Saturday, June 20, 2026

Musk exercises 2018 Tesla pay package for ~$116B gain

Tesla

A Form 4 filed with the SEC on June 17 disclosed that Elon Musk exercised all 303,960,630 stock options from his 2018 Tesla compensation award at a split-adjusted strike of $23.34, against a $404.66 share price - a roughly $116 billion paper gain. Tesla withheld about 17.5 million shares to cover the transaction through net settlement, so Musk paid nothing out of pocket and reported no open-market sales, lifting his stake to roughly 1.12 billion shares and his voting power toward about 19.9%. The exercise formalizes delivery of the long-disputed award after the Delaware Supreme Court reversed its cancellation in December 2025 and Tesla's board signed an implementation agreement in April 2026.