Elon Musk’s latest pay package has a distinctly SpaceX twist: To unlock all of it, he’ll have to help build a city on Mars.
In SpaceX’s long-awaited S-1 filing on Wednesday, the company disclosed that its board approved a grant of 1 billion performance-based restricted shares for Musk as part of a compensation plan tied not only to valuation milestones, but also to one of Musk’s most ambitious goals yet: establishing “a permanent human colony on Mars with at least one million inhabitants.”
The filing says the award vests in 15 equal tranches tied to specified market-cap targets, and a second condition that reads more like science fiction than securities law.
“For any tranche of the award to vest,” the filing says, “both the applicable market capitalization milestone for such tranche and the human colony milestone must be met.”
In other words, SpaceX’s CEO doesn’t simply have to keep growing the company’s value to unlock his full pay package. He also has to help populate Mars.
Based on a rough estimate using the share counts disclosed in the filing, Musk’s 1 billion-share award could ultimately be worth about $117 billion if SpaceX were to reach a $1.5 trillion valuation. However, if SpaceX were to eventually hit the award’s highest market-cap milestones — $7.5 trillion — the value could theoretically swell to about $583 billion.
Separately, the filing also outlines an award of about 302 million shares tied to orbital data centers that deliver 100 terawatts of compute a year, along with a SpaceX market-cap milestone of about $6.56 trillion. That award comes with a max payout of about $154 billion, Business Insider previously reported.
The actual value of Musk’s compensation package is impossible to pin down at this stage because it depends on SpaceX’s future valuation. Recent reports from outlets like Bloomberg have suggested the company could seek an initial valuation of up to $2 trillion in its IPO.
At the lower end of estimates, Musk’s SpaceX pay package would still dwarf his $55.8 billion Tesla compensation plan that became the subject of a prolonged Delaware court battle.
The Tesla compensation, which ultimately gave way to a larger $1 trillion pay package, was also built around aggressive market-cap and operational milestones — but SpaceX’s version raises the stakes beyond Earth entirely.
In Silicon Valley, so-called “moonshot” pay packages typically reward executives for hitting ambitious corporate growth targets. SpaceX’s proposal gives the term a more literal twist, since it ultimately depends on helping establish a human colony on Mars.
The SpaceX filing says the board approved the grant on January 13, 2026, and later adjusted the market-cap milestones after the rocket company completed its merger with Musk’s artificial intelligence venture, xAI, in February.
SpaceX also disclosed the extent of Musk’s existing holdings in the company.
According to the filing, Musk controls 849.5 million Class A shares and roughly 5.57 billion Class B shares. Those figures include more than 1.3 billion restricted shares already issued to Musk that remain subject to performance conditions, along with shares held through several trusts and 350 million shares issuable through options exercisable within 60 days of May 1, 2026.
The filing doesn’t spell out exactly how — or when — SpaceX’s board would certify that a million-person Mars colony exists, how long the residents have to live there, or any other number of logistical questions tied to a space colony.
