Back to News
Apr 29, 2026 8:20 AM

SpaceX Will Pay Elon Musk To Conquer Mars — No, Really, It's In The Filing

Buried inside the confidential paperwork SpaceX has handed regulators ahead of its planned public offering sits one of the strangest performance targets ever set for a corporate executive: build a city on Mars, and the company will hand its founder one of the largest stock awards in history.

According to a Reuters report Tuesday that reviewed excerpts of the rocket maker’s confidential SEC registration statement, the SpaceX board signed off on the plan in January. It clears Elon Musk to receive 200 million super-voting restricted shares, but only if SpaceX hits a $7.5 trillion valuation and helps establish a permanent human settlement on Mars with at least one million residents.

Space Data Centers Sweetener

A second tranche of up to 60.4 million restricted shares, granted on March 23, kicks in if SpaceX clears separate valuation hurdles and runs orbital data centers capable of delivering 100 terawatts of computing power, an amount of energy roughly equivalent to 100,000 nuclear reactors running simultaneously.

The package has no calendar deadline. As long as Musk remains at the company, the awards stay open-ended. Miss the targets, and he gets nothing.