Elon Musk Emerges Highest Paid CEO Of 2025 With Staggered $1 Trillion Pay Plan In Focus

Billionaire Elon Musk is set to be the highest paid chief executive officer of 2025, primarily due to his financial compensation from Tesla's stock options.

The compensation amounts to $23.5 billion, according to a Times of India report. The Tesla founder's wealth is likely to increase exponentially in the future due to the staggered $1 trillion dollar pay plan that shareholders approved for him earlier this year.

Musk will be paid through a 12-tiered endowment of locked up stock. He needs to hit a "performance milestone" and an "operational milestone" to unlock each tier. He has been tasked with bringing the company's market cap to $8.5 trillion dollars in the next 10 years as well as meeting these 12 goals, for which he will be compensated with $1 trillion via the pay package.

The 12 "performance milestones" involves bringing the company's market cap up to $2 trillion from the firm's current $1.49 trillion, and with each subsequent $500-billion jump, the layered benefits of his pay would be unlocked. The target is to reach $8.5-trillion m-cap over the course of the next decade.

The riders attached to Musk's pay also includes 12 "operational milestones". Four of them are related to Tesla's product sales, which involves delivery targets for its vehicles and upcoming humanoid robots. They also involve the commercial operations firm's planned robotaxis and subscriptions to Tesla's self driving software.

As Musk reaches each tier of the goals linked to his pay, he unlocks 35.312 million stocks, adding 1% to his ownership in Tesla. This will take his ownership from 16% to 28% in 10 years, provided that he is successful in meeting these targets.