By Ross Kerber
April 28 (Reuters) – SpaceX’s board of directors approved a compensation plan for founder Elon Musk with goals as futuristic and celestial as the company’s ambitions: colonizing Mars and operating data centers in outer space.
Details of Musk’s large pay package, which have not been widely disclosed, were revealed in the company’s confidential registration statement filed in recent weeks with the Securities and Exchange Commission and reviewed by Reuters last week.
The lofty rewards SpaceX is offering Musk show the challenge of keeping the serial entrepreneur’s attention as he prepares to take the rocket maker public. They also potentially set up SpaceX investors to raise tensions with shareholders of Tesla, where Musk is CEO, corporate governance experts say.
Connecting science fiction visions with accounting commitments, SpaceX’s board of directors in January approved a pay package for the world’s richest man that will award 200 million in super-voting restricted stock if the company reaches a market value of $7.5 trillion and establishes a permanent human colony on Mars with at least 1 million people, according to excerpts of the company’s registration statement reviewed by Reuters.
Its Mars-shot performance package also gives it up to ‌60.4 million in restricted stock vesting on March 23 if SpaceX meets separate valuation targets and operates in-space data centers that provide at least ‌100 terawatts of computing capacity — a colossal amount of energy equivalent to 100,000 gigawatts, or about 100,000 one-gigawatt nuclear reactors running all at once. Both awards come with super-voting Class B restricted shares, which provide 10 votes for each Class A share, and vest in tranches as the company’s value increases.
CONDITIONAL REWARDS, STOCK OPTIONS
However, you won’t receive a single share if the company fails to meet the board’s lofty valuation targets, which aren’t tied to a specific timeline other than your continued employment. He has received a nominal salary from SpaceX of $54,080 per year since 2019.
The value of the pay package could not be determined as SpaceX is a private company. SpaceX is targeting an initial public offering around the time of Musk’s birthday on June 28, which could value the company at about $1.75 trillion, Reuters reported.
As of Dec. 31, he owned 68.8 million pre-vested Class B stock options with an exercise price of about $42 that expire in 2031, allowing Musk to pocket any profits above that amount if he exercises the options before then.