Musk Drops $1B on Tesla Stock as Board Champions Mega Pay Package

Elon Musk just put serious skin back in the game.

In his first big open-market buy in more than five years, the Tesla CEO snapped up about $1 billion worth of shares on Sept. 12 via a revocable trust, according to a Monday filing. The move landed as Tesla’s board is pitching a fresh, performance-heavy compensation plan that could hand Musk nearly $1 trillion in stock if he hits a slate of moon-shot goals.

Investors liked the flex: Tesla popped more than 6% in early trading Monday.

Musk purchased roughly 2.6 million shares, nudging his stake from about 12.7% to 12.8%—still miles from the 25% voting control he said in 2024 he wants to stay “influential” at the company. At Tesla’s roughly $1.2 trillion market cap, buying his way to 25% would run $150 billion-plus—and that’s before any price pop from the buying itself. Remember: he sold $20+ billion of Tesla stock in 2022 to help fund his Twitter/X takeover.

Chair Robyn Denholm is defending a pay plan that ties Musk’s potential haul to truly audacious milestones, including:

• Lifting Tesla’s valuation to $8.5 trillion (from ~$1 trillion today),
• Deploying 1 million autonomous taxis and 1 million robots, and
• Boosting profits more than 24x last year’s level.

Denholm’s argument: stretch goals drive “world-changing” tech—and Musk cares more about voting power than paydays. Some shareholders aren’t buying it, saying the package rewards a CEO who’s juggled Tesla unevenly while chasing other ventures.

Tesla’s core EV business has hit some speed bumps—global sales have cooled and a US EV tax credit is set to expire at September’s end. Musk’s longer-term pivot leans hard into robotaxis, humanoid robots, and software to reignite growth.

The filing excludes 304 million shares from Musk’s 2018 comp plan (still tied up in court) and 96 million restricted shares granted in August. Musk remains the world’s richest person (paper wealth heavily tied to Tesla, SpaceX, and xAI), but converting that into the cash needed to materially raise his Tesla stake won’t be easy.

Whether or not this is about clawing toward 25% control, a $1B buy is a clear vote of confidence—and a timely one as Tesla tries to sell Wall Street on a future built on autonomy and robots, not just cars.

With input form Business Insider, the New York Times, Reuters, and CNBC.