The announcement by Tesla of the 2025 CEO Performance Award for Elon Musk signals nothing less than a reckoning with the question: what does it really cost to secure not just a top executive, but a visionary? As the board persuaded shareholders to vote yes to robots, and reject robotic voting, the package forces a stark trade-off: can the astronomical quantum of rewardpotentially eclipsing 1 trillionever be justified by the scale of ambition, or does it tip the scales too far from shareholder value creation?
Ambition writ large: The mechanics of the 2025 package
According to the 2025 Proxy Statement, Tesla is asking shareholders to approve a restricted-stock award comprising 423,743,904 shares divided into 12 tranches each 35,311,992 shares under Proposal 4. Vesting requires a mix of highly challenging performance milestones and service retention of 7.5 to 10 years. The firm estimates the fair value of the award at approximately US79.10 billion to US87.75 billion on grant date. More publicly, commentary places the potential full value at up to US1 trillion if all milestones are achieved, making it the largest CEO pay programme ever seen.
