Elon Musk has a unique path to becoming the world’s first trillionaire, one paved less with frugal living and more with extraordinary corporate success. At Tesla’s annual shareholder meeting on Thursday, investors approved a compensation package that could potentially award Musk up to $1 trillion in Tesla stock. This, added to his existing stake worth roughly $473 billion, would catapult him far beyond the current wealthiest person, Oracle founder Larry Ellison, whose net worth stands at $303 billion.
The path to this dizzying figure isn’t paved with gold; it’s outlined in a complex performance-based agreement dubbed the “2025 CEO Performance Award.” To claim the full prize, Musk must remain Tesla’s CEO for seven and a half years while guiding the company through ambitious milestones.
He has until November 6, 2035 to achieve these targets:
- Market Cap Dominance: Boost Tesla’s market capitalization to $8.5 trillion—greater than the combined value of both Apple and Nvidia, currently the world’s largest companies by market cap at roughly $4 trillion and $4.6 trillion respectively.
- Production Prowess: Deliver 20 million Tesla vehicles, deploy 1 million “bots” (likely referring to Tesla’s humanoid robot project), and launch a commercial fleet of 1 million Robotaxis.
These goals echo Musk’s tendency towards ambitious pronouncements, many of which have faced delays or adjustments in the past. However, this time, there’s a firm deadline attached: November 6, 2035. Notably, Musk recently shifted Tesla’s Roadster unveiling date from sometime before the end of 2023 to April 1, 2026—just days after he’d announced his initial “before year-end” timeframe. Achieving trillionaire status with these stringent targets might prove even more challenging than bringing a futuristic sports car to market on time.
Whether Musk can pull off this unprecedented feat remains to be seen, but the approved compensation package clearly places monumental expectations—and enormous potential wealth—on Tesla’s future performance.
