Elon Musk’s Trillion-Dollar Moment: Tesla’s Biggest Vote Yet

The cult of Musk meets the calculus of money

Tesla doesn’t do small decisions. On Thursday, it will ask shareholders to vote on whether to hand Elon Musk one of the largest pay packages in corporate history — a performance-based deal that could, on paper, make him the world’s first trillionaire.

Wedbush analyst Dan Ives thinks the outcome isn’t in doubt. “We expect Musk to get overwhelming shareholder approval,” he wrote this week, calling the vote “a loud and clear message” that investors still see Musk as Tesla’s indispensable wartime CEO. The firm keeps its Outperform rating and a $600 target on the stock, which trades at $456.

The proposed award isn’t a salary or a bonus in the usual sense. It’s a set of monumental targets that link Musk’s payout directly to Tesla’s performance — measured in everything from earnings and margins to product launches and AI milestones.

If he hits them, the payday is roughly $1 trillion. If he doesn’t, he gets nothing.

What the deal actually looks like

At its core, the new plan extends the 2018 performance award that’s been both praised and litigated. Tesla’s board is offering Musk an additional 423 million shares, about 12% of the company — taking his potential voting power to roughly 25%.

But there are catch-22s baked in. To unlock the tranches, Tesla must meet a string of ambitious goals:

• Deliver 20 million vehicles globally
• Achieve 10 million active Full Self-Driving subscriptions
• Roll out 1 million robotaxis in commercial use
• Deploy 1 million Optimus robots
• Hit an eye-watering $400 billion of adjusted EBITDA over four consecutive quarters

That’s more than a pay plan — it’s a corporate moonshot. And, as Ives notes, it ties directly to Musk’s bigger obsession: making Tesla the beating heart of the AI revolution.

The AI pivot behind the pay

Alongside the vote on Musk’s compensation, shareholders will also decide whether Tesla can take a strategic stake in xAI, Musk’s separate artificial intelligence start-up. The plan is to fold more of that technology back into Tesla — think smarter autonomy, advanced robotics, and AI-driven energy systems.

Wedbush’s analysts see this as Tesla’s next defining act. “The biggest asset for Tesla is Musk,” Ives wrote. “With the AI revolution front and centre, keeping him at the helm is crucial.”

The bank argues that this deal cements Tesla’s role as more than a carmaker. It’s a bet that its future lies at the intersection of AI, autonomy and humanoid robotics... and that Musk, for all his volatility, is the one person capable of driving that convergence.

Shareholder angst and Silicon Valley swagger

Not everyone’s convinced. Proxy advisers, including Institutional Shareholder Services (ISS) have urged investors to vote against the plan, arguing that it is excessive and risks deepening Musk’s control over Tesla at the expense of governance checks.

But Tesla investors have seen this movie before. In 2018, similar warnings were ignored as Musk’s first blockbuster pay deal passed overwhelmingly. Since then, Tesla’s market cap has ballooned from $50 billion to more than $1.5 trillion.

Wedbush’s view is simple: Musk delivered once, and shareholders will back him to do it again. “This was the smart move by the board,” Ives wrote. “It keeps Musk engaged through Tesla’s most critical chapter.”

The big picture

Underneath the drama, this vote marks a moment of generational transition for Tesla. The company that redefined electric vehicles now wants to reinvent itself as an AI-powered mobility and robotics platform.

Whether that’s visionary or hubristic depends on your reading of Musk. But the message from Wedbush is unmistakable: the stock’s next act, robotaxis, Optimus, autonomy, is inseparable from the man himself.

On Thursday, shareholders will decide not just whether to pay him, but whether to double down on his vision of the future. And if the analysts are right, the answer will come in Tesla’s favourite colour: bright green.