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SpaceX’s board approved in January 2026 a package offering Musk up to 260 million Class B shares conditioned on goals such as US$7.5 trillion in market value and a Mars colony with 1 million people, according to a filing revealed by Reuters in April.
SpaceX has just turned science fiction into a contractual clause. According to a confidential company filing submitted to the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and revealed by Reuters on April 28, 2026, SpaceX’s board approved a compensation package for Elon Musk in January of this year that conditions the release of up to 200 million Class B shares with multiple voting power upon the fulfillment of goals no company has ever set: reaching a market value of US$7.5 trillion and establishing a permanent human colony on Mars with at least 1 million people. The cash value of the package could not be determined by Reuters because SpaceX is a private company and the share price is not public, a fundamental detail that differentiates the reality from what some hasty headlines reported.
In addition to the Martian goals, SpaceX included a second component that expands the plan’s scale. On March 23, 2026, the board granted Musk up to an additional 60.4 million restricted shares conditioned on separate market value goals and the operation of data centers in space with a capacity of 100 terawatts, a power that Reuters compares to the equivalent of 100,000 1-gigawatt nuclear reactors operating simultaneously. “I’m not a physicist or an astronomer, and I wouldn’t know where to begin. The measuring stick is: has this ever been done in human history? It hasn’t. So it’s difficult,” stated Eric Hoffmann, data director at corporate governance consultancy Farient Advisors, in an analysis published by Reuters.
What SpaceX’s package offers Musk and why experts are concerned
The shares SpaceX links to the Mars goals are not ordinary shares. Each SpaceX Class B share carries 10 votes versus 1 vote for each Class A share, meaning the package is not just financial compensation but an instrument of decisive control over the company: if Musk meets the conditions and receives the 200 million shares, his voting power on the board will become virtually unchallengeable. For corporate governance experts, this concentration of control linked to goals impossible to measure by traditional parameters inaugurates an unprecedented model in corporate history.
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SpaceX tied the package to goals that have no defined deadline. Musk only loses the right to the shares if he leaves the company before fulfilling the conditions, meaning the goals could take decades to be achieved, if they are ever achieved, without the package expiring. Hoffmann noted to Reuters that SpaceX and Tesla, both controlled by Musk, are practically “bidding against each other” for the executive’s attention, a dynamic he said he had never seen in other companies and which raises questions about how a CEO divides dedication between two companies that compete for the same resource: his time.
What SpaceX’s IPO has to do with the Mars package
The package’s revelation comes at a strategic moment for SpaceX. The company confidentially filed for an initial public offering on April 1, 2026, and the public offering is expected in June of this year with a valuation estimated by Reuters at approximately US$1.75 trillion, a value that would make SpaceX one of the most valuable companies on the planet on its first day of trading. The US$7.5 trillion goal embedded in Musk’s package would require SpaceX to quadruple its value after the IPO, a level no company in the world has reached to date.
For investors considering entering the SpaceX IPO, the variable compensation package is a significant factor in the analysis. A company whose CEO controls the board and whose bonus plan depends on colonizing Mars offers a radically different risk profile from any other initial public offering in history, and the concentration of voting power in the Class B shares that Musk can accumulate makes it virtually impossible for minority shareholders to challenge the founder’s decisions. The IPO in June will tell whether the market accepts betting on this model or if investors will demand additional governance guarantees before buying shares of a company whose success depends on goals humanity has never attempted.
How much Musk already has in SpaceX and what his current net worth is
The numbers surrounding Musk contextualize the package within a fortune that is already the largest on the planet. Since 2019, the SpaceX founder has received a fixed salary of US$54,080 per year from the company, a symbolic amount that contrasts with a net worth estimated by Forbes and Reuters at US$776 billion. As of December 31, 2025, Musk already held 68.8 million Class B SpaceX stock options with an exercise price of approximately US$42 and expiring in 2031, a position that, combined with the new package and an approximately 20% stake in Tesla, could “more than double” his fortune if he meets the goals in both companies, according to Reuters.
The board that approved the SpaceX package is chaired by Musk himself, and among the directors is Antonio Gracias, described as a close friend of the billionaire. This composition raises a question that governance experts consider central: who approves the CEO’s compensation when the CEO chairs the body that approves it? The arrangement is not illegal for private American companies, but in the context of an imminent IPO, the transparency required by the SEC may force adjustments that the public market demands with a rigor that SpaceX’s private universe has never faced.
Why the goal of 1 million people on Mars is considered unattainable in the short term
The gap between Musk’s discourse on Martian colonization and current technological reality is enormous. Starship, the central rocket for the Mars plan, remains under development and has not yet carried out a crewed mission, and Musk himself recently shifted SpaceX’s focus to building a “self-sustaining city on the Moon” as an intermediate step, stating that the Moon would take less than a decade while Mars would require more than 20 years. The goal of 1 million colonists on Mars is considered by aerospace experts to be unattainable within the horizon of a productive lifetime, which makes the Martian component of the bonus more symbolic than practical in the short and medium term.
The energy component of the package is equally ambitious. Operating data centers in space with 100 terawatts of computational capacity would require power equivalent to 100,000 nuclear reactors operating simultaneously, a scale that humanity as a whole does not currently produce: the entire installed electrical capacity on the planet is around 30 terawatts. For SpaceX to meet this goal, it would need not only to develop unprecedented space infrastructure but also to solve the problem of power generation in orbit on a scale that would make the company the largest producer of energy in the solar system, an ambition that makes the colonization of Mars seem modest by comparison.
And you, do you think Musk will manage to take 1 million people to Mars? Is the SpaceX package visionary or absurd? Leave your opinion in the comments.
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