4:13 AM PDT · August 4, 2025 Tesla’s board of directors has announced a new compensation package for CEO Elon Musk worth around $29 billion in shares, with the company citing the “ever-intensifying AI talent war and Tesla’s position at a critical inflection point” as reasons for the payout. The massive pay package is being allocated through a 2019 Equity Incentive Plan that is already approved by shareholders, so it won’t go to a vote, according to a regulatory filing and Ann Lipton, a professor at the University of Colorado Law School. Tesla says it will put “a longer-term CEO compensation strategy” to a vote at the company’s annual shareholder meeting, which is scheduled for November. Musk’s new compensation plan will be entirely voided if the Delaware Supreme Court decides to overturn a judge’s January 2024 decision to strike down Musk’s 2018 compensation package because of how it was negotiated behind the scenes. That pay package was worth around $56 billion. Musk has threatened to stop working on AI and robotics at Tesla unless he gains more control over the company. Those threats preceded what is now a multimillion-dollar talent war among the biggest companies in the artificial intelligence space, along with a rush of mergers and acquisitions. At the same time, Musk has built up his own AI company outside Tesla called xAI, which now owns X, his social media platform. This has happened while Tesla’s sales growth has vanished and its brand has been damaged by Musk’s involvement in the Trump administration. Tesla said Monday that its board of directors formed a special committee earlier this year consisting of chairwoman Robyn Denholm and board member Kathleen Wilson-Thompson in order to sort out a new package. The award they ultimately decided on involves giving Musk 96 million shares that will vest in two years, provided that he “serve continuously in a senior leadership role at Tesla” during that term and holds the stock for five years. Unlike Tesla’s previous award to Musk, this new package does not appear to be tied to goals like increasing the company’s stock price. Techcrunch event