The Delaware Supreme Court has reinstated Elon Musk’s $56 billion Tesla compensation package from 2018, overturning a ruling last year by the state’s Treasury Court, according to an opinion released Friday.
In a unanimous decision, the Delaware Supreme Court justices said that canceling Musk’s package “denies him compensation for six years of his time and effort.” Considering Tesla’s current stock price, which hit an all-time high this week, the revived package would be worth about $140 billion, according to Bloomberg.
The state Supreme Court’s decision is likely to end a years-long battle that left a very bad taste in Musk’s mouth, moved Tesla’s incorporation from Delaware to Texas, and prompted other companies to follow suit.
In response to the news, Musk posted on Friday that Mr. X was “right.” “Thank you for your continued support,” he wrote in response to Alexandra Merz, a vocal shareholder known as “Tesla Boomer Mom.”
Tesla is likely to cancel the $29 billion pay package it offered Musk earlier this year, which was intended as a hedge against the company’s possible loss on appeal to the Delaware Supreme Court. The $1 trillion compensation package given to Musk in November is separate and will remain in place, giving him a set of lofty goals to achieve to maximize his value.
The 2018 award also showed the many milestones Musk had to achieve to maximize his value. Mr. Musk and Tesla accomplished all of these goals, but in 2018, shareholders filed a lawsuit alleging that the deal was improperly negotiated and that shareholders were not properly informed of conflicts of interest.
Musk and many Tesla supporters have denounced the lawsuit as absurd, focusing in particular on the fact that the plaintiff (former corporate lawyer and heavy metal drummer Richard Tornetta) owns only nine shares of the company’s stock.
tech crunch event
san francisco
|
October 13-15, 2026
After years of back-and-forth, including a trial in which Musk testified, the Treasury Court judge overseeing the case agreed with the plaintiffs and initially annulled the pay package in January 2024. Tesla held a vote at its 2024 annual meeting and shareholders “reauthorized” the package, but a judge confirmed her decision in December 2024. Tesla filed an appeal soon after.
