SpaceX Approves Musk Pay Tied to Mars Colony

SpaceX's board of directors has approved a new compensation package for founder and CEO Elon Musk, linking potential stock awards to the company's achievement of extraordinary milestones, including establishing a permanent human colony on Mars with at least 1 million residents and operating data centers in space capable of 100 terawatts of compute capacity.

The plan, detailed in a recent confidential Securities and Exchange Commission registration statement, would grant Musk 200 million Class B restricted shares, which carry 10 votes for each Class A share, upon SpaceX reaching a 7.5 trillion valuation alongside the Mars colony goal. A separate tranche of up to 60.4 million such supervoting shares would vest if the company meets additional valuation targets and deploys the specified space-based computing infrastructure, equivalent in power to about 100,000 one-gigawatt nuclear reactors operating simultaneously. The awards vest in stages as valuation milestones are hit, but Musk receives nothing if the targets are missed. There is no fixed deadline for the goals, which remain contingent on his continued employment at the company.

Musk, who founded SpaceX in 2002, has drawn a...