Tesla’s 2024 shareholder meeting: all the news about Elon Musk’s $50 billion payday

Tesla is holding its annual shareholder meeting in Austin, Texas, today, where investors will decide the fate of CEO Elon Musk’s enormous $50 billion compensation package.

The event is not just about Musk’s payday. Tesla’s board is portraying it as a pivotal moment in the company’s effort to secure Musk’s attention span, which is divided between X Corp., SpaceX, Neuralink, and his other companies. It also hinges on the question of whether Musk can steer Tesla back on track.

On Thursday, Tesla shareholders will face a stark choice: approve Elon Musk’s enormous pay package, the largest ever awarded to a chief executive, or risk him picking up his ball and going home. 

The shareholder meeting on Thursday is a referendum on Musk’s tumultuous leadership, in which he took a relatively niche startup, wrested it away from its founders, and turned it into what is arguably one of the most consequential car companies in modern history. To reward him for this feat, shareholders are being asked to cast an unprecedented vote on Musk’s compensation — to the tune of $50 billion — for the second time. And in a post on X late Wednesday, Musk said the vote was close to approval.

Tesla board chair Robyn Denholm is calling on the company’s shareholders to approve Elon Musk’s massive $56 billion pay package or risk driving the billionaire CEO to greener pastures.

On June 13th, Tesla shareholders will decide the fate of Musk’s compensation package, which is estimated to be worth as much as $56 billion. It will be the second time that shareholders will vote on the CEO’s pay, after a Delaware judge voided the first one earlier this year on the grounds that the approval process was “deeply flawed.” And now the company is engaged in a full-court press to convince shareholders to approve his compensation, as well as a proposal to reincorporate Tesla in Texas to circumvent the oversight of Delaware’s courts.

The fight for Tesla CEO Elon Musk’s enormous pay package is heating up.

On June 13th, Tesla shareholders will decide the fate of Musk’s compensation package, which is estimated to be worth as much as $56 billion. It will be the second time that shareholders will vote on the CEO’s pay, after a Delaware judge voided the first one earlier this year on the grounds that the approval process was “deeply flawed.”

Elon Musk isn’t going to get that $55 billion pay package after all, a Delaware Court of Chancery judge has ruled. The ruling means Tesla’s board will need to come up with a new proposal.

The ruling threatens Musk’s fortune if it makes it through an appeal, Bloomberg reports. Without the options in that package, Musk may only be the third-richest man in the world.

As if he doesn’t have enough going on, Elon Musk will find himself in court later this week defending his $56 billion pay package from allegations by Tesla shareholders that it was rigged with easy performance targets.

And that’s not all! On Tuesday in Los Angeles, a Tesla Model S owner is on trial for manslaughter in a case that experts are calling it a first-of-its-kind legal test of the responsibility of a human driver in a car with advanced driver-assist technology like Tesla’s Autopilot.

Tesla’s stock price hit $1,000 for the first time on Wednesday, meaning the Silicon Valley company has now passed Toyota in market capitalization and is the most valuable automaker in the world by that metric.

This comes as at least six Tesla employees have tested positive for COVID-19 in California since CEO Elon Musk reopened the company’s facilities there last month — initially in violation of stay-home orders, and then with the blessing of local officials — according to new reports from The Washington Post and Electrek. An employee at Tesla’s Buffalo, New York solar panel factory also tested positive for COVID-19 after that facility reopened, as The Verge previously reported.