Elon Musk Influenced CEO Paydays To Record High, Study Finds
Compensation plans for leading executives at S&P 500 companies reached an all-time high in 2025, after Elon Musk’s trillion-dollar pay deal at Tesla became a “reference” for other firms, according to a study reported by Reuters.
Average compensation for CEOs in the S&P 500—excluding Musk—surged 21% to $22.8 million in 2025, Reuters reported, citing data from the American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations (AFL-CIO).
That’s the largest figure since the AFL-CIO began tracking compensation plans in the 1990s.
AFL-CIO secretary-treasurer Fred Redmond told Reuters that Musk’s pay at Tesla “changes the dynamic when other CEO compensation plans come up” and that “boards use it as a reference.”
Including Musk’s pay deal, which could be valued at more than $1 trillion should Tesla achieve several goals, average compensation plans for chief executives in the S&P 500 topped $340 million.
Musk is the world’s richest person with a fortune estimated at $870.6 billion as of Thursday morning, and his net worth is more than double that of Google co-founder Larry Page ($284.3 billion) and Amazon’s Jeff Bezos ($275.7 billion), who rank the second- and third-richest, respectively. The SpaceX and Tesla CEO became the world’s first trillionaire following the rocket maker’s trading debut in June, and his fortune peaked at an all-time high of $1.45 trillion before plunging SpaceX shares cut Musk’s net worth in half. Musk appeared to acknowledge his declining net worth in a social media post, writing on X last month that he was a “(Former) trillionaire.”
Tesla shareholders approved a compensation package for Musk last year that features several market capitalization and sales goals. Among the goals is Tesla’s market valuation topping $8.5 trillion within 10 years and the automaker selling 12 million more cars. The pay deal was opposed by some investment groups, including the management firm overseeing Norway’s sovereign wealth fund, which said they were “concerned about the award, dilution and lack of mitigation of key person risk.” He has similar compensation rewards outlined in his SpaceX package, like the firm establishing a “permanent human colony” on Mars with at least 1 million people and SpaceX developing “non-Earth-based” data centers capable of delivering 100 terawatts of compute each year—about 29 times the electricity generated globally in 2023.