Musk is putting a lot of time into his newly founded artificial intelligence company xAI, and at the same time, he is asking Tesla shareholders to approve a high-price compensation plan designed to ensure his focus on the job.

On Thursday in US time, Tesla will announce the preliminary results of a key shareholder vote, with the core topic being Musk's new compensation plan.

If this plan is approved, it will increase his shareholding from approximately 15% to 25% over the next ten years, with a condition that the company achieves grand objectives including selling one million Optimus humanoid robots and reaching a market

However, according to media outlets citing sources with knowledge of the situation, some major Tesla investors have privately pressed company executives and board members in recent weeks about how much energy Musk is devoting to Tesla and whether the

According to former executives and people who have worked with Musk, for most of this summer, Musk has been 'hiding' at his latest startup xAI, participating in meetings day and night. He even began to hold meetings with Tesla employees at xAI's offi

Salary in the Trillions and the "Part-Time" CEO Role

Tesla's board proposed this huge compensation plan in September's proxy statement.

In an interview last week, the Board Chairman Robyn Denholm said that the board is not concerned about how Musk allocates his time. She stated:

Other CEOs might enjoy playing golf, but he enjoys creating companies that are not necessarily Tesla.

Denholm expressed that the rigorous targets in the compensation plan will force Musk to invest his "time, effort, and energy" into Tesla. During the meeting with major investors, she and other directors also admitted that they cannot force Musk to wo

In the podcast program 'All-In', Musk expressed his hope that shareholders would approve the plan to ensure that he could maintain significant control as Tesla transitions into a robotics company. He said:

If I could be kicked out, I wouldn't build a robot army.

However, the consulting agency believed that this plan would give Musk too much equity, and therefore advised opposition.

Tesla, xAI and Conflicts of Interest

The boundaries between companies owned by Musk are becoming increasingly blurred.

Earlier this year, he integrated xAI with X (the former Twitter). After SpaceX invested approximately $2 billion in xAI, the idea of getting Tesla to participate in the investment resurfaced. Over 140 shareholders submitted proposals urging the Tesla

Although Musk declared the synergy between the two companies in terms of autonomous driving and Optimus robots, some large investors expressed doubts about this potential investment.

Tesla's board of directors ultimately did not propose any recommendations on the proposal. When interviewed by the media, Denholm, the chairman of the board, tried to downplay the technical connection between Tesla and xAI, saying that the overlap be

As the critical vote nears, Tesla investors are faced with a central question: by approving a generous compensation package, are they really able to steer the CEO, whose focus has clearly shifted, back to the right track or are they merely paying for

Musk himself responded to the salary controversy on X with a post, asking:

If the CEO were not me, which CEO from another car company would you want to run Tesla?

Fully committed to xAI

After leaving the Department of Governmental Efficiency (DOGE) of the Trump administration in late May this year, Musk has fully committed to the work of xAI.

According to media reports citing sources with knowledge of the matter, he sometimes sleeps at the xAI office in Palo Alto a few days a week, which is just across the street from Tesla's engineering headquarters.

His work style has also changed from signing in for a weekly all-staff meeting to having one-on-one meetings with employees for several hours.

In the intense weeks leading up to the release of the latest xAI model, Grok 4, in July, many employees adjusted their schedules to accommodate Musk's unusual work hours.

He personally supervised the design of a sexy female chat robot called Ani, planned a very large data center for xAI in Memphis, and spent long hours in the office playing his favorite video game "Diablo" to relax.

Meanwhile, Tesla's core business stumbled. Its car sales fell by 13.5% in the quarter ended June 30, marking the second consecutive quarter of decline. Musk disclosed to investors during the earnings call that

We may experience several tough quarters.

The controversial journey of xAI expansion

In order to make xAI's Grok quickly catch up with OpenAI's ChatGPT, Musk has taken some controversial measures.

It is reported that xAI requires its employees, mainly AI trainers, to sign an agreement granting the company a perpetual, global, tax-free license to use their biometric data such as faces and voices to train virtual images. A subsequent notice more

These data are used to develop a 3D virtual image named Ani. The robot is designed with blonde hair braids and exposed animation style, and its interaction with users is similar to a dating simulation game, which attracts a large number of paid subsc

However, reportedly, some employees who provided biological data felt discomforted with the sexual implications and stereotypes of Ani. Additionally, the Grok system once outputted anti-Semitic and violent content on platform X after adjustments to i

Furthermore, according to company records seen by the media, xAI also instructed employees to use personal accounts to ask questions on competitor platforms such as ChatGPT, and then use the obtained answers to improve Grok.

Another project required employees to create personal accounts on Replit and Bolt, AI website-building companies, and scrape data. A spokesperson from Replit stated that this behavior violates their service terms.)