Tesla’s 2024 shareholder meeting: all the news about Elon Musk’s $50 billion payday

Tesla’s 2024 shareholder meeting is a bit different than meetings past. Investors are being asked to weigh in on the question of Elon Musk’s massive pay package, which is estimated to be as high as $50 billion.

But it isn’t the first time shareholders have voted on whether to approve Musk’s unusual compensation package. Earlier this year, a Delaware court judge voided his $56 billion pay in response to a shareholder lawsuit.

Shareholders will also vote on proposals to move Tesla’s legal home from Delaware to Texas and to reappoint two board members: James Murdoch and Kimbal Musk, Elon’s brother.

The vote is widely seen as a referendum on Musk’s tumultuous leadership at Tesla. Retail investors widely support Musk, while some institutional shareholders have said they would oppose the plan, calling it excessive.

Musk has threatened to remove Tesla’s work on AI and robotics if he doesn’t receive a larger share of the company’s stock. And Tesla’s board has implied that he could leave the company altogether if the pay package isn’t approved.

• Elon Musk’s $50 billion pay day is nigh.

  The Tesla CEO appears heading to victory in today’s shareholder vote over his enormous pay package. Musk posted two graphs on X last night which showed both proposals — the one of his compensation, and the other on reincorporating Tesla in Texas — ahead by wide margins. But the results aren’t final yet, and things could still go pear-shaped. After all, this is Tesla we’re talking about. Tune in at 3:30 pm CT if you want to watch Musk dive into a pile of cash, Scrooge McDuck-style.

  
  

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  Tesla’s $50 billion question comes down to the wire

  

  Illustration: Lille Allen / The Verge

  On Thursday, Tesla shareholders will face a stark choice: approve Elon Musk’s enormous pay package, the largest ever awarded to a chief executive, or risk him picking up his ball and going home. 

  The shareholder meeting on Thursday is a referendum on Musk’s tumultuous leadership, in which he took a relatively niche startup, wrested it away from its founders, and turned it into what is arguably one of the most consequential car companies in modern history. To reward him for this feat, shareholders are being asked to cast an unprecedented vote on Musk’s compensation — to the tune of $50 billion — for the second time. And in a post on X late Wednesday, Musk said the vote was close to approval.

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  Tesla on trial

  

  Laura Normand / The Verge

  As if he doesn’t have enough going on, Elon Musk will find himself in court later this week defending his $56 billion pay package from allegations by Tesla shareholders that it was rigged with easy performance targets.

  And that’s not all! On Tuesday in Los Angeles, a Tesla Model S owner is on trial for manslaughter in a case that experts are calling it a first-of-its-kind legal test of the responsibility of a human driver in a car with advanced driver-assist technology like Tesla’s Autopilot.

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  Tesla becomes most valuable automaker as more workers contract COVID-19

  

  Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

  Tesla’s stock price hit $1,000 for the first time on Wednesday, meaning the Silicon Valley company has now passed Toyota in market capitalization and is the most valuable automaker in the world by that metric.

  This comes as at least six Tesla employees have tested positive for COVID-19 in California since CEO Elon Musk reopened the company’s facilities there last month — initially in violation of stay-home orders, and then with the blessing of local officials — according to new reports from The Washington Post and Electrek. An employee at Tesla’s Buffalo, New York solar panel factory also tested positive for COVID-19 after that facility reopened, as The Verge previously reported.

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  Tesla stakes Elon Musk’s salary on plan to become bigger than Amazon

  

  Photo by Mark Brake/Getty Images

  Tesla has announced a new compensation plan for Elon Musk: he’ll only get paid if he reaches certain exorbitant milestones, including a Tesla market valuation of $650 billion.

  The company’s market valuation goals start at $100 billion and go up in $50 billion increments. (They climb to $150 billion, and so on until the $650 billion mark.) Tesla has a dozen market valuation goals and a dozen revenue and adjusted profit targets. The profit goals are designed to ensure that the company is “also executing well on both a top-line and bottom-line basis” as the company grows in valuation.

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