Tesla shareholders have approved a pay plan that could hand Elon Musk up to $1 trillion in Tesla stock if a suite of ambitious milestones is met. The vote on 6 November 2025 passed with roughly three‑quarters in favour, setting a new record for CEO compensation and placing a very long timeline in front of investors.

The mechanics matter. Musk takes no salary under this scheme; instead, the award is split into 12 tranches tied to operating goals, profitability and market value. With Tesla’s market capitalisation around $1.5 trillion today, the headline hurdle is $8.5 trillion within the next decade, with shares vesting only as milestones are hit.

Musk framed the package as part of building towards roughly 25% voting control, arguing he needs that stake to steer long‑term bets. On stage he even referenced keeping influence over a future “robot army”, while pointing to Tesla’s latest strategy outline, Master Plan 4, as a guide to where the company wants to go.

To grasp the scale, NPR’s accounting puts this at more than 33 times the previous record package - which was, in fact, Musk’s own 2018 award. Proxy adviser Glass Lewis estimates that, after tax‑related payments, Musk’s take‑home would be about $942bn if every milestone is met.

There is legal history here. Delaware’s Chancery Court voided the 2018 plan and later rejected efforts to restore it; Tesla has appealed. The trillion‑dollar scheme is presented as a fresh, forward‑looking plan rather than a reinstatement of the old award, and it pays nothing if targets are missed.

For a quick sense check on magnitude: a trillion is a thousand billion. Counting one dollar every second would take about 31,688 years to reach $1 trillion - far beyond recorded British history. To spend that amount in a single year, you’d be burning through roughly $19bn every week.

For a more consumer‑friendly thought experiment, NPR calculated that even if you bought every new Rolls‑Royce, every private jet and every yacht sold worldwide each year for a decade, you’d still have roughly $475bn left from a trillion. It’s a playful example, but it gets you in the right ballpark.

What would have to go right for the award to vest? The path runs through profitable autonomy, a functioning robotaxi network and large‑scale deployment of Tesla’s Optimus humanoid robot - ambitions Musk reiterated alongside a refreshed product roadmap and talk of “sustainable abundance”. Timelines have slipped before, which is why the plan is entirely stock‑based.

For UK readers holding global trackers in ISAs or SIPPs, the impact is indirect but real. If Tesla hits those thresholds, its weight in world indices rises and portfolio concentration increases; if it misses, the award simply doesn’t vest. Either way, the market will look for tangible progress in software‑driven margins and autonomy adoption rather than slogans.

Before we leave you, three quick mind‑set tests. First, 1% of a trillion is $10bn - more than the annual profits of many well‑known firms. Second, even extravagant global luxury purchases for a decade barely dent the total, as NPR’s arithmetic shows. Third, spending $1m a day since ancient Rome still wouldn’t clear the pot. Numbers this large defeat intuition - which is why the vote matters only if the delivery follows.