Tesla has thrown out Musk’s $29B ‘temporary’ award after a Delaware court reinstated the majority of the money

Tesla scrapped the $29 billion “short-term” payout it gave CEO Elon Musk last year, after a recent Delaware Supreme Court ruling. restored Its gross prize money is $56 billion as of 2018.

The company had it offered Musk a temporary package in August 2025 to prevent the Delaware supreme court from denying his appeal. Tesla explained to investors that the long-term package will be canceled if Musk wins. “(T)here can be no ‘deep dip’,” the company wrote last year.

Indeed, Tesla proved in his quarterly booking and the Securities and Exchange Commission on Thursday morning that it received an interim award on April 21. Tesla said that the board voted without Musk or his brother (and co-chairman) Kimbal Musk.

“These actions are in line with the ‘no double dip’ principle, which prevents Mr. Musk from being caught in the wind if he uses the 2018 CEO Performance Award,” Tesla wrote in a statement.

Tesla offered a package of $ 56 billion to Musk in 2018, and he was challenged in court by a shareholder who accused the CEO of negotiating on his own when making this, and not informing the shareholders of this. The case took years to be brought back to the Delaware Supreme Court before a judge ruled in 2024 that the plaintiff was right, and removed the money.

Tesla launched a public relations campaign when it appealed the judge’s decision to the state Supreme Court. This includes a “re-vote” on the package to ensure that shareholders have not been duped. Musk, meanwhile, has threatened to leave Tesla altogether in order to develop intelligence elsewhere. This prompted the Tesla board to seek a $29 billion hedge fund, and work again a larger and more ambitious $1 trillion investment fund.

The temporary removal of the award does not affect Musk’s $1 trillion package. In order to get all that money, Musk has to lead Tesla to several projects (such as sending 20 million cars and a million robots, and putting a million robotaxis on the road), increasing its valuation to over $8 trillion over 10 years.

Interestingly, Tesla explained in quarterly filings that it is starting to figure out for itself what Musk can and cannot achieve. The company didn’t say what it thought Musk would do, but it did write that it has “a total of $9.97 billion in cash payments for work that is expected to be accomplished during the award period.”

The company went on to say that it is short of stockholders’ equity between $105.82 billion and $120.37 billion due to “significant events that do not appear to occur,” though it did not specify what that means.

Although Musk has 10 years to achieve all the goals associated with the trillion-dollar package, many of these developments are very difficult. he lowered the promises he had made before. However, it seems that Tesla himself is not convinced that he can kill a few.

Tesla also explained in the filing that its management has decided to suspend restrictions on how Musk can sell shares from the restated package of 2018 “to reduce any risk of selling more shares in the company.”

These restrictions appear to follow some of the additional restrictions set for the $1 trillion payment. It stipulates that Musk must remain CEO or chief development officer of the company until 2028 for the shares to become available, and asks him to keep the shares for five years.