Tesla shareholders have approved a record-breaking pay package for boss Elon Musk that could be worth nearly $1tn (\u00a3760bn).<\/p>\n
The unprecedented deal was approved by 75% of Tesla shareholders who cast votes at the firm’s annual general meeting on Thursday.<\/p>\n
The deal requires Musk, who is already the world’s richest man, to drastically raise the electric car firm’s market value over a period of years. If he meets various targets, he will be rewarded with hundreds of millions of new shares.<\/p>\n
The scale of the deal is controversial, but the Tesla board argued that Musk might leave the company if it was not approved – and that it could not afford to lose him.<\/p>\n
The announcement drew loud applause from the audience at the meeting in Austin, Texas. Musk took to the stage and danced to chants of his name.<\/p>\n
“What we’re about to embark upon is not merely a new chapter of the future of Tesla, but a whole new book,” he said.<\/p>\n
“Other shareholder meetings are snoozefests but ours are bangers. Look at this. This is sick,” Musk said.<\/p>\n
The milestones Musk achieve include raising Tesla’s market value to $8.5tn from $1.4tn at time of writing.<\/p>\n
He would also need to get a million self-driving “Robotaxi” vehicles into commercial operation.<\/p>\n
But his early remarks on Thursday placed the spotlight on the Optimus robot, dashing the hopes of some long-time analysts and Tesla watchers who want Musk to focus on reviving the company’s electric vehicle business.<\/p>\n
“Let it sink in where Musk’s head is at,” wrote analyst Gene Munster, the managing partner at Deepwater Asset Management, on X.<\/p>\n
“His vision of the ‘new book’ starts with Optimus. No mention of cars, FDS and robotaxi yet.”<\/p>\n
Later in his remarks, Musk did refer to FSD, shorthand for full-self driving, saying the company was “almost comfortable” allowing drivers to “text and drive essentially.” <\/p>\n
He also likened dealing with regulators to being in a Franz Kafka novel.<\/p>\n
US regulators are investigating Tesla’s self-driving feature after multiple incidents in which the cars drove through red lights or on the wrong side of the road.<\/p>\n
Some of these incidents have resulted in crashes that have caused injuries.<\/p>\n
Tesla shares were slightly higher in after hours trading but have risen more than 62% over the last six months.<\/p>\n
Wedbush Securities’ Dan Ives, a tech analyst whose been a long time advocate of Musk’s leadership of Tesla, called Musk “Tesla’s biggest asset” in a note published after the vote.<\/p>\n
“We continue to believe that the AI valuation is getting unlocked, and we believe the march to an AI driven valuation for TSLA over the next 6-9 months has now begun,” Mr Ives added.<\/p>\n
Musk already held 13% of Tesla shares. Shareholders had twice ratified a pay package worth tens of billions of dollars if he achieved a tenfold increase in the company’s market value – which he did.<\/p>\n
But a Delaware judge rejected that pay deal on grounds that Tesla board members were too close to Musk.<\/p>\n
Tesla reincorporated from Delaware to Texas, and the Delaware Supreme Court is currently reviewing the lower court judge’s decision.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Tesla shareholders have approved a record-breaking pay package for boss Elon Musk that could be worth nearly $1tn…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":360824,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[51,50,52],"class_list":{"0":"post-360823","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-news","8":"tag-headlines","9":"tag-news","10":"tag-top-stories"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115505258837053144","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/360823","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=360823"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/360823\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/360824"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=360823"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=360823"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=360823"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}