Elon Musk reckons his out to rewrite the playbook for what’s possible in business and technology. The latest news is enough to make your accountant barf in his mouth: Tesla shareholders have approved a mind-warping $1 trillion pay deal for Musk if he hits outrageous growth targets. If he succeeds, Musk will stomp past Rockefeller and every tech billionaire, becoming the world’s first trillionaire on pure ambition and wild bets.
Musk’s vision is jaw-dropping. He’s pitched a world filled with self-driving cars, fleets of robotaxis, and an army of humanoid robots called Optimus. Forget delivery drones he’s talking about medical bots capable of performing flawless surgery, and legions of robots tackling boring, repetitive work. Musk insists all this will wipe out poverty and give everyone top-shelf medical care. Humanoid robots, he promises, will be “an infinite money glitch” enough wealth, he says, to fundamentally change what it means to be human.
But Musk’s sci-fi payroll is no free lunch. Tesla must scale its market cap to an eye-watering $8.5 trillion and pump out 20 million vehicles a year. There’s a million robotaxis to launch, plus a million Optimus robots that, so far, have mostly poured popcorn at Tesla events. Musk says, “Working will be optional like growing your own vegetables instead of shopping.” It’s a future so colossal and outlandish, skeptics say he’s veering into fantasy.
Critics have slammed the board’s loyalty and the package’s scale, warning the plan hands Musk too much control particularly over this budding robot army. Musk’s reply? He needs more voting power to protect humanity from blunders if anyone else gets the keys to the robots.
What’s next? Musk says Optimus V3 will drop next year, aiming to look more human than ever. Still, the big vision robot surgeons and poverty erased remains over the horizon. Love or loathe the guy, it’s impossible to ignore the scale of the gamble. If Musk pulls this off, your next nurse, taxi driver, or handyman might just be a Tesla robot.
Get ready: the future’s about to put pedal to metal, and Musk wants every seat in his robot revolution. Anyone still betting against him isn’t paying attention.