What can Elon Musk do with $1 trillion? He can eliminate world hunger, or buy 2,000 superyachts

1,000,000,000,000. That’s a one and 12 zeroes — which makes up a trillion. It’s also going to be Elon Musk’s new pay package after Tesla shareholders did the unthinkable and approved the new plan, setting up the world’s richest man to be also become the world’s first trillionaire.

On Thursday (November 6), more than 75 per cent of Tesla shareholders approved a $1 trillion compensation plan for CEO Elon Musk , which will be the largest corporate payout in history.

But what exactly does this mean for the Tesla CEO and what could he possibly buy with his payout?

What does Musk’s Tesla pay package entail?

On Thursday, in Austin, Texas, amid chants of ‘Elon, Elon’, Tesla shareholders overwhelmingly endorsed a massive pay package for their CEO.

Reacting to the news, a euphoric Musk said: “I’d like to just give a heartfelt thanks to everyone who supported the shareholder votes. I super-appreciate it.”

Dancing alongside the company’s Optimus robots, Musk added, “What we’re about to embark upon is not merely a new chapter of the future of Tesla, but a whole new book. Other shareholder meetings are snoozefests but ours are bangers. Look at this. This is sick.”

However, the pay package has some caveats attached to it and will be handed out in 12 tranches.

The first tranche will be available to Musk when Tesla reaches $2 trillion in market value, up from its current $1.5 trillion. He also needs to ensure the delivery of 20 million Tesla vehicles cumulatively over the decade, until 2035, a volume more than twice the company’s total output of the prior dozen years.

Musk also needs to put one million robotaxis into commercial operation and deploy one million humanoid robots (Optimus). Additionally, he needs to achieve up to $400 billion in “core profits” over the period.

The payout package also states that he has to be vested in the company for at least seven-and-a-half years and help it develop a long-term succession plan. In its proposal, the company noted that the milestones laid out “will be extraordinarily difficult and challenging for Tesla, and for Musk personally”.

If these financial goals are met, it would mean Tesla would be worth nearly as much as Meta, Microsoft and Google’s parent Alphabet combined.

How does Musk’s payout compare to other CEOs?

The short answer to this is that it is incomparable. As India Today notes Musk’s $1 trillion potential payout represents compensation on an entirely different scale from contemporary tech executives.

For instance, Tim Cook’s compensation reached $74.6 million in 2024, an 18 per cent increase from $63.2 million in 2023. His package included $3 million in base salary and $58.1 million in stock awards.

Similarly, in 2022, Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai received $226 million in total compensation, with approximately $218 million coming from stock awards granted every three years. His base salary remained steady at $2 million.

What can Musk do with a trillion dollars?

If Musk is able to secure the goals set out for him, he will achieve a total payout of $1 trillion, which will be added to his existing net worth of $475 billion fortune . This will make the Tesla CEO have more money than any one person anywhere, ever, in the history of the world, and needless to say more money than any person could ever spend.

To put things in perspective, $1 trillion is more than the annual GDP of countries like the Netherlands, Saudi Arabia or Switzerland. It is also less than what the United Nations World Food Programme stated would be the required amount to end world hunger. In 2021, the UN agency had it would need around $US 40 billion annually to end world hunger by 2030. That is a total of $400 billion.

It is also equivalent to India’s total defence budget for nearly 15 years.

For a trillion dollars, Musk could acquire 10,000 CEOs of the coffee giant, Starbucks. Currently, the CEO of the firm is paid a paltry sum of $100 million. The Tesla CEO could also build 333 supertall skyscrapers, each of them costing $3 billion.

With a trillion dollars, Musk could also 2,000 superyachts just like the one Amazon’s Jeff Bezos has. The Amazon CEO owns a 127-metre-long yacht, named Koru, which is an estimated $500 million.

Besides this, $1 trillion would get Elon Musk all the Ivy League institutions not once but five times over. CNN reported that currently the endowments of the eight most elite American universities come out to about $200 billion — which is nothing compared to Musk’s payout.

If Elon Musk wanted, he could also buy each and every house in Hawaii; for reference, the American state has 572,781 households, and according to Zillow they go for $826,575, on average.

Elon Musk could also buy other major car manufacturers such as Toyota, Volkswagen, Stellantis, Hyundai, Ford, and GM. Talk about buying out his competition.

He could also acquire 7,150 tonnes of gold; that’s double the amount of the yellow metal that the United States Bullion Depository at Fort Knox houses.

With $1 trillion, Musk would also have enough money to award every American a bonus of $2,923 bonus. And if that’s not enough, he could also purchase the three largest American oil companies — ExxonMobil, Chevron, and ConocoPhillips.

If Musk was feeling generous, he could use the $1 trillion to provide clean drinking water for every person on the planet and still have enough to several missions to Mars. He would also be able to buy every team in the NFL, NBA, and Premier League, and still have hundreds of billions left over.

But does Musk truly deserve such a pay package?

But Musk’s huge pay package has invited criticism from many, with some pointing to the company’s dip in sales , while others point out the income inequality.

Tesla Takedown, an activist group, blasted the shareholders, noting the company’s drop in auto sales in recent quarters. “Elon Musk just got one trillion dollars for failure,” said the group, adding, “Sales are down, safety risks are up and his politics are driving customers away. This isn’t leadership — it’s the world’s most expensive participation trophy.”

Others such as Norway’s sovereign wealth fund have also argued that the pay is excessive.

But regardless, Musk has got what he wanted and is very well on the path to acquiring $1 trillion — a number we still aren’t able to comprehend.

With inputs from agencies