Tesla shareholders have officially approved Elon Musk’s 2025 CEO Performance Award plan, with over 75% of votes in favor, marking a pivotal moment for the company as it aligns executive compensation with ambitious long-term goals.
The approval, announced during the 2025 Annual Shareholder Meeting at Gigafactory Texas, Thursday evening, was met with enthusiastic applause and celebration from attendees, including Musk dancing on stage alongside Tesla’s Optimus humanoid robots, which also performed synchronized movements.
The landmark pay package, worth up to $1 trillion over a decade, is contingent on Tesla achieving specific performance benchmarks, including reaching a $8.5 trillion market capitalization, delivering 1 million Optimus robots, and operating 1 million robotaxis.
The 2025 CEO Performance Award requires Musk to grow Tesla’s market capitalization from approximately $1.1 trillion to $8.5 trillion within ten years, a target that would make Tesla the most valuable company in history.
Additional requirements include increasing Tesla’s operating profit from $17 billion to $400 billion annually, delivering 20 million vehicles cumulatively, securing 10 million active Full Self-Driving (FSD) subscriptions, and achieving 1 million robotaxi operations.
The vote was supported by major institutional investors like Schwab Asset Management, which cited alignment with shareholder value, despite opposition from proxy advisors such as Glass Lewis and ISS.
Musk expressed gratitude for the approval, celebrating on stage with a dance and acknowledging the support of fellow tech leaders like Jack Dorsey and Michael Dell, who publicly endorsed the pay package as a governance and engineering necessity.
The approval was facilitated by Tesla’s reincorporation in Texas, allowing Musk to vote his 15% stake, unlike in a previous Delaware-based vote.
The meeting also featured major announcements on Tesla’s AI, robotics, and vehicle development, including the planned production of the Cybercab, Optimus robots, and the AI5 chip, all central to Tesla’s new mission of "Sustainable Abundance."
Tesla confirmed a rapid production ramp of Optimus humanoid robot, starting with a 1 million unit line in Fremont and a future 10 million unit line in Texas. The robot is expected to cost around $20,000 in current dollars and is seen as a tool to eliminate poverty and provide advanced medical care. Musk suggested that future versions could potentially host human consciousness via Neuralink, though this is likely over 20 years away.
At the meeting, Musk claimed that Optimus robots “will eliminate poverty,” “give everyone amazing medical care,” and will be “bigger than cell phones, bigger than anything.” He also said the robots could be used for “containment of future crime” by following criminals around and stopping them from “doing crime.”
The fully autonomous Cybercab, designed without pedals or steering wheels, will begin production in April 2026 at Gigafactory Texas. Tesla aims for a production cycle time of under 10 seconds, with a theoretical goal of five seconds.
The event featured a video of the unboxed manufacturing process of the Cybercab, with sightings of the vehicle on public roads becoming increasingly frequent, signaling progress toward its commercial rollout.
Musk revealed details about Tesla’s next-generation AI5 chip (formerly Hardware 5), which will be manufactured by Samsung and TSMC and is designed to power self-driving systems, Optimus robots, and other AI applications. The chip promises a 50x improvement over the AI4 chip, with 5x block quantization, 9x memory capacity, and 10x raw compute increase.
The final production iteration of the Tesla Semi, with a 500-mile range and 800kW drive power, will begin volume production in Nevada in 2026, targeting 50,000 units annually.
The new Tesla Roadster (V2) supercar Roadster will be unveiled on April 1, 2026, with production expected 12–18 months later, according to Musk.
The electric vehicle company is moving toward allowing "texting and driving" with Full Self-Driving, FSD V14, based on safety data, with the goal of opening this feature within months. FSD use has already led to 85% fewer crashes and 35,000 fewer fatalities over the past year, according to Musk.
Tesla’s new lithium refinery in South Texas is now the largest outside of China, capable of producing 50 GWh of lithium annually. A new Giga Texas cathode factory is under construction to strengthen supply chain resilience.
The company reaffirmed its mission to achieve "Sustainable Abundance," encompassing EVs, solar, energy storage, Optimus, and charging infrastructure.
Tesla is exploring space-based solar power and considering building a Tesla TeraFab for chip production. The company also plans to expand Tesla Insurance and the Tesla App to new languages like Hebrew.
The pay package approval has already had a market impact, with Tesla shares rising about 2% in after-hours trading, reflecting investor confidence in Musk’s long-term vision for autonomous vehicles, robotaxis, and humanoid robotics.
