Elon Musk said he needed to receive what amounted to the largest compensation package in history so that he could fuel his goals around “interplanetary travel”, Tesla chairman Robyn Denholm testified on Tuesday.
Denholm’s speech came as part of the week-long trial in the Delaware Court of Chancery in Wilmington examining Musk’s 2018 Tesla compensation package, which today has a net worth of $50.9 billion. Elon Musk is due to testify on Wednesday morning.
Musk has long claimed he intends to use his vast wealth to pursue space travel and colonization. In 2020, Tesla’s owner said in an interview with Axel Springer that he would have “almost no assets with monetary value”, instead he would dedicate that capital to the development of a city on Mars.
Later in his testimony, Denholm said the compensation was ultimately about motivating Musk to focus his attention on Tesla rather than the details of what he would do with the money.
“Honestly, I don’t know how much it costs to make any interplanetary trip. It’s not a hobby of mine,” Denholm said.
In addition to Tesla, SpaceX and Twitter, Musk also leads the Boring Company, which specializes in underground tunnels, and is the founder of Neuralink, which seeks to put computer chips in people’s brains.
The company’s biggest interest in awarding Musk such a large compensation package was to keep its focus on Tesla as opposed to its other companies. Denholm said on Tuesday that Musk’s previous compensation package before the 2018 plan was not adequate to keep him engaged at the company.
“It was to motivate him to achieve things that were bold and audacious and for him to put his time and energy into that as opposed to his other interests,” Denholm said.
He added that the exact amount of hours Musk would work was not important, but that the board needed his “focus and attention”.
Whether the Elon Musk compensation plan is enough to keep him focused on Tesla is questionable.
Much of Musk’s attention lately seems focused on a flashy investment he’s made since the compensation plan helped him become the world’s richest man, though it doesn’t involve interplanetary travel. The billionaire recently spent $44 billion to buy Twitter, the social media platform.
He has since laid off half of his staff and employees have described a chaotic transition as Musk says he is trying to return to profitability.
Musk last year would be surprised if the company hadn’t put a person on Mars by 2026. As of this writing, SpaceX still hasn’t sent a person beyond Earth’s orbit.
Source: CNN Brasil
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