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    Elon Musk’s Tesla pay package totals $158 billion for 2025
    • May 1, 2026

    By Richard Clough | Bloomberg

    Tesla tallied up Elon Musk’s annual compensation for the first time since shareholders approved his moonshot pay package, and it’s a doozy: $158 billion.

    The 2025 total was revealed in a regulatory filing late Thursday, about six months after investors signed off on a $1 trillion stock award for the electric-car maker’s longtime chief executive officer.

    Also see: Tesla’s California sales slide deepens as hybrids displace EVs

    The staggering figure is exceptional even in the context of increasingly large packages for executives seen as visionary and essential to the success of the companies they lead. Musk turned Tesla into the EV market leader — and became the world’s richest person in the process — though the manufacturer has struggled of late with rising competition out of China and a relatively stagnant product lineup.

    The billionaire recently has turned his attention to other parts of his business empire, particularly the rocket maker SpaceX, which is attempting to stage the biggest initial public offering of all time in June. Thursday’s filing offered new insight into the overlap between his companies, revealing that Tesla generated more than half a billion dollars in revenue last year from selling products to other Musk-run companies.

    The bulk of the sales — about $430.1 million — came from doing business with xAI, Musk’s artificial intelligence startup, Tesla first disclosed in January. The automaker added this week that it also recognized another $143.3 million in revenue from SpaceX. Bloomberg News reported last month that SpaceX likely had purchased more than $100 million worth of Cybertrucks, the company’s slow-selling electric pickup, in the fourth quarter of last year.

    Tesla didn’t immediately respond to a request for additional details.

    Tesla shares were little changed as of 9:37 a.m. Friday in New York. The stock fell 15% this year through Thursday’s close, trailing the more than 5% rise in the benchmark S&P 500 Index.

    Compensation caveats

    The new disclosure on Musk’s head-turning pay came with some major caveats. There may be “significant disconnect” between what the company reports as Musk’s total compensation in a given year “and the value actually realized,” Tesla said in the filing.

    Also see: Tesla loses title as world’s biggest electric vehicle maker as sales fall for second year in a row

    There are several reasons the disclosed figures are uncoupled from reality. For one, the unprecedented pay package awarded last year consisted entirely of equity award grants. It was structured so that the CEO will only cash in if Tesla’s stock soars and the company achieves various operational milestones.

    Since Tesla didn’t reach any of the market value or operational targets set last year, Musk’s total realized compensation was zero. He hasn’t earned a salary from the company for years.

    The total compensation figure included the maximum grant date fair value attributed to the award Musk received last year, assuming all performance conditions will be achieved. Tesla reported that fair value at around $132 billion.

    The remainder of the total compensation — just over $26 billion — is the grant date fair value attributed to an interim award that Tesla’s board approved for Musk in August. Musk ended up forfeiting that payout in April of this year, due to the reinstatement of a 2018 compensation package.

    ​ Orange County Register 

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