Elon Musk Secures 96M Shares As Tesla Bets On Continuity

While Tesla’s future is played out both on the stock market and in court, its board of directors has just granted Elon Musk 96 million shares, worth 29 billion dollars. This spectacular choice comes as the company goes through a turbulent period. Far from a simple bonus, this decision reveals a declared dependency on a leader who is as admired as he is controversial. Tesla bets on Musk, at all costs, at the risk of exacerbating tensions between individual power and collective interest.

A salary counterattack against the US justice system

Tesla’s board of directors approved in early August an exceptional grant of 96 million shares to Elon Musk, valued at about 29 billion dollars, while he had embarked on an XXL survival operation.

This decision comes after a Delaware court invalidated his previous 2018 compensation plan, which reached more than 50 billion dollars.

The court found that this plan had been approved under conditions deemed unfair to shareholders, due to the closeness between Musk and several board members. The entrepreneur has appealed, denouncing “many legal errors” in the judgment.

To secure the company’s managerial future, a special committee was mandated to study a new form of compensation, resulting in the current proposal.

The concrete elements of this new plan reveal both an effort to legitimize previous criticisms and a clear attempt to retain Musk at the head of the company. Here are the key details :

• The total bonus amount : about 29 billion dollars in shares (96 million securities) ;

• A financial condition : Musk will have to pay 23.34 dollars per share, the exercise price set in the initial 2018 plan ;

• The stated objective : “to ensure the continuous presence of Elon Musk at the head of Tesla”, according to the special committee ;

• The strategic justification : responding to the cancellation of the previous plan while ensuring Tesla’s managerial stability ;

• Silence on performance conditions : Tesla has not communicated new targets or thresholds to be met in exchange for this grant.

This move fits into a strategy of quick response to legal uncertainty, while sending a strong signal to the markets : Elon Musk remains, for Tesla, the central element around which everything revolves.

A leverage of power to stay the course with Musk

Beyond the financial compensation, the granting of these 96 million shares appears as a tool to increase Musk’s influence on Tesla’s strategic decisions. The special committee states bluntly : this measure is also designed to “gradually increase Elon Musk’s voting power”.

Today a shareholder with 13 %, Musk could strengthen his ability to lead the company according to his vision, in a context where his other commitments, whether at SpaceX, X (ex-Twitter) or via his AI Grok, fuel concerns over his real concentration within Tesla.

The manufacturer, for its part, justifies this centralization by the ongoing shifts in its strategy. Tesla is gradually refocusing : from affordable electric vehicles towards autonomous robotaxis and humanoid robots.

The committee considers “that it is essential to keep Elon focused on Tesla’s mission”, especially facing the rise of cross-cutting projects. This shift, if successful, will redefine Tesla but also Musk’s role in the global technology landscape.

By once again relying on its founding CEO, Tesla chooses continuity but also a highly personalized governance model, where Musk’s leadership overrides classical control mechanisms. This strategy could reassure markets in the short term but raises questions in the long term about the sustainability of such a system. Between visionary opportunity and structural dependency, Tesla’s future, already mixed with a 70% profit loss, may be decided as much on the path of innovation as behind the scenes of its governance.