Musk’s $158 Billion Tesla Pay Is 5,745 Times Ford’s Ceo, But He Didn’t Take A Cent Home

Pay packages in the auto industry usually make headlines for the wrong reasons, but Tesla operates by its own arithmetic. Elon Musk takes no traditional salary from the company. Even so, Tesla has disclosed that his 2025 compensation came in at $158 billion. That’s around 3.3 times Ford’s entire market capitalization of $47.65 billion as of May 2026.

That figure is, for the sake of comparison, also 392 times what Rivian’s RJ Scaringe collected ($403 million) and 5,745 times Ford boss Jim Farley’s $27.5 million for the same year. None of it, however, is heading to Musk’s bank account in any conventional sense.

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Tesla revealed the value of Musk’s compensation from last year in a recent financial report filed with the US Securities and Exchange Commission. Importantly, the $158 billion is only an estimate of what he could earn if Tesla meets all the milestones set out in the $1 trillion pay deal Musk secured last year, which is scheduled to run over the next decade.

“Elon Musk isn’t actually going to pocket $158bn,” AJ Bell head of financial analysis Danni Hewson told BBC. “He’s still got a whole bunch of targets to hit and none of the milestones set out in the $1tn pay deal approved by shareholders last year were achieved in 2025.”

What Does Musk Have To Do?

Hitting all the targets set out over the next decade won’t be easy, but some do appear achievable. For example, Tesla needs to reach 20 million vehicle deliveries over its lifetime. To get there, it will need to deliver approximately 12.8 million more vehicles over the next ten years, averaging about 1.2 million per year, which is well below its current rate. Tesla must also reach 10 million active Full-Self Driving subscriptions, deliver 1 million Optimus humanoid robots, and deploy 1 million Robotaxis in commercial operation.

The company also needs to steadily increase its adjusted EBITDA from $50 billion to $400 billion. For each objective achieved, Musk will receive more than 35 million Tesla shares.

Tesla’s board and its shareholders approved Musk’s compensation package in an attempt to ensure he remains focused on Tesla and oversees its continued growth, rather than getting distracted by one of his many side projects.