Elon Musk is the world’s richest person, with an estimated net worth of nearly $500 billion, but the Tesla CEO could become the world’s first trillionaire, thanks to a controversial pay package approved Thursday by the electric vehicle company’s shareholders.
Ahead of the vote, a coalition of laborunions and progressive advocacy groups launched the “Take Back Tesla” campaign, urging shareholders to reject the package for its CEO, who spent much of this year spearheading President Donald Trump’s so-called Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), which prompted nationwide protests targeting the company.
Musk’s nearly $1 trillion package would be the biggest corporate compensation plan in history if he gets the full amount by boosting share value “eightfold over the next decade” and staying at Tesla for at least that long. It was approved at the company’s annual meeting after the billionaire’s previous payout, worth $56 billion, was invalidated by a judge.
The approval vote sparked another wave of intense criticism from progressive groups and politicians who opposed it—including on Musk’s own social media platform, X.
“Musk, who spent $270 million to get Trump elected, is now in line to become a trillionaire,” Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) wrote on X. “Meanwhile, 60% of our people are living paycheck to paycheck. Americans understand we’re living in a rigged economy. Together, we can and must change that.”
The vote came during the longest-ever federal government shutdown, which has sparked court battles over the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program. A judge on Thursday ordered the full funding of 42 million low-income Americans’ November SNAP benefits, but it is not yet clear whether the Trump administration will comply.
The Sunrise Movement, a youth-led climate group, noted the uncertainty over federal food aid in response to the Tesla vote, saying: “Meanwhile, millions of kids are losing SNAP benefits and healthcare because of Musk’s allies in DC. In a country rich enough to have trillionaires, there’s no excuse for letting kids go hungry.”
Robert Reich, a former labor secretary who’s now a professor at the University of California, Berkeley, said: “Remember: Wealth cannot be separated from power. We’ve seen how the extreme concentration of wealth is distorting our politics, rigging our markets, and granting unprecedented power to a handful of billionaires. Be warned.”
In remarks to the Washington Post, another professor warned that other companies could soon follow suit. Rohan Williamson, professor of finance at Georgetown University, said Musk’s argument for commanding such a vast paycheck is largely unique to Tesla—though similar deals may become more prevalent in an age of founder-led startups.
“No matter how you slice it, it’s a lot,” Williamson said. But the deal seeks to emphasize Musk’s central—even singular—role in the company’s rise, and its fate going forward.
“I drove this to where it is and without me it’s going to fail,” Williamson said, summarizing Musk’s argument.“No CEO is ‘worth’ $1 trillion. Full stop,” the advocacy group Patriotic Millionaires argued Wednesday, ahead of the vote. “We need legislative solutions like the Tax Excessive CEO Pay Act, which would raise taxes on corporations that pay their executives more than 50 times the wages of their workers.”