Musk’s Unfathomable $1 Trillion Payday, Explained
Background for Media: Elon Musk’s $1 Trillion Pay Package and How We Got Here
On Thursday, Tesla’s board of directors will ask shareholders to approve a pay plan for Musk that would grant him approximately $1 trillion in stock and expand his voting powers at the company.
If no wars ravaged Ukraine and the Middle East, if a milquetoast Republican inhabited the White House instead of a six-time bankrupt, twice impeached, three-times indicted and once convicted, policy-by-Roomba prevaricator, American business media, and Americans generally, would fixate on the $1 trillion pay package Elon Musk engineered from his Tesla board.
One trillion dollars is unfathomable.
A million seconds is about 11 days. A billion seconds is about three decades. A trillion—30,000 years.
Musk’s payday isn’t guaranteed, and it’s not a pile of cash deposited all at once in his driveway.[1] As the Economic Times of India (exemplifying the global intrigue in Musk’s payday) summarized, “Musk won’t get a penny unless the company hits these targets.” Generally, as the Economic Times described, Musk must achieve the following:
- Market Growth: Tesla’s market capitalization must rise from roughly $1 trillion to $8.5 trillion. This would establish Tesla as the most valuable company in history, and by several multiples.
- Vehicle Production Milestones: Musk must oversee the delivery of 20 million vehicles annually, a major increase from current production.
- Initial Milestone: Tesla must first reach a $2 trillion valuation before any part of the package begins to vest.
To earn the full package, Musk must remain at Tesla for at least 7.5 years and meet all these targets within 10 years.” (If he misses these ambitious targets, he still gets billions if he meets lesser goals, still orders of magnitude above the second highest paid CEO.)
If Musk works a 40-hour work week with two weeks’ vacation, or about 200,000 hours for 10 years, that’s $50 million an hour. (And Musk does not work 40 hours at Tesla. He heads several other companies. For a half-year in 2025, he barely worked for Tesla, as he commanded the Washington stage at the Department of Government Efficiency, savaging the federal work force.) That hourly $50 million rate would exceed the second highest annual pay for American CEOs. One trillion dollars is $200 billion more than the combined annual pay of all Fortune 500 company CEOs. Yet, still, even these comparisons are unfathomable.
In brief, we argue that Elon Musk doesn’t deserve the pay package because 1) he and his companies rely heavily on government money to survive – money that his actions may put in jeopardy, 2) he allows other business interests, conspiracy theories, and personal vendettas to distract him from Tesla, 3) a previous, much smaller Musk pay package has already been ruled “unfair” and “unfathomable” by a court, and 4) Tesla’s board is not independent and is loyal to Musk over Tesla.
Musk epitomizes the critical problems with CEO pay. We begin with a brief recent history and then turn to an explanation of how the unfathomable has now become a possibility. In a second forthcoming installment, we review the general breakdown in corporate governance behind soaring CEO pay throughout corporate America.
CEO PAY: UP, UP AND AWAY
For the last half-century, CEO pay has soared, even as the pay of average American workers has stagnated. The reason for this is straightforward: the gears of corporate governance that would ordinarily bridle exorbitant pay, or withhold bonuses for poorly performing executives, are sanded with conflicts. Board directors who should serve shareholders in guarding against waste are instead captured by management. Shareholders have little effective voice, and the mutual funds that now hold most individuals’ investments also work for corporations as advisors to company pension funds. And there are other conflicts of interest.
In 1965, the average CEO made 20 times that of the average paid worker.[2] From 1950 through the early 1970s, CEO pay actually grew more slowly than the pay of average workers.[3] Then, in the 1980s, CEOs began to cash extraordinary paychecks.
Michael Eisner became CEO of Walt Disney’s in 1984. With the help of pay consultant Graef Crystal, Eisner became “by far” the best paid chief executive in the nation, observed the Tampa Bay Times. [4]
By 1995, that pay ratio between the CEO and average worker reached 122-1. By 2016, it crested at 347- 1.[5] It has remained near that level since. In other words, in 2016, the average big company CEO was compensated in about one day what the average U.S. worker earned in a year.
There are a number of ways to measure CEO pay. They vary because a sizeable portion of compensation comes in the form of stock options.[6] Stock options give the CEO the right to purchase a certain number of shares of stock in the company at a certain price. Typically, when the options are granted to the CEO, the price is set on the grant date. These option grants typically carry restrictions, such as a delay of months or years before the CEO can “exercise” the option, which means, use the right of the option to purchase stock. In a sense, the option has no value at the grant date because if the CEO bought the stock at that price and tried to sell it, there would be no gain. But based on historical trends and other assumptions, companies can estimate what’s called the present value of that option when the CEO eventually cashes in. (The most common estimation technique uses the Black Scholes Option Pricing Model.[7] When this pricing model is measured for accuracy, that is, what it predicted and what happened in the real market place, “the accuracy of these formulas is very poor,” according to one study.[8]) Another way to value CEO pay is to measure it when the options are actually exercised, that is, when the CEO purchases the stock at the grant date price and then sells it at the higher, current market price. (An executive doesn’t rationally exercise an option that is “underwater,” where the current market price is less than the grant date price.) In 2022, the average CEO pay (among the top 350 firms) using the first method, namely the Black Scholes estimate, was $14.5 million. Using the second method, the average pay was $24.2 million.[9]
These CEO pay figures are averages. Some CEOs are paid more. In 2022, for example, the CEO of Paycom Software received $211 million.[10] Paycom is a payroll services provider with 6,300 employees. It reported $281 million in profit in 2022.[11] The CEO’s pay was nearly as large as the company’s profits.
Some claim that most such CEO pay levels are trivial next to the billions of dollars in corporate revenue and earnings. But Harvard professors Lucian Bebchuk and Jesse Fried calculated that the five senior executives at Fortune 500 companies (the only executives for which pay disclosure is required) absorb 10 percent of total corporate earnings.[12]
Like a ratchet, CEO pay only goes up. “Up, up and away,” in the words of financial columnist Joe Nocera. [13]
“Away” renders inadequate justice to Musk’s $1,000,000,000,000.00.
Musk’s Record Payday is Not Deserved
Elon Musk has set the record for CEO compensation. Musk has become a visible figure in several worlds, prompting a spirited conversation about the role of single individuals in the success of vast enterprises that employ thousands of workers.
Born in South Africa in 1971 to a prosperous family, Musk began university there before moving first to Canada, then to the United States where he received an undergraduate degree from the University of Pennsylvania in economics and physics. He then moved to California, and after two days attending Stanford, began a life of entrepreneurship.[14] [15]
In 1995, Musk, his brother Kimbal and another partner founded an online version of the Yellow Pages, which was a long-standing print version of businesses in a particular region. [16] They sold this to Compaq in 1999. With some of his $22 million in profits from the sale, Musk and several other partners formed an online bank called X.com.[17] It merged with a competitor, and they rebranded it PayPal. Musk served briefly as PayPal CEO until the board ousted him. [18] Shortly after, eBay acquired PayPal, netting Musk an estimated $180 million.[19][20] The money from the PayPal acquisition allowed Musk to build the business empire he is most known for today, one that includes Space X, Tesla, and X (formerly Twitter).
To those who admire Musk, he’s a trailblazer responsible for some of the most important innovations of our day. Tesla cars can help tame climate change as they produce no emissions and will ideally be powered by renewable electric energy. Space X fills orbital rings with important telecommunications satellites. With his Open AI, Musk advances Artificial intelligence, which may be the next revolution in virtually every industry.
But to his detractors, Musk is at best a successful financier and promoter of other entrepreneurs’ ideas and projects.
Musk’s Business Empire Relies Heavily on Government Money – Money That May be Less Reliable When Power Changes Hands.
Musk co-founded Space X in 2002, with ambitions to colonize Mars. After several failed launches, Space X achieved success in 2008 and won a $1.6 billion contract with NASA. This contract, according to one researcher, “saved the company when it was on the brink of bankruptcy.”[21] Musk then expanded his interest to electric cars. Developed by two engineers and incorporated in 2003, Musk subsequently helped Telsa with financing, investing $6.5 million of his own funds, becoming the majority shareholder. By 2008, however, Tesla faced bankruptcy, with a string of losing years and a financial crisis engulfing the world economy. Musk prevented the bankruptcy filing, investing more of his own funds and lending more. [22] As a condition, he became CEO. In 2010, Musk “ran out of cash.”[23] No longer able to rely on its wealthy CEO for money, Tesla was teetering. Then, Uncle Sam stepped in with a $465 million Department of Energy loan. “Tesla would not have survived without the loan,” a former Tesla employee told the Washington Post.[24]
It is reasonable to say that had it not been for government support through loans and contracts, the crown jewels of Musk’s business empire – Space X and Tesla – would not exist today.
Along with the company-saving loan, since 2007, Tesla has received $11.4 billion in automative regulatory credits. Since 2003, Space X has received more than $20 billion in funding from NASA and DoD combined, according to an analysis by the Washington Post.[25]
There is nothing inherently wrong with a company relying heavily on government contracts or loans. Many companies do. But not all these companies or CEOs inject themselves into partisan politics to the level Musk has. Musk has a close, though sometimes rocky, relationship with President Trump. If Republicans lose power, it is possible he may find government contracting more challenging in a Democratic administration.
Musk is Distracted by Other Businesses, Conspiracy Theories and Personal Vendettas.
Calling Musk distracted from his work at Tesla would be an understatement. When other business ventures are not commanding his attention, Musk has shown an appetite for conspiracy theories and personal attacks that constantly put the Tesla CEO in the news for unflattering reasons.
Unwilling to focus simply on Space X and Tesla, in 2015, Musk also helped found OpenAI, a non-profit devoted to researching artificial intelligence; the Boring Company in 2016, which aimed to dig tunnels under and around major cities; and Neuralink in 2017, which aims to build brain implants that could allow people who are paralyzed to operate technology such as computers or robotic limbs.[26]
Then there is Twitter. After first proposing to buy the social media firm, then announcing he’d walk away, and then was forced to consummate the sale, Musk promptly reduced the workforce dramatically and eliminated some of the content moderation employees. Vitriol grew.[27] Some of this came from Musk himself. He retweeted that the husband of Nancy Pelosi, attacked by an intruder, might have been engaged in a gay lovers’ quarrel. He claimed those worried about COVID are “dumb.” He likened Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau to “Hitler.”[28] He derided Mark Zuckerberg’s private parts.[29][30][31] When advertisers left Twitter because of various incendiary remarks on the platform, Musk told an interviewer that they could “go f— themselves.”[32]
Musk’s actions on X haven’t just been inflammatory; he’s harmed Tesla with the tweets. The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) accused Musk of making “a series of false and misleading statements.” Specifically, the government declared, Musk stated on Twitter that he planned to buy out Tesla shareholders at a premium, and that he’d lined up funding for the transaction. The SEC stated that “In truth and in fact, Musk had not even discussed, much less confirmed, key deal terms, including price, with any potential funding source.”[33] In the end, the court ordered Musk personally and Tesla to pay $20 million each.[34]
Opined a Los Angeles Times columnist, “Musk’s actions since taking over Twitter . . . have been so destructive to the platform’s functioning and reputation that the question is raised of whether, rather than being a genius, Musk is in fact an idiot.”[35] Added Alex Shepard in the New Republic, “Elon Musk is evil. While he has mostly made headlines for his incompetence, he has unleashed and legitimized truly heinous forces on Twitter.”[36]
The New York Times documented Musk’s drug use, which “went well beyond occasional use.” The Times reported, “He told people he was taking so much ketamine, a powerful anesthetic, that it was affecting his bladder, a known effect of chronic use. He took Ecstasy and psychedelic mushrooms. And he traveled with a daily medication box that held about 20 pills, including ones with the markings of the stimulant Adderall, according to a photo of the box and people who have seen it.”[37]
In some companies, the CEO is terminated for alleged drug abuse. The Drug-Free Workplace Act of 1988 requires federal contractors, which Musk companies are, to establish and maintain a drug-free workplace.
At worst, Musk has been “roundly mocked as a crazy con artist on the verge of going broke.”[38] Former associates have described Musk as “petty, cruel and petulant.” [39]
In 2024, Musk became a vocal supporter of Trump, contributing prodigiously to his campaign. Upon election, Trump designated him the head of the Department of Government Efficiency, a contrivance (Congress wasn’t involved) to cut spending.[40] Musk pronounced grand ambitions for his efforts. Now, on the national stage where those with no interest in Tesla cars could observe his methods, he savaged the federal workforce, making specious claims about savings. He first claimed he’d cut the deficit in half. He later reduced that claim. And the result fell to negligible levels. Concluded the Washington Post: “No corporate turnaround expert, walking into a struggling company, would imagine that the way to fix it was to spend a few months haphazardly firing as many employees as possible, before giving up in disgust. They’d have spent those months on a listening tour, getting the employees to explain what’s keeping them from cutting costs or delivering better services.” The headline of the above conclusion: “Why Elon Musk Failed.”
Musk’s erratic, politically toxic behavior is having a clear impact on Tesla. During this period of Musk’s conspicuous DOGE failure, and arguably because of this, the shine on Tesla tarnished and sales fell. In Germany, where he chided the nation for over-dwelling on guilt, sales fell 59% during one period.
On top of everything else, much of the praise heaped on Musk is likely more deserved by others.
Putting the Yellow Pages online doesn’t measure with many of the great technological advances of the 1990s, a time when other innovators were developing far more powerful universal search engines, notably Google. His profits from PayPal largely came from the efforts of others.[41]
Tesla began not with Musk but with a Stanford engineer attempting to transform old Porsches into electric cars. [42]
Much of Space X’s success derives from president and chief operating officer Gwynne Shotwell, who runs the day-to-day activities at the firm, according to one observer. Musk hired her away from Microcosm, an El Segundo rocket company. Musk does deserve credit for “staying out of her way while taking credit for the company’s achievements as a government contractor,” the observer added.[43]
Musk’s First Mega Paycheck, Which Was Far Less Than the New $1 Trillion Proposal, Was Voided and Called “Unfathomable” and “Unfair” by the Judge
Whether he deserved to be the best paid CEO in history has also come under scrutiny before. On January 21, 2018, Tesla granted Elon Musk, the Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, an option to acquire 20,264,042 shares of Tesla. This represented 12% of the outstanding shares, alone an extraordinary number.
By contrast, the number of shares that Paycom Software granted to its CEO named most overpaid executive, according to the As You Sow annual review of overpaid CEOs, was 1.6 million.[44] That indulging compensation represented about 2 percent of Paycom’s total of 60 million shares.[45]
According to an option pricing model, this Musk payout was estimated to be worth $2.6 billion. When $100 million is often the compensation figure that puts a CEO at or near the top of the annual list of best paid managers, this $2.6 billion easily set a new record, and by an order of magnitude.[46] In fact, the option pricing model proved conservative. Musk’s stock option value has exceeded tens of billions because Tesla’s stock price soared well above what the model predicted, and what sales and profit fundamentals might otherwise dictate.[47]
Musk’s payday drew the attention of shareholders who filed litigation in the Delaware courts (where Tesla and many large companies are incorporated).
In their suit, the Police and Fire Retirement System of the City of New York focus on Musk’s control of the board. They alleged, “Musk has installed his family and friends on the Company’s Board and through them he dominates and exercises control over Tesla and is able to avoid independent oversight of the way he runs the Company. In return, with Musk’s blessing and vote as a director, the Director Defendants have consistently paid themselves unfair and lavish compensation.”[48] The mutual backscratching continued for many years. In 2015, for example, the board paid the non-employee directors an average of $6.3 million each.[49] In 2018, the year they awarded the outsized stock option plan to CEO Musk, the board paid themselves $8.7 million each.[50] [51]
Charles Elson, a professor of corporate governance, wrote to the Delaware court an amicus brief noting that Musk may be a special, charismatic, hardworking executive, but no more so than Mark Zuckerberg (Facebook), Jeff Bezos (Amazon), Bill Gates (Microsoft), or Sergei Brin (Google). They receive modest compensation, he noted. Their respective boards understood that their equity stakes in their respective companies were more than enough incentive to build shareholder wealth, Elson opined. Musk held 20% of Tesla’s stock, so the additional stock options were unnecessary, and wasting shareholder value, he contended.[52]
A Delaware court agreed. Opening her opinion siding with the plaintiffs, Chancellor Kathaleen McCormack of the Delaware Court of Chancery asked, “Was the richest person in the world overpaid?”[53] She observed that this package was worth 250 times that of his peers, and 33 times larger than the second biggest payout, which happened to be Musk’s previous pay plan.[54]
The judge voided this 2018 package. Musk responded to the judge’s opinion: “Never incorporate your company in the state of Delaware.”[55]
Musk chose not to surrender to the Delaware courts. After the Delaware judge invalidated his Tesla pay package – calling it “an unfathomable sum,”[56] – Musk derided her and Delaware corporate law. He then led reincorporation of Tesla and SpaceX in Texas.
Tesla’s Board Has “Thick Ties” to Musk and Is Hardly Independent
In voiding Musk’s first pay package, Judge McCormack highlighted the major breakdown in corporate governance behind this mega-pay structure. She reviewed the evidence of the “collection of features characterizing Musk’s relationship with Tesla and its directors gave him enormous influence” over how the Tesla board decided on these riches: the “thick ties” that Musk enjoyed with the directors who awarded him the record-smashing payday.
These directors included his brother Kimbal Musk; a long-time business partner; another who “owed roughly 44% of his net worth to Musk entities;” one who “derived the vast majority of her wealth from her compensation as a Tesla director;” another who “amassed ‘dynastic or generational wealth’ from investing in Musk’s companies.” One director considers himself “close friends” with Musk—they spend the night at each other’s homes, vacation together, celebrate Christmas, birthdays and weddings together. The Tesla general counsel was Musk’s former divorce attorney. The judge found that these conflicted directors did little diligence with the 2018 pay package. Further, they set targets that were not difficult to meet. [57]
Elon Musk’s board failed to exercise the duty of loyalty to shareholders because they were loyal instead to Musk. American law proscribes squandering shareholder funds on exorbitant compensation.
Governance expert Nell Minow[58] explains: “Even if we confuse what is legal with what is right, I don’t think you can justify something as legal if Musk had to move the company’s domicile from Delaware, where the judge twice threw out an outrageous pay play 1/20th of this one, promising the shareholders that the Texas laws were pretty much as protective of their rights as Delaware and then paying $$ of the shareholders’ money to lobbyists who wrote new laws immediately passed by Texas legislators (more $$$ from Tesla) that slash those rights, including making it nearly impossible to challenge this trillion dollar pay plan in court. 2. The pay plan was approved by a two-person compensation committee made up of directors who themselves have been paid almost 3/4 of a billon to do whatever Musk says, including illegally delaying the ‘annual’ meeting by six months and then approved by a board that includes Musk’s brother, a chef. Board members are legally obligated, even in Texas, to make decisions based on what is best for shareholders, not CEOs. 3. As a matter of economics, it makes no sense. Every dollar allocated by the board has to be evaluated in terms of return on investment, whether spent on research, manufacturing, marketing, or CEO pay. There is no way this pay plan, even tiered as it is to some ambitious financial goals, can be worth it for shareholders, especially for a part-time CEO who spends a great deal of his attention on other companies.”
Even before the litigation, some speculated that Musk’s galactic payday would eventually become earthbound.[59] These are paper gains, not cash actually entering his bank account. At the time of Musk’s options bonanza, Tesla was not a profitable company. In 2019, it reported a loss of $870 million. In 2020, it swung into the black and reported its first profit of $690 million.[60] By comparison, giant General Motors reported steady income of $6.5 billion in 2019 and $6.2 billion in 2020.[61]
Stock market valuations have told a vastly different story. A snapshot in February 2023 showed that shareholders valued the much larger General Motors at $57 billion, but Tesla at $623 billion, more than 10 times greater. Shareholders were paying 6.7 times earnings for General Motors stock, but 48 times earnings for Tesla.
In other words, for every dollar of General Motors’ earnings, shareholders were valuing GM stock at 6.7 times this. It’s not that Tesla stock investors think Tesla dollars are worth more – a dollar is a dollar. It’s that they expect that in the coming years, Tesla will earn far more than GM. Most simply, if Tesla’s market capitalization is more than 10 times that of GM, investors are betting it will one day earn ten times the income of GM. Tesla earned $12.5 billion in 2022. GM earned $10 billion in 2022.[62] Valuing Tesla at 10 times GM implies investors believe Tesla will, in the future, earn $120 billion. Currently, the most profitable US companies are Apple ($99 billion), Microsoft ($72 billion), and Google/Alphabet ($59 billion).[63] Assertions by Wall Street analysts that Tesla stock is overvalued are common.[64]
Conclusion
At the end of 10 years, if he does, indeed, remain at Tesla, Musk may be demoted to a reputation as simply an intelligent, hard-driven financier who knows how to command attention — to find a parade and march in front of it.
Yet his legacy may be long. The arena of executive compensation will unhappily face a new frontier of exactly how absurdly much the CEO could be paid, so long as corporate governance remains terribly broken. As long as boards remain beholden to Musk, as long a corporate governance generally remains broken, and as long as share value remains the one lone star, which we explore more fully in the forthcoming Part 2 of this analysis, then CEO pay will go “up, up, and away.”
[1] If it were deposited in $100 bills, the bills would fill about 800 20-foot standard containers. (A bill is .0043 inches thick. Hundred-dollar bills stacked one on top of the other would reach 678 miles; or if grouped in containers, at $1.25 billion worth per container, fill 800 containers.)
[2] Lawrence Mishel, Ceo Pay Continues To Rise As Typical Workers Are Paid Less Economic Policy Institute, June 12, 2014) https://www.sec.gov/comments/s7-07-13/s70713-980.pdf
[3] Geoffrey Colvin, The Great CEO Pay Heist, Fortune/CNN Money (June 25, 2001) https://money.cnn.com/magazines/fortune/fortune_archive/2001/06/25/305448/index.htm
[4] Disney chief overpaid, expert says, Tampa Bay Times, Oct. 8, 2005) https://www.tampabay.com/archive/1994/11/19/disney-chief-overpaid-expert-says/
[5] AFL-CIO, PayWatch, AFL-CIO (website visited August 7, 2023) https://aflcio.org/paywatch
[6] “After weeks of horse-trading, Congress sent President Truman the Revenue Act of 1950, and on Sept. 23 he signed it into law. Buried deep within that bill was a section amending the tax code. And that change, scarcely remarked upon at the time, made it legal and practical for companies to pay employees with an interesting form of currency called the stock option. Thus began the madness. If you want to understand America’s out-of-control CEO pay machine–including Steve Jobs’ recent $872 million options grant, by far the largest ever–start there. The machine is worth understanding because it has begun churning out dollar amounts so mammoth that even hardened professionals grope for words. ‘Outrageous in many cases and unrelated to services rendered,”’ says Charles Elson, a director of three publicly held corporations who runs the University of Delaware’s Center for Corporate Governance.”
From: https://money.cnn.com/magazines/fortune/fortune_archive/2001/06/25/305448/index.htm
[7] This formula uses five variables: the strike price of an option (namely a fixed price at which the owner can buy the underlying security), the current stock price, the time to expiration, the risk-free interest rate (usually the rate offered on a US Treasury), and the volatility, or how much and how often the price changes. The formula itself is complicated and uses a type of differential equation. With the Black Scholes model many of the variables are guesses about the future. If the risk-free interest rate changes, such as when the Federal Reserve increases interest rates, then the value of the option changes. If volatility in the future is different than what it was in the past, the option model prediction will also be incorrect.
[8] Shirley Redroban, On The Performance Of The Black And Scholes Options Pricing Formulas During The Subprime And Covid-19 Crises, The Journal of Corporate Accounting and Finance. (May 31, 2021) https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/jcaf.22504
[9] Rosanna Landis Weaver, 100 Most Overpaid CEOs, 2022, As You Sow (2022) https://static1.squarespace.com/static/59a706d4f5e2319b70240ef9/t/6216d82ba1d3b0492e873119/1645664302205/AsYouSow2022_100MostOverpaidCEOs2022_v4_FIN_20220217.pdf
[10] Id.
[11] Paycom Annual Report, Securities and Exchange Commission (2022) https://www.sec.gov/ix?doc=/Archives/edgar/data/1590955/000095017023003049/payc-20221231.htm#item_8_financial_statements_and_supple
[12] Lucian Bebchuk, Jesse Fried, Pay Without Performance, Journal of Corporate Law (2005) http://www.law.harvard.edu/faculty/jfried/pay_without_performance_overview.pdf
[13] Joe Nocera, C.E.O. Pay Goes Up, Up and Away!, New York Times, (April 14, 2014) https://www.nytimes.com/2014/04/15/opinion/ceo-pay-goes-up-up-and-away.html
[14] Avery Harman, Tesla CEO Elon Musk: His Career And Biography, Business Insider (July 11, 2023) https://www.businessinsider.com/tesla-ceo-elon-musk
[15] Molly Ball, 2021 Person of the Year: Elon Musk, TIME, (Dec. 13, 2021) https://time.com/person-of-the-year-2021-elon-musk/
[16] Molly Ball, 2021 Person of the Year: Elon Musk, TIME, (Dec. 13, 2021) https://time.com/person-of-the-year-2021-elon-musk/
[17] Id.
[18] Avery Harman, Tesla CEO Elon Musk: His Career And Biography, Business Insider (July 11, 2023) https://www.businessinsider.com/tesla-ceo-elon-musk
[19] PayPal, 10-k Securities and Exchange Commission (2002) https://web.archive.org/web/20200825231531/https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1103415/000091205702009834/a2073071z10-k405.htm
[20] Molly Ball, 2021 Person of the Year: Elon Musk, TIME (Dec. 13, 2021) https://time.com/person-of-the-year-2021-elon-musk/
[21] https://www.cnbc.com/2025/08/24/spacex-how-us-space-industry-became-dependent.html
[22] Avery Harman, Tesla CEO Elon Musk: His Career And Biography, Business Insider (July 11, 2023) https://www.businessinsider.com/tesla-ceo-elon-musk
[23] Owen Thomas, Tesla’s Elon Musk: “I Ran Out of Cash”, The New York Times (May 27, 2010) https://archive.nytimes.com/www.nytimes.com/external/venturebeat/2010/05/27/27venturebeat-teslas-elon-musk-i-ran-out-of-cash-19627.html?dbk
[24] Elon Musk’s business empire is built on $38 billion in government funding”, The Washington Post (Feb. 26, 2025) https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/interactive/2025/elon-musk-business-government-contracts-funding/
[25] Id.
[26] Avery Harman, Tesla CEO Elon Musk: His Career And Biography, Business Insider (July 11, 2023) https://www.businessinsider.com/tesla-ceo-elon-musk
[27] Michael Hilzik, Column: Is Elon Musk A Genius Or An Idiot?, LOS ANGELES TIMES (Nov. 7, 2022) https://www.latimes.com/business/story/2022-11-07/is-elon-musk-a-genius-or-an-idiot
[28] Elon Musk tweets, then deletes, meme comparing Trudeau to Hitler, Reuters (Feb. 27, 2022) https://www.reuters.com/world/elon-musk-tweets-then-deletes-meme-comparing-trudeau-hitler-2022-02-17/
[29] Ryan Coogan, When it comes to wit and charm, Elon Musk just doesn’t measure up, The Independent (July 12, 2023) https://www.the-independent.com/voices/elon-musk-mark-zuckerberg-contest-funny-b2373885.html
[30] Ali Breland, Elon Musk Can’t Stop Talking About Penises, The Atlantic (Feb. 21, 2025) https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2025/02/trolling-maga-elon-musk/681793/
[31] Id.
[32] Alex Shepard, Elon Musk Is The New Republic’s 2023 Scoundrel of the Year, the New Republic (Dec. 27, 2023) https://newrepublic.com/article/177695/elon-musk-scoundrel-year-2023-new-republic
[33] SEC v Elon Musk, US District Court for Southern District of New York (Sept 27, 2018) https://www.sec.gov/divisions/enforce/claims/docs/elon-musk-complaint-09272018.pdf
[34] SEC v. Elon Musk Case No. 18-cv-8865 (S.D.N.Y.) SEC v. Tesla, Inc. Case No. 18-cv-8947 (S.D.N.Y.)
Securities and Exchange Commission (website visited March 18, 2024)
https://www.sec.gov/enforcement/information-for-harmed-investors/tesla
[35] Michael Hilzik, Column: Is Elon Musk A Genius Or An Idiot?, LOS ANGELES TIMES (Nov. 7, 2022) https://www.latimes.com/business/story/2022-11-07/is-elon-musk-a-genius-or-an-idiot
[36] Alex Shepard, Elon Musk Is The New Republic’s 2023 Scoundrel of the Year the New Republic (Dec. 27, 2023) https://newrepublic.com/article/177695/elon-musk-scoundrel-year-2023-new-republic
[37] Kirsten Grind and Megan Twohey, On the Campaign Trail, Elon Musk Juggled Drugs and Family Drama, The New York Times (May 30, 2025) https://www.nytimes.com/2025/05/30/us/elon-musk-drugs-children-trump.html?smid=url-share
[38] Molly Ball, 2021 Person of the Year: Elon Musk, TIME, (Dec. 13, 2021) https://time.com/person-of-the-year-2021-elon-musk/
[39] Id.
[40] Public Citizen filed lawsuits to contest some of Musk’s cost cutting. For example, within weeks of his presidency, Public Citizen filed a lawsuit in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia against President Trump, the State Department, the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), the Office of Management and Budget (OMB), Marco Rubio, Secretary State and Acting Administrator of USAID, and Russell Vought, Director of the Office of Management and Budget, on behalf of the AIDS Vaccine Advocacy Coalition (AVAC) and Journalism Development Network, Inc. (JDN), seeking emergency relief from the freeze on funding for foreign assistance. See https://www.citizen.org/wp-content/uploads/ECF-1-Complaint-1.pdf
[41]Alex Shepard, Elon Musk Is The New Republic’s 2023 Scoundrel of the Year the New Republic (Dec. 27, 2023) https://newrepublic.com/article/177695/elon-musk-scoundrel-year-2023-new-republic
[42] Molly Ball, 2021 Person of the Year: Elon Musk, TIME, (Dec. 13, 2021) https://time.com/person-of-the-year-2021-elon-musk/
[43] Michael Hiltzik, Is Elon Musk a genius or an idiot?, The Los Angeles Times, Nov. 7, 2022) https://www.latimes.com/business/story/2022-11-07/is-elon-musk-a-genius-or-an-idiot
[44] Rosanna Landis Weaver, 100 Most Overpaid CEOs, 2022, As You Sow (2022) https://static1.squarespace.com/static/59a706d4f5e2319b70240ef9/t/6216d82ba1d3b0492e873119/1645664302205/AsYouSow2022_100MostOverpaidCEOs2022_v4_FIN_20220217.pdf
[45] Rosanna Landis Weaver, 100 Most Overpaid CEOs, 2022, As You Sow (2022) https://static1.squarespace.com/static/59a706d4f5e2319b70240ef9/t/6216d82ba1d3b0492e873119/1645664302205/AsYouSow2022_100MostOverpaidCEOs2022_v4_FIN_20220217.pdf
[46] Joseph Bachelder, Elon Musk’s Compensation, Harvard Law School Forum on Corporate Governance (May 22, 2018) https://corpgov.law.harvard.edu/2018/05/22/elon-musks-compensation/
[47] Noel Randewich, Elon Musk Scores Hat Trick Of Tesla Compensation Goals Worth $23 Billion,
Reuters, (April 20, 2022) https://www.reuters.com/technology/elon-musk-scores-hat-trick-tesla-compensation-goals-worth-23-billion-2022-04-20/
[48] The Police and Fire Retirement Systems of the City of Detroit V. Musk et all, Court of the Chancery of the State of Delaware, (June 17, 2020) https://courts.delaware.gov/Opinions/Download.aspx?id=359340.
[49] Id.
[50] Id.
[51] In another unusual move, Musk decided to end the directors’ and officers’ liability insurance. This insurance protects directors from personal financial responsibility for lawsuits brought for misconduct. According to a Tesla statement, “Tesla determined not to renew its directors’ and officers’ liability insurance policy for the 2019-2020 year due to disproportionately high premiums quoted by insurance companies. Instead, Elon Musk agreed with Tesla to personally provide coverage substantially equivalent to such a policy for a one-year period.” [51] The move drew criticism. The former general counsel of Marriott International noted he’d “never heard of anything like that before.” [51] And indeed, Musk’s decisions as CEO drew a number of lawsuits. Standing between the directors’ liability for the lawsuits was Musk, a clear conflict reducing the board’s ability to oversee Musk, argued the Detroit plaintiffs. The Police and Fire Retirement Systems of the City of Detroit V. Musk et all, Court of the Chancery of the State of Delaware, (June 17, 2020) https://courts.delaware.gov/Opinions/Download.aspx?id=359340
[52] Charles Elson, Amicus Curiae, Tornetta V Musk et al, Court of the Chancery of the State of Delaware (Jan 23, 2023)
[53] Kathaleen McCormack, Post-Trial Opinion, Tornetta et al v Musk et al, Court of the Chancery of the State of Delaware (Jan. 30, 2024) https://courts.delaware.gov/Opinions/Download.aspx?id=359340
[54] Kathaleen McCormack, Post-Trial Opinion, Tornetta et al v Musk et al, Court of the Chancery of the State of Delaware (Jan. 30, 2024) https://courts.delaware.gov/Opinions/Download.aspx?id=359340, also, Sarah Anderson, 6 Takeaways from the Court Decision to Void Elon Musk’s Compensation
Inequality.org (Jan. 31, 2024), https://inequality.org/great-divide/takeaways-from-musk-compensation-ruling/
[55] Jack Ewing, Elon Musk’s Tesla Pay Package Is Voided by Judge, New York Times (Jan. 30, 2024) https://www.nytimes.com/2024/01/30/business/elon-musk-tesla-pay-package.html?bgrp=g&smid=tw-share
[56] Hals, Tom. “Judge voids Elon Musk’s ‘unfathomable’ $56 billion Tesla pay package.” Reuters. January 31, 2024
[57] Kathaleen McCormack, Post-Trial Opinion, Tornetta et al v Musk et al, Court of the Chancery of the State of Delaware (Jan. 30, 2024) https://courts.delaware.gov/Opinions/Download.aspx?id=359340
[58] An email to the author
[59] Jena McGregor, Elon Musk’s Pay Deal Could Theoretically Be Worth $55.8 Billion — But He Could Also Get Nothing, Washington Post, (Jan. 23, 2018) https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/on-leadership/wp/2018/01/23/elon-musks-new-pay-package-could-theoretically-be-worth-55-8-billion-but-none-of-its-guaranteed/
[60] Tesla, Inc. Wall Street Journal (website visited August 9, 2023) https://www.wsj.com/market-data/quotes/TSLA/financials/annual/income-statement
[61] General Motors, Wall Street Journal (website visited August 9, 2023) https://www.wsj.com/market-data/quotes/GM/financials/annual/income-statement
[62] General Motors, Yahoo Finance (website visited August 22, 2023) https://finance.yahoo.com/quote/GM/key-statistics?fr=yhssrp_catchall
[63] List of Largest Companies by Revenue, Wikipedia (website visited August 22, 2023) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_largest_companies_by_revenue#Notes
[64] David Trainer, Tesla’s 2Q23 Earnings Confirm My Thesis That TSLA Is One Of The Most Overvalued Stock, Forbes (June 20, 2023) https://www.forbes.com/sites/greatspeculations/2023/07/20/teslas-2q23-earnings-confirm-my-thesis-that-tsla-is-one-of-the-most-overvalued-stocks/?sh=5dd8cfeb1af6