Tesla says Elon Musk’s pay is worth $158bn, but he won’t get it (yet)

Tesla has valued Elon Musk’s 2025 compensation package at an eye-watering $158bn, tied to ambitious performance targets.

The figure was disclosed in a regulatory filing submitted on Thursday, offering a first estimate of the potential value of Musk’s compensation for 2025.

Last year, Tesla shareholders approved a $1tn performance-based pay plan for Musk, which is the largest corporate pay package in history, following his threats to leave the company.

But to ever see it, Musk has to meet an extensive list of objectives, such as bringing Tesla's overall market value to $8.5tn (roughly twice today’s value), making up to $400bn in core profit, and delivering 20 million Tesla vehicles and one million robots over the next ten years.

Tesla said there may be “a significant disconnect between what is reported as compensation for Mr Musk in a given year … and the value actually realised as compensation in that year or over a period of time”.

Achieving these milestones would mean that Musk, who doesn’t take a salary, will get as much as 423.7 million additional Tesla shares over the next 10 years (worth around $1tn depending on the company’s market value).

Yet analysts think there is a long way to go before these targets are met – and even then, they are not guaranteed.

"He's still got a whole bunch of targets to hit and none of the milestones set out in the $1tn pay deal approved by shareholders last year were achieved in 2025,” Danni Hewson, head of financial analysis at AJ Bell, told the BBC.

Musk is already the world’s richest person, with a net worth estimated at $651bn by Bloomberg and $788bn by Forbes.

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