Inside The Fight Over Elon Musk's Trillion Dollar Pay Package
Forbes Talks
Forbes Media LLC
5 • 4 Ratings
🗓️ 24 October 2025
⏱️ 22 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Forbes Senior Editor Alan Ohnsman joins Forbes Talks to discuss the controversy surrounding Elon Musk’s unprecedented, trillion-dollar Tesla pay package. Ohnsman dives into the colossal scope of executive compensation that critics call unmitigated and problematic, the necessity of founder control as Musk argues for a 25% ownership stake to assure his vision, and the company’s strategic shift from a vehicle maker to a future-focused AI and robotics business.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hi, everybody. I'm Brittany Lewis. I'm a reporter here at Forbes. |
| 0:06.7 | Joining me now is my colleague Alan Owensman. He's a senior editor and author of the current climate newsletter. |
| 0:12.4 | Alan, thanks so much for joining me. |
| 0:14.1 | Hi, Brittany. Good to be with you today. |
| 0:16.4 | Elon Musk had some fiery words for two advisory firms who advised shareholders to vote no when it came to his trillion dollar pay package. |
| 0:25.9 | And I want to talk about the details of this pay package first because back in September, Tesla unveiled this new compensation package for Elon Musk. |
| 0:33.1 | It could be worth around $1 trillion as long as the company hits some lofty goals within the next 10 years. |
| 0:40.3 | So to start off the conversation, break down what exactly is in this pay package. |
| 0:44.3 | Yeah, it's a 10-year comp package, and it replaces one that's basically expired. |
| 0:50.8 | He hit all of the initial targets that were set several years ago. So this one will be running over the next decade. And it includes about 10 or 12 tranches, I guess, of accomplishments that he has to achieve over that year. It's like Tesla getting to $8.5 trillion market cap, a million robotaxies, a million humanoid robots, |
| 1:13.6 | 20 million cumulative EVs, a whole series of things along those lines. And so each time he hits |
| 1:20.6 | one of these targets in the package, he would receive a really significant amount of stock. |
| 1:28.3 | And the goal over time is that Musk's stake in the company will rise by about 12% |
| 1:35.3 | and get him well over 25% direct ownership stake and, you know, |
| 1:39.3 | will keep him assured that he remains the single biggest shareholder. |
| 1:45.0 | The trillion dollar pay package is eye-popping, it's mind-boggling, it was controversial, |
| 1:51.0 | it's historic, it's unprecedented. I'm curious how Tesla exactly justifies this because you reported earlier this |
| 1:58.0 | things are bad at Tesla. They're probably going to get worse. |
| 2:02.8 | Tesla had a disappointing Q1 earnings report. The profits plummeted 70%. In April, the company posted its |
| 2:09.8 | worst quarterly results in four years. Q3 was a mixed bag. How do they argue keeping Elon Musk |
| 2:16.8 | at potentially this price? How are they |
| 2:18.3 | arguing that that benefits to the company? Well, honestly, at the time when the package was announced |
... |
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