⚡ Elon Musk’s $1 Trillion Dollar Pay Package

In today’s newsletter I discuss Elon Musk’s insane $1 trillion dollar pay package the Tesla wants to give him, the U.S. Department of Energy and AMD have partnered on a $1 billion dollars supercomputer deal, Taylor Sheridan may be departing Paramount for a massive new production contract with NBCUniversal that could be worth over $1 billion dollars, Nike just unveiled the company's "world's first powered footwear system" for running and walking, President Donald Trump just issued a pardon for Changpeng Zhao, better known as CZ who founded Binance and went to jail for 4 months after pleading guilty to money laundering, Yuga Labs is trying to make NFTs popular again by launching a social hub called the Koda Nexus in their Otherside metaverse (man, do I miss NFTs), and there’s a whole bunch of drama over in the NBA involving illegal sports books and mafia-related poker games.

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⚡ Elon Musk’s $1 Trillion Dollar Pay Package

Tesla’s board of directors has just done something that has never been done before. They have offered Elon Musk, the CEO of Tesla, a $1 trillion pay package!

Let that sink in for a minute.

$1 trillion dollars!

This offer is unprecedented in the history of executive compensation, and then some!

The sheer magnitude of this proposed award is insane! This package is contingent on Elon Musk hitting specific company milestones, and is designed to keep him engaged and focused on his duties as CEO of the electric vehicle manufacturer.

Hold up a second.

Isn’t the CEO of a publicly traded company supposed to already be “engaged and focused” just by paying them a normal salary that is in line with what other CEOs make? Last time I checked, no other CEO in the world is getting paid $1 trillion dollars!, and yet other CEOs sure due seem engaged and focused.

Something a little sus here.

The proposal, which is scheduled for a shareholder vote at the annual meeting on November 6, 2025 marks a significant moment in corporate governance, given its scale and the questions it raises about executive pay.

Oh that’s going to be a fun meeting to attend.

Full disclosure, I’m a Tesla shareholder, and you can probably guess which way I’m leaning to vote. At the end of this video, let me know down in the comments if you think the Tesla board and shareholders should vote to approve the $1 trillion pay package for Elon Musk.

The official name of the $1 trillion dollar pay package for Elon Musk is called the “2025 CEO Performance Award”, and is structured as a grant of 423,743,904 shares of performance-based restricted common stock, representing approximately a 12% stake in Tesla. This massive stock grant would be unlocked in 12 separate tranches of stock over a ten-year period. To fully receive the entire $1 trillion pay package, Elon Musk must guide Tesla through a series of ambitious operational milestones in order to achieve a market capitalization for Tesla.

The market capitalization goals start at a valuation of $2 trillion dollars for Tesla, and increase in $500 billion dollar increments, with the final market cap targeted to be a staggering $8.5 trillion dollars for Tesla. This figure is more than double the current market capitalization of the world's most valuable company, NVIDIA, so let that sink in for a minute.

The operational milestones that must be achieved alongside the market cap goals include a list of 'Mars-shot' type targets. These are not easily achieved, and include the delivery of 20 million vehicles in total, the deployment of 1 million Robotaxis in commercial operation, 10 million active Full Self-Driving subscriptions, and 1 million Optimus AI-powered robots from Tesla’s new robotics division.

For the financial targets, the final operational milestone requires Elon Musk to lead Tesla to a $400 billion adjusted EBITDA, which means growing the company's current adjusted EBITDA by approximately 26 times.The Tesla shares only become 'Earned Shares' to Elon Musk when both a market capitalization milestone and an operational milestone are met, and they are generally scheduled to vest after 7.5 to 10 years, depending on when they are earned. To put this proposed package into perspective, the largest executive pay packages in history pale in comparison. For example, Elon Musk's own previous 2018 compensation plan, which was valued at $56 billion dollars and was already considered the largest in corporate history at the time. That pay package was ruled void by a Delaware court on January 30, 2024, leading to Elon Musk moving Tesla’s incorporation to Texas where he believes he’ll have more favorable corporate governance laws.

The second most expensive executive pay package is significantly lower, and belongs to Apple's Tim Cook with a value of $770.5 million dollars. Then we have Alphabet's Sundar Pichai's pay package which comes in around $280 million dollars. Going back to 2023, the highest-paid CEO, who wasn’t named Elon Musk, was Jon Winkelried of TPG, the global alternative asset management firm, and his total compensation was $198.6 million dollars.

This new $1 trillion package for Elon Musk doesn’t just eclipse all others; it redefines the upper limits of executive compensation by an astronomical amount! The ratio of CEO-to-worker pay has historically ballooned, going from about 20 times the average worker's salary in 1965 to over 400 times by 2006 for CEOs of major U.S. companies. The sheer scale of Elon Musk's proposed pay package pushes this ratio into an entirely new realm. The average salary of a Tesla employee is around $114,033 per year. The ratio of the average Tesla employee's salary to Elon Musk's salary is approximately 1 to 8,769,391. This means that for every dollar the average Tesla employee is paid, Elon Musk is paid about $8.7 million dollars.

Tesla's board has argued that the massive pay package is necessary to retain and motivate Elon Musk, and to ensure his long-term focus on the company's growth and innovation, particularly in areas like Artificial Intelligence and robotics, which are key to Tesla’s "Master Plan Part 4 Sustainable Abundance." The board has stated that the key to Tesla's success lies in ensuring alignment of Elon Musk's interests with those of the shareholders. Critics have raised concerns that Elon Musk wields significant influence over the Tesla board, which includes his own brother Kimbal Musk, as well as other hand-picked board members, so it’s not exactly impartial.

Right now Elon Musk owns approximately 13% of Tesla's stock, and has publicly stated that one of his reasons for pushing for a larger award is to raise his equity stake in Tesla up to 25% to gain more control over the company's direction. As if he doesn’t already control Tesla’s board and make every decision himself, but I digress.

Elon Musk also divides his time with his other ventures, including SpaceX, his brain implant company Neuralink, his tunnel drilling company The Boring Company, and his AI company xAI, which recently merged with his company X (formerly and to forever be called Twitter by me).

And we’re not even going to get into his short-lived side hustle where he ran the Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE for 90 days earlier this year in the beginning of the second Trump Administration.

The figure of $1 trillion dollars is hard for me to even wrap my head around, but here’s a couple of examples I came up with of what you could buy for $1 trillion dollars.

You could buy 200 billion McDonald's Happy Meals for $1 trillion dollars, which is enough to give each of the 8.2 billion people in the world around 24 McDonald's Happy Meals each, which cost around $5 per Happy Meal. Given that there’s around 475 calories in each McDonald's Happy Meals, that means you’d be consuming 11,400 calories if you ate them all in one sitting, which I don’t recommend.

On the topic of healthcare, right now in Congress, lawmakers are trying to permanently extend the enhanced Obamacare subsidies of the Affordable Care Act, which would cost an estimated $410 billion dollars over the next 10 years. At that price, you could singlehandedly afford to pay it, and still have $590 billion left over - so if you’re feeling generous you might as well just extend Obamacare for the next 20 years to ensure any American that needs healthcare can afford it.

For $1 trillion dollars you could afford to buy a pair of Nike Air Jordan sneakers, retailing for around $150 dollars, for approximately 6.67 billion people in the world, or about 81.34% of the world's population. They might not all have healthcare or clean running water, but they’d all be rocking some really nice kicks.

And lastly, since we’re talking about Tesla here, considering that the cheapest new Tesla Model 3 starts at around $38,630, if you had $1 trillion dollars you could afford buy 25,886,616 Teslas with that amount, which would be good for Tesla's market cap, and help Elon Musk get closer to the milestones the company has set for him, so you’d actually doing him a solid.

The proposed $1 trillion dollar pay package for Elon Musk is an extraordinary proposal that sets a new, and possibly unattainable, standard for executive pay. Proponents argue it is essential for retaining Elon Musk's talent and vision, which has been crucial to Tesla's success, and that the value created for shareholders by meeting the $8.5 trillion dollar market cap and operational milestones will be far greater than the cost. Opponents point to the unprecedented size, the potential for massive dilution of shareholder value from the 423.74 million shares being granted to Elon Musk, and the concentration of Tesla’s equity into Elon Musk's hands, arguing that it is excessive for a CEO who’s already well compensated.

I know where I stand on this issue, and I’ve already cast my vote ahead of the November 6 Tesla shareholder’s meeting. What do you think? Leave a comment down below letting me know if you think Tesla should award Elon Musk a $1 trillion pay package, or if you think it’s an insane number to even consider. And with that, I guess you know what I think.

Quick Hits

🔋 Business

The U.S. Department of Energy and AMD have announced a partnership worth over $1 billion dollars in public and private investment for the construction of two new AI supercomputers named Lux and Discovery. The Lux system, which will use AMD Instinct MI355X accelerators, is scheduled for deployment in early 2026 to expand the DOE's AI capabilities for science and national security.

AMD has been signing other major AI deals lately, including a $10 billion dollar collaboration with HUMAIN to further advance global AI infrastructure, and a multibillion dollar partnership with OpenAI that includes the deployment of 6 gigawatts of AMD GPUs in OpenAI data centers. It sure is a good time to be an AI chip company.

🦚 Entertainment

Television creator/actor/writer/producer Taylor Sheridan may be departing Paramount for a massive new production contract with NBCUniversal that could be worth over $1 billion dollars, and include not only new shows but movies. His film deal would start in March 2026, and his five year television agreement, which is reportedly tied to him producing up to 20 shows, will formally begin in early 2029 after his Paramount deal ends in 2028. Honestly, I’ll watch anything Taylor Sheridan makes anywhere he chooses to stream it.

👟 Tech

Nike just unveiled the company's "world's first powered footwear system" for running and walking, designed by their Project Amplify project team with robotics partner Dephy to augment lower leg movement, which the company claims is like an e-bike for your feet. This exoskeleton system features an ankle movement augmenting motor, a drive belt, and a rechargeable battery to provide an unparalleled boost. But don’t get too excited just yet. A consumer launch isn’t expected for a few years, and no price has been confirmed (i.e. read: it’ll make a paid of Nike Air Jordans look cheap).

🪙 Crypto

President Donald Trump just issued a pardon for Changpeng Zhao, better known as CZ who founded Binance. CZ served four months in prison in April 2024 after pleading guilty to money laundering. His company Binance was fined $4.3 billion dollars and CZ paid a personal fine of $50 million dollars.

CZ’s company Binance is a partner with the Trump family’s crypto company World Liberty Financial’ stablecoin, called USD1, and promoted it to Binance's users - so no conflict of interest to see here I guess.

The pardon by President Donald Trump completely erases the criminal record of Changpeng Zhao, showing that the only thing better than good compliance is a very good political connection.

🐒 NFTs

Remember NFTs? Those were fun times. It seems Yuga Labs, owner of the Bored Ape Yacht Club really wants to bring back those good times. They have officially launched their central social hub, called the Koda Nexus for their metaverse Otherside. The Koda Nexus launch represents the company's biggest bet on reviving the BAYC brand and proving that a creator-focused, NFT-integrated virtual world can compete with major Web2 platforms.

NFTs may have gone the way of Garbage Pail Kids when the last crypto winter set in, but Yuga Labs has been busy with their Otherside build out in hopes of a resurgence in NFT sales. In an effort to try and kickstate the NFT industry, Yuga Labs unveiled a major partnership with Amazon Gaming, which will feature an exclusive, co-branded virtual character called Boximus to introduce digital assets to a mainstream audience.

🏀 Sports

In a recent federal indictment the government charged over 30 individuals, including Portland Trail Blazers head coach Chauncey Billups and Miami Heat guard Terry Rozier, in schemes involving illegal sports betting and Mafia-backed rigged poker games. The schemes, which operated between December 2022 and March 2024, allegedly leveraged insider NBA information for illegal sports betting and cheated victims out of at least $7 million dollars in the poker operation, which was tied to organized crime families like the Gambino, Genovese, and Bonnano. Someone explain to me why Terry Rozier, who’s in the last year of his $96.3 million dollar four-year contract, would be involved in illegal sports betting and poker games? He’s literally going to make $26.6 million dollars this year even while he now sits out on administrative leave, which should give him plenty of time for all those court dates that are coming up.

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The Business Behind The News is written, edited, and published by Chris Thompson.