Elon Musk Was Paid $158 Billion Last Year. He Is Now Preparing The Largest IPO In Human History. The Only Person Who Can Fire Him Is Him.

 Billionaires

Tesla paid Musk $158 billion in 2025 compensation — the largest executive pay package ever recorded. SpaceX is going public in June at a $1.75 trillion valuation. The dual-class share structure means public investors will own shares but not votes. This is called investing. It used to be called something else.

By Forbes Watcher  |  May 11, 2026  |  BillionairesSOMEWHERE ABOVE THE LAW — Tesla Inc. has disclosed that Elon Musk received $158 billion in total compensation for 2025 — a figure so large that financial journalists needed a new sentence structure to write it. For context: $158 billion is more than the GDP of 130 countries, more than NASA's entire budget for the next 40 years, and roughly 3.5 times what the US spent on food stamps last year. Tesla shareholders approved it. Tesla shareholders have since moved on to approving SpaceX.

SpaceX is going public in June under the internal codename "Project Apex" — a name that sounds like a supervillain's plan and is, in fairness, not entirely unlike one. The IPO targets a $1.75 trillion valuation and a $75 billion raise, which would make it the largest IPO in human history, surpassing Saudi Aramco in 2019 by roughly 2.5 times.

"The dual-class structure allows only Musk to fire Musk."— SpaceX S-1 filing summary, April 2026. Public investors will receive Class A shares with standard voting rights. Musk holds Class B shares with 10 votes each. You are buying a financial claim with no governance. This is, technically, legal.

Musk merged SpaceX with xAI in February 2026 for $1.25 trillion. The combined entity lost $4.9 billion last year. It is being valued at $1.75 trillion. Twenty-one banks are lining up to take it public. Musk's net worth currently sits at $845 billion — more than the next three richest people combined. He wants to be a trillionaire. He is, by most estimates, about eighteen months away. The number after trillionaire has not yet been named. Someone will need to name it. Musk will probably name it himself.

Elon Musk$158 Billion PaySpaceX IPO June 2026Only He Can Fire HimProject ApexTrillionaire Incoming

Disclaimer: Satire. All figures sourced from Bloomberg, Reuters, and SpaceX's SEC S-1 filing reviewed April 2026. The dual-class voting structure is real. The "Project Apex" codename is real. — Ed.