Tesla Shareholders to Vote on Elon Musk’s $1 Trillion Pay Package Amid Exit Warning

Hadisur Rahman, JadeTimes Staff

H. Rahman is a Jadetimes news reporter covering Business

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Image Source: AFP via Getty Images

Tesla shareholders are preparing to vote Thursday on a proposed $1 trillion pay package for CEO Elon Musk, a decision that could determine both the company’s leadership future and its market direction. The vote follows Musk’s warning that he might step down if the proposal fails.

The package would increase Musk’s ownership stake in Tesla from 16 percent to about 25 percent, giving him greater control over the company as it expands into artificial intelligence and robotics. Musk has argued that such control is essential to protect Tesla from activist investors and to ensure his focus on developing autonomous vehicles and humanoid robots.

The vote will take place during Tesla’s annual meeting at its Gigafactory in Texas. Major institutional investors including Vanguard, BlackRock, and State Street which collectively hold nearly 15 percent of Tesla shares are seen as key to the outcome. Smaller investors such as Ron Baron and Ark Invest’s Cathie Wood have already pledged support for Musk.

However, not all shareholders are convinced. Norway’s $2.1 trillion sovereign wealth fund, Tesla’s seventh-largest investor, has said it will vote against the deal, citing concerns about its massive size, shareholder dilution, and lack of safeguards against overreliance on a single executive. Proxy advisory firms ISS and Glass Lewis also recommended rejecting the proposal, calling it excessive and poorly structured.

Tesla’s leadership has spent the past week lobbying investors in New York. Chair Robyn Denholm warned that losing Musk could have a severe impact on the company’s stock price and long-term ambitions, arguing that the compensation plan is necessary to motivate him to achieve “impossible things.”

The proposed package would grant Musk no salary or bonus, instead awarding stock options tied to dramatic increases in Tesla’s valuation and profits. To earn the full amount, Tesla must reach a market capitalization of $8.5 trillion and generate $400 billion in annual earnings targets that would make it the most valuable company in the world.