Tesla CEO Elon Musk’s younger brother, Kimbal Musk, has said that the world’s richest man “deserves to be paid,” amid an ongoing legal dispute over his brother’s compensation package. Elon Musk does not receive a salary or cash bonuses from Tesla, but is instead compensated through “performance awards” of costly stock options. In an interview with CNBC’s “Squawk Box”, Kimbal Musk said, “I think my brother deserves to be paid. He has had zero pay for the past six to eight years. I don’t think that’s right. I’ll let Tesla shareholders make that decision, but I believe that it does need to be. He needs to be paid.”Earlier this month, Tesla’s board approved an “interim” pay package of 96 million shares for Elon Musk, currently valued at around $29 billion. The shares are set to vest over two years, provided he remains in a key executive role. The pay plan was approved by a special committee of the board, from which both Elon and Kimbal Musk recused themselves, the report added, citing board members Robyn Denholm and Kathleen Wilson-Thompson’s letter to shareholders.
Tesla CEO Elon Musk’s pay package legal disputes
These “performance awards” came after a Delaware judge in December 2024 ordered Tesla to cancel Musk’s $56 billion pay package from 2018, which had been a record compensation plan for a public company executive in the US. Before the Delaware court decided on his 2018 package, Musk had posted on X, formerly known as Twitter, in January 2024 that he was seeking greater pay and more control over Tesla.“I am uncomfortable growing Tesla to be a leader in AI & robotics without having ~25% voting control. Enough to be influential, but not so much that I can’t be overturned. Unless that is the case, I would prefer to build products outside of Tesla,” Musk wrote at that time.However, Musk’s new pay package was approved without a shareholder vote. The SOC Investment Group urged Nasdaq to investigate, saying Tesla’s board should have sought shareholder approval. Meanwhile, Tesla board members said a longer-term CEO compensation plan will be presented for a shareholder vote at the November 2024 annual meeting. Apart from this, Musk is also working on products at his AI firm, xAI.
