Tesla wants to be the apple of Elon Musk’s ever-wandering eye.
Tesla Chair Robyn Denholm said the proposed compensation plan for Musk, which was unveiled Friday and is worth about $1 trillion, is designed to keep his “focus and attention” on the EV company.
“To me, the plan is super ambitious, and that is what motivates Elon,” she said during an interview with CNBC.
Tesla outlined the pay package on Friday in an SEC filing. The filing said Musk would earn the fortune if he completed certain milestones for the company, including bringing Tesla to at least $8.5 trillion market cap by 2035.
Denholm acknowledged that the proposed payout may seem exorbitant but referred to the multibillion-dollar deal Tesla’s board approved in 2018.
“From our perspective, it’s about shooting for the moon and coming up with the ambition — the vision — that we’ve put out with the master plan,” Denholm said.
Since becoming CEO of Tesla in 2008, Musk has taken on several other major projects and a few side quests.
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He founded Neuralink in 2016 and The Boring Company in 2017. In 2022, Musk acquired Twitter and renamed it X. One year later, he launched xAI. He is also still the CEO of SpaceX, which he founded in 2002.
That’s a lot of jobs to juggle all at once.
Then, in January, Musk became the face of the White House DOGE Office. Musk’s effort to cut costs and reduce staff triggered significant public backlash, which was largely directed at Tesla. He remained in the role until May, when he told Tesla investors he would focus more on the company, responding in part to falling revenue, deliveries, and stock prices.
During the interview, Denholm said the proposed pay package includes another significant motivator that could keep Musk locked in on Tesla: voting power.
“He’s been very public about getting additional voting power, so that as he develops AI products and AI deliverables and the Optimus robots and the robots to come after that, he wants to make sure that evil can’t be done with those things,” Denholm said. “Having some sort of voting power in order to prevent bad things happening is a motivator for him.”
Denholm did not immediately respond to a request for comment from Business Insider.
