Elon Musk Retains Title as the Highest-Paid CEO in History—Fortune
August 5, 2025
Tesla has again cemented Elon Musk’s status as the highest-paid CEO in history, granting him a new $29 billion compensation package—now structured as 96 million restricted shares. The award comes after years of legal wrangling over his original 2018 mega-grant, which was twice struck down by Delaware courts. In a move that could make further litigation more difficult, Tesla changed its state of incorporation to Texas and amended its bylaws to require any pay-related legal challenge to come from shareholders with at least a 3% stake—roughly $3 billion worth. Unlike the earlier package, the new grant includes no performance hurdles. Musk only needs to remain in a senior role for two years and hold the shares until 2030.
Farient Advisors’ Eric Hoffmann told Fortune the award represents an unprecedented “floor-and-ceiling” structure, with the 96 million shares serving as a backstop in case the Delaware courts don’t reinstate Musk’s original 2018 options.
“There’s a clause that says ‘no double dipping,’” Hoffmann explained. “But this 96 million share award could be used to make up any of the original grant if he loses in the course of the legal action.” He added, “There’s no playbook for this. They made the first grant, it got overturned by a judge; they made another grant, got it approved by shareholders, and then that got held up.”
About Eric Hoffmann
Chief Data Officer
Louisville, Kentucky
(626) 800-3120
eric.hoffmann@farient.com
Eric leads Farient’s data strategy, operational capabilities, partnerships, research, and client insights. With more than 20 years of human resource technology and data analytics experience, Eric’s work at Farient focuses on creating and delivering information and decision support to boards of directors, human resource professionals, and investors. Combining data analytics and visualization, Eric and his team create compelling narratives that lead to business insight and defensible decisions for his clients.
Eric has extensive experience in executive compensation and performance. From March 2005 to January 2011, he was the Technology Solutions Delivery Leader and a partner at Mercer. In support of Mercer’s compensation and benefits data and analytics business, Eric and his global, cross-disciplinary team delivered leading-edge SaaS-based client-facing and operationally driven data analytics solutions. Before that, Eric was a principal at Mercer, where he led a software development team. Eric holds a BS in computer science and mathematics from Purdue University and an MS in computer science from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.
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