Preparing for Elon Musk’s $1 Trillion Tesla Vote

Over the past couple of months, my X feed and television have been bombarded with Tesla advertisements. For the most part, these ads don’t feature products anyone can actually buy—instead, they include futuristic Tesla projects like the Optimus humanoid robot and are aimed at convincing Tesla shareholders to approve a proposed compensation package for CEO Elon Musk. The result of that vote is likely to be among the biggest tech and finance stories of the coming week. 

 Tesla shareholders have until Wednesday night to vote on the package unless they’re going to Texas to attend the company’s annual meeting in person on Thursday. The package would award Musk up to $1 trillion in Tesla shares over the next decade if he meets several ambitious targets, including sextupling Tesla’s market capitalization to $8.5 trillion, selling 20 million cars and rolling out a million Optimus robots and a million Robotaxis. The Tesla board, led by chair Robyn Denholm, has been on a media blitz in recent weeks trying to drum up support for the pay package. Dangling a bigger Tesla stake in front of Musk is the only way to keep him focused on the automaker over his other ventures, Denholm argues. This past week, she warned Musk could quit if shareholders reject the deal.