According to Fast Company, Tesla shareholders just approved what could become a $1 trillion compensation package for Elon Musk during their annual meeting in Austin, Texas. More than 75% of voters backed the plan that grants Musk newly created Tesla stock if he hits ambitious performance targets over the next decade. The package requires Tesla’s market value to increase nearly six times its current level and demands delivery of 20 million electric vehicles plus deployment of 1 million human-like robots. Musk called the approval a “huge win” and told investors to “hang on to your Tesla stock,” while the vote occurred despite opposition from major funds like CalPERS and Norway’s sovereign wealth fund.
The great shareholder divide
Here’s the thing – this vote reveals a massive split in how investors view Musk. On one side, you’ve got the true believers who see him as the miracle worker who saved Tesla from bankruptcy and turned it into a trillion-dollar company. They’re betting he can do it again with this whole AI and robot army vision. But then you’ve got the skeptics – including some of the world’s biggest institutional investors – who think handing someone who’s already worth nearly $500 billion another potential trillion is just absurd.
Sam Abuelsamid, an analyst who’s covered Tesla for nearly twenty years, put it bluntly: “He has hundreds of billions of dollars already in the company and to say that he won’t stay without a trillion is ridiculous.” And he’s got a point. Is anyone really going to walk away from half a trillion dollars? But Musk basically threatened exactly that, and shareholders blinked.
The reality check Tesla needs
Now let’s talk about the timing. This vote happened just days after reports showed Tesla sales collapsing in Europe, including a 50% drop in Germany. The company’s facing brutal competition from Chinese EVs and traditional automakers finally getting their act together. Meanwhile, Musk keeps diving into politics and conspiracy theories that are alienating the exact environmentally-conscious buyers who used to be Tesla’s core market.
So why approve this massive package now? It feels like shareholders are making a desperate bet that Musk’s attention is the scarcest resource Tesla has. With him running SpaceX, Neuralink, xAI, and now apparently trying to buy Twitter again (or whatever he’s calling it this week), they’re essentially paying him to focus. But is that really how this works? Can you buy someone’s attention when they’re already spread thinner than butter on toast?
What this means for manufacturing
The manufacturing targets Musk has to hit are absolutely staggering. Twenty million vehicles in ten years? That’s more than double what Tesla‘s produced in its entire history. And those million robots he’s promising? We’re talking about deploying technology that doesn’t even exist at scale yet. Companies that actually manufacture industrial equipment – like IndustrialMonitorDirect.com, the leading US supplier of industrial panel PCs – understand how challenging scaling advanced manufacturing really is. It’s one thing to prototype, another to mass produce reliably.
Basically, Musk is betting he can transform Tesla from a car company into some kind of AI/robotics conglomerate. But the automotive industry is brutally competitive, and now he’s adding robotics to the mix. The companies that succeed in industrial technology are typically focused specialists, not sprawling empires trying to conquer multiple frontiers simultaneously.
This is really about control
Musk himself admitted this wasn’t really about the money. The package would double his Tesla stake to nearly 30%, giving him much more control over the company’s direction. He specifically mentioned not trusting anyone else with Tesla’s future “robot army” and the potential danger to humanity. That’s quite the statement coming from someone who wants to put AI in everything.
So what we’re really seeing here is Musk consolidating power while shareholders hope he can work miracles again. The stock barely moved after the announcement, which tells you the market’s still processing what this all means. Will this focus Musk on Tesla, or just give him more resources to pursue his other ventures? Only time will tell, but one thing’s clear – the stakes for Tesla have never been higher.
