American aerospace firm SpaceX has approved a major new pay plan for founder and CEO Elon Musk. The plan, signed in January, links his potential rewards to bold targets such as colonizing Mars and running multiple data centers in space. The rewards also come with a condition that Musk will not receive his largest payout if he fails to hit the targets.
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Trade TSLA with leverageDetails of the high-stakes deal were revealed in a recent private filing the company made with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) in its registration statement.
SpaceX Sets Ambitious Pay Targets for Musk
SpaceX’s board of directors has put together a massive pay package for Musk, made up of two separate share awards. As per the filing, the first reward gives Musk up to 200 million super-voting shares if the company’s market value hits $7.5 trillion and the CEO successfully builds a Mars colony of at least one million people.
The second reward, approved on March 23, gives him up to 60.4 million extra shares tied to a different valuation target. Under that award, SpaceX must also operate data centers in space and be able to supply at least 100 terawatts of compute power, equal to roughly 100,000 nuclear reactors running at once.
Both awards are issued as super-voting Class B restricted stock, which carries ten votes per share against one vote for a regular Class A share. The shares also pay out in stages as SpaceX’s value grows.
However, Musk will receive no shares if the company does not meet the board’s high-value targets, with no set deadline beyond his continued employment. The value of the pay package is also unclear as SpaceX remains a private company.
Experts Say SpaceX’s Pay Deal for Musk Is Unique
Eric Hoffmann, a compensation expert and the chief data officer at Farient Advisors, said no matching pay deal exists at any other firm. He added that because of the unique pay plan, both SpaceX and Tesla (TSLA), which Musk controls, are now competing for his attention.
At Equilar, research lead Courtney Yu also noted that SpaceX’s Mars plan and space data goal stood out. She said that, because of this, the boards of both firms must decide how to share Musk’s time. Outside the new incentive plan, Musk still earns a base salary of $54,080 per year at SpaceX, unchanged since 2019.
Furthermore, he holds 68.8 million Class B stock options priced near $42, which run until 2031. Moreover, Forbes puts his net worth at about $776 billion, with Musk owning roughly 20% of Tesla shares as of November 2025.
Which Company’s IPO is Coming?
SpaceX is targeting an initial public offering (IPO) around June 2026, with a possible valuation of about $1.75 trillion. The company already filed private paperwork with the SEC in March and has also brought in over 20 banks, including Morgan Stanley (MS) and JPMorgan (JPM), to manage the process. OpenAI and Anthropic are also among the most closely watched expected listings in 2026.