Elon Musk is on the verge of earning another $1 trillion pay package after the SpaceX board approved a comprehensive plan to give him a massive super-voting stock. However, there are conditions attached to the bumper pay package.
According to reports, Elon Musk will earn the compensation if SpaceX reaches a $7.5 trillion valuation, puts a permanent human population on Mars, and builds space-based data centers with compute power so large it sounds like something only this company would put in paperwork. The plan was shown inside SpaceX’s private registration filing with the US Securities and Exchange Commission in recent weeks.
SpaceX board approves new pay package for Elon Musk
SpaceX is still privately held, but it is preparing for a possible IPO around June 28, which is coincidentally Elon’s birthday, at a possible value of about $1.75 trillion. That alone is expected to push the company into the same weight class as the biggest public names, while Tesla (TSLA) shareholders also watch the same CEO chase another huge award outside the electric vehicle business. The largest part gives Elon up to 200 million restricted shares.
Aside from hitting the valuation, SpaceX claims that the human settlement population on Mars should be around 1 million. The filing turns a Mars dream into a corporate pay target. No vague hype. No soft language. It puts a population number beside a valuation number and links both to Elon’s stock award. A second part of the package gives Elon as many as 60.4 million restricted shares from an award dated March 23.
That part depends on separate company value targets and SpaceX running data centers in outer space that can provide at least 100 terawatts of computing power. That power figure is massive. 100 terawatts equals 100,000 gigawatts, or about 100,000 nuclear reactors of one gigawatt each running at the same time. Both stock awards use Class B restricted shares. Each Class B share carries 10 votes, while each Class A share carries 1 vote. That gives the package a control angle, not just a money angle. The shares vest in parts as SpaceX grows in value.
Elon gets none of those shares if SpaceX fails to hit the board’s targets. The plan does not have a calendar deadline, except that he must keep working at the company. Since 2019, SpaceX has paid him a yearly salary of $54,080. SpaceX cannot place a clean dollar value on the package yet because its shares do not trade publicly. Elon already held 68.8 million Class B stock options as of December 31. Those earlier options have a strike price of about $42 and expire in 2031, so any gain above that price belongs to him if he exercises them before they lapse.
However, it is expected that the SpaceX award may create friction between SpaceX investors and Tesla shareholders. Elon runs both companies, and corporate governance experts have warned that investors may question how much attention each business gets when both have giant targets attached to him. SpaceX is also ending a separate fight in California. The development comes as the California Coastal Commission apologized to Elon’s rocket company and settled a lawsuit filed after SpaceX accused the agency of political bias against the company and its chief executive.
