have a better and longer future with its existing lineup. Musk is a cancer and will inevitably be the end of Tesla.
The chairwoman of the board has been selling for a long time so some of them already know.
It’s a win - win for Elon in the end. If elon doesn’t get the pay package approved, he can leave Tesla and let it self destruct with it being “his fault”. So it’s a blame-free way out of the inevitable crashing of the stock.
If he gets 1% it's still much more than the job is worth. I'll sit and play videogames for $999B if that's what they want.
Reality, what a concept!
$999M!
Full Reckless Driving if you want truth in advertising.
Give him a CyberToaster as a consolation prize.
Testla is in a no-win situation now. Felon is the face of the company whose mythology keeps the scam going. He's also the face whose extracurricular activities have driven away most of Tesla's customer demographic for good. There really is no fix for this so they are now playing out the scenario where they stall long enough to loot the company's assets before they have to parchute out.
(rimshot)
Why not? SpaceX can't get there.
I think they can play with the books to make it look like he does even if it means sticking Tesla labels on Tonka trucks.
The business can, and much better. The stock price can't.
Or watch the stock tank so he can come back with cash from his other companies to buy it back cheap.
He wants to be Putin.
Seems like the company would be better off without him anyways.
What is the general consensus of the reality of this payout actually happening?
This
Oh no, Elon would be gone from Tesla oh no. There's the F door, make sure it hits you on the way out. Idiot Elon is the reason Tesla sales are dropping and he's a merchant of BS all this time, why does Tesla need him? Because he's a "founder"? He's not even that. He basically stole Tesla from Martin Eberhard and Marc Tarpenning.
kiss tap sleep shy racial longing mysterious innocent bear sugar *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev/home)*
It's another shameless joke considering that they are talking about a white-supremacist who is actively trying to destroy democracy whereever he can influence election results and who absolutely doesn't give a fuck about climate change when picking his allies for this cause.
Banking on Stockholm much?
Here's the thing. Elon gets his being alive money from loans against Tesla stock. He will lose everything if he walks or the stock gets anchored to reality instead of Musk's bullshit.
I mean that’s too much for a part time CEO! Perhaps there should be a DoGE squad checking his impact on all of his CEO responsibilities across all of his companies. I think they’ll find that he’s not an alien he is human and despite having such a loud voice on social media that he has single handedly caused huge a massive deficit in Tesla’s popularity and sales. But he is smart because the power of social media has done this. He bought twitter for 50bil which has capsules him to demanding 1tril due to his social media muscle and bullying antics. The share holders are running scared!
You need to own *all* the water to control who else gets to drink. He is a monster of course
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Oh no, losing the worst thing to ever happen to the company. My god. How will Tesla survive. People forget it wasn't Elon that helped Tesla back in the day. It was his handlers that wrote all of his scripts and pushed the image that he was a real life Tony Stark. Then they got fired because Elon got too big for his britches and thought he should start going off-script and tell people how he really felt. Boot him. Literally pick anybody and just do the same PR song and dance again and suddenly you've saved your company from its current demographic nightmare where a huge block of people wouldn't drive a Tesla if you gave it to them.
This is pathetic. You get two choices. Destroy value by paying Elon. Or destroy value by letting him leave. both are probably true. Only one is reality
This is all it boils down to. All the other speculative posts here are wrong.
So is Elon faking shareholders votes?
Pay him with cyber trucks.
I don’t get how making the statement “pay Elon $1T or he may leave” is even a threat. It’s a win win. Elon is not responsible for Teslas success. Tesla is successful despite Elons management.
Not a finance guy, so patience is appreciated as I ask this question. Where does the company find $1tn in stock to award him if the company's market cap is *only* $1.45tn as it is? How does the company create this much new stock to award him? Doesn't this devalue the rest of the shares? Thanks.
He probably shouldnt have alienated his entire customer base by aligning himself with the maga party. Not very smart for a self proclaimed genius
I’ve been seeing advertisements on Reddit asking to vote in favor. It’s insane. They don’t even run ads for their actual products
Look 👀 further down the line and it gets much better
Elon Musk's compensation is affected by the market cap of the company. I think the 1 trillion figure is if all of Elon Musk's goals are met. The market cap of the company is assumed to be 8 trillion at this point. Yes, the company would create new stock at that point.
And if Musk leaves Tesla, the stock price will collapse as the source of overblown predictions is gone and the illusion of possible success implodes. Gotta admire the audacity to ask for 1T, though….
Elon does not care about Tesla, he never did. His goal is to make money more than making a good lasting car. Everybody knows that Tesla is not worth $1 Trillion, it is not only inflated because of Musk lies but also it is hard to sell after Musk showed his true vales as fascist racist far right wing supporter. His last resort is take $1 trillion and probably quit Tesla for good.
A Company simply cannot rely on one person to run the show. Tesla should be nice decentralized and not depend on a drug addict
Elon realized this and now extracts blackmail money in unheard of amounts. Which is why stakeholders should push for a pay package that keeps the upper end of the compensation intact, but removes the lower end. Because the lower end isn't remarkable at all.
Why are you so confident they would recover? I'm not saying they won't be around, but the stock valuation is based on lofty FSD and humanoid robots, because with cars (extremely competitive) you simply can't make these kinds of money. Unfortunately, both FSD and humanoid robots can and are done by other companies, and probably better. Waymo / Figure are USA examples, China has a dozen more in both categories. Tesla is overtaken left and right so quickly that it has to be a worry even for Elon.
What’s interesting here isn’t just the number, it’s the *leverage logic.* Musk’s power play depends on Tesla’s valuation story holding together, not necessarily performance. It’s similar to how he overruled his team to chase Robotaxi instead of a budget EV: valuation > volume. He’s managing investor psychology, not product strategy. [https://capitalfolly.com/tesla-at-the-crossroads/](https://capitalfolly.com/tesla-at-the-crossroads/)
And absolutely butchering the brand with his political antics in the demographics most likely to buy electric cars.
The man has to get to Mars,after all
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