Elon Musk is about to get a lot richer. It was worth the headaches.

By William Gavin

Musk would have to pay $23.34 a share to exercise his award, but the stock is currently trading at more than 16 times that price

Elon Musk's net worth stands at nearly $650 billion, primarily thanks to his stakes in SpaceX and Tesla, both of which he leads as CEO.

Tesla has officially handed over the rights to hundreds of millions of shares to CEO Elon Musk, owed to him under a plan approved by investors eight years ago.

The electric-vehicle maker on Monday registered 303,960,630 shares of common stock, which were awarded to Musk under the terms of his 2018 compensation plan.

Musk has an 11% stake in Tesla (TSLA), excluding those shares, according to FactSet. Based on current share counts, increasing his holdings by 303,960,630 shares would boost Musk's direct stake in Tesla to just over 19%.

Registering Musk's stock means that the shares will be available for trade once he exercises his options. According to an April 21 letter filed with regulators, Musk must exercise the 2018 award no later than Aug. 15, 2026, and will then receive the restricted shares, which vest in early 2028.

To exercise the award, Musk would have to buy the stock at his "strike price" of $23.34 a share, paying about $7.09 billion in total. If he then sold the stock at its current price - the stock was up 0.9% at $379.67 in afternoon trading on Monday - he would net about $108.3 billion.

In 2018, investors overwhelmingly approved the compensation plan, which would award Musk a certain amount of shares after reaching 12 set groups of milestones. In order to fully vest, Tesla needed to grow its market capitalization by $600 billion and reach a series of revenue and profitability targets.

By June 2022, Tesla had achieved all 12 market-cap milestones and 11 operational milestones. Eleven of the 12 tranches vested.

However, in response to a shareholder lawsuit, the Delaware Chancery Court invalidated the options package in 2024. Then, in late 2025, a Delaware Supreme Court judge ruled that the pay package must be reinstated. "It is undisputed that Musk fully performed under the 2018 Grant, and Tesla and its stockholders were rewarded," the judge wrote.

At the end of trading on March 21, 2018, the day investors approved Musk's 2018 pay package, Tesla's share price stood at $21.10.

See more: Tesla is headed down a path of 'runaway, unsustainable' spending, analysts warn

Earlier this month, an interim award of stock to Musk was forfeited under a "no double dip" principle, Tesla said. The award was meant to reward Musk with shares if the Delaware court declined to reinstate Musk's pay package.

Musk is now moving toward his next set of performance-based stock awards. Last November, investors approved a 10-year plan that would net Musk about $1 trillion in stock as long as Tesla meets a series of milestones spread out across 12 tranches.

That includes Tesla's raising its market cap to $8.5 trillion from $1.4 trillion, as well as delivering 20 million cars and 1 million humanoid robots, among other things. Adjusted earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortization would also need to reach $400 billion across four separate consecutive quarters. As of last quarter, Tesla's adjusted Ebitda was $3.67 billion.

Whether Tesla will be able to achieve those goals is up in the air. The Optimus humanoid robot is still being developed, while Tesla's robotaxi business is still slowly expanding. Tesla's car business is being, as one analyst put it, sacrificed in favor of those and other artificial-intelligence initiatives.

Musk's SpaceX, which is pursuing an initial public offering expected to be valued at as much as $2 trillion, has also given Musk a performance-based plan. He bought 1.4 billion SpaceX shares last year and could gain another 60 million if SpaceX's market cap reaches as high as $6.6 billion and the company meets other goals, the Information reported.

Musk's net worth currently stands at $647 billion, according to the Bloomberg Billionaire Index. His stake in SpaceX, which acquired Musk's xAI in February, accounts for most of his wealth.

Read on: What is Cursor? SpaceX could buy the AI company for a whopping $60 billion.

-William Gavin

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04-27-26 1432ET