Those who know me know I love to unwind by watching YouTube. While I have a lot of content creators I’m subscribed to, oftentimes I just go down a video rabbit hole and find myself at the mercy of the algorithm, clicking on videos one after another in a seemingly endless spiral. Mind you, I love watching a lot of educational and informative content, as this is one of the ways I get news coverage and commentary delivered to my feed. On one particular evening this past week, I was relaxing in my recliner watching YouTube videos on my iPad, when all of a sudden the next video that popped up in my recommended tab was a 36 second video by TODAY, entitled, “Elon Musk Could Become a Trillionaire Under New Tesla Package.”
I was initially intrigued by this title as having a trillion dollars, even though I’m aware it’s in stock and not liquid, is a seemingly unreal amount of wealth for one person to possess. I think the average person has difficulty wrapping their head around a billion dollars, so a trillion seems incomprehensible. The fact that someone could actually become the world’s first confirmed trillionaire is a huge deal that should receive a fair amount of news coverage. I was also interested in the claim presented by this video title as I know Elon Musk is a polarizing figure due to his pivot in political affiliation in the last several years and contributions in the Trump administration. With this in mind, I did start becoming a bit skeptical, not necessarily about the entire validity of the claim, but the hyper-sensationalized manner and motivation for why and how it’s being reported on through various other news organizations.
Upon watching the 36 second clip, I was impressed with the incredibly direct and straight forward approach TODAY had in reporting this. In all actuality, the actual news segment of this video was just 24 seconds, as the last 12 was reserved for the channel’s outro. The video mentions the pay package deal would only be enacted if Elon meets a series of ambitious goals set by the board. The package could grant the CEO an additional 400 million shares, which would make him the world’s first trillionaire. While I appreciate the transparent nature in the reporting from this video, it leaves me wanting more information to determine the underlying motivations behind this deal. A part of me questions why the video was so short, when it’s clear there was more journalism to do on this story. I was curious about how others felt about the topic presented in the video, so I turned to the comments. Sure enough, most of the comments on this video were trying to steer the conversation political or emotional. I began to wonder if that was the intention behind this seemingly bare-bones news story; to only report on the essentials of the story and leave out relevant details and context in order to get people’s emotions stirred up and boost engagement seems like it could be an effective strategy. I believe my theory is given credibility by the fact the TODAY YouTube channel has amassed 4.87 million subscribers as of September 2025, yet struggle to crack as many views that would be proportionate to a channel that size. While I understand The TODAY Show to be a historically mainstream, live TV broadcast, it’s clear most of their success is derived from the television program and website, with the YouTube channel simply being an extension of their brand to aid in the program’s reach, potentially to a younger demographic.
Because of these underlying questions I had, I decided to look deeper and utilize lateral reading for verification purposes of this claim. The next step I took after analyzing my original source was to look up key search terms relevant to the claim. I began with, “Elon Musk trillion dollar pay package”. Instantly, I was greeted with numerous articles on the topic by many reputable news outlets I have encountered in the past. Some of these sites include, Reuters, NPR, and Yahoo! Finance.
While I found some articles that appeared neutral with how the information was presented, I also found some articles with an apparent agenda on this topic. Examples of this include the The Motley Fool’s article, as I found out the primary content this website reports on is finance and investment news, so the way this information was processed and filtered was tailored for that specific audience. Another instance of bias in this news story is an opinion piece hosted on Yale Insights (although the original article was presented on Fortune) which was one of the top results when googling my initial search terms. This article takes personal aim at Musk himself and argues the notion of corporate greed, making it an incredibly political, dividing issue. Because these websites did not appear the most credible from skimming them for their information on the subject, I chose to look elsewhere to learn more about the claim.
I don’t have to scroll much further down my initial search results page until I find an article entitled, “Tesla Offers Elon Musk a Trillion Dollar Pay Package”, by The Guardian. I am personally a big fan of how The Guardian structures their articles and have had success in the past with the news organization being a reliable source of information. Because of this prior knowledge, I decided to investigate the claim further through this site.
Upon reading The Guardian article, it was able to highlight more details and contingencies of the pay package deal, establishing that if Elon doesn’t double Tesla’s valuation over the 10-year period, the deal will be null and void. The articles highlights just how ambitious of a task this would be, specifying the target stock price to be $8.5 trillion dollars, which is more than double what the current most valuable company, Nvidia, is worth.
I appreciated the extra details given about the specifics of this deal that was presented in this article, as it gives the reader more context which they then can use to shape their own opinions on this matter. The article makes mention of a previous deal Tesla offered Musk back in 2018 involving a $55.8 billion bonus, but ran into legal trouble with a court finding the targets had been inappropriately set. Nevertheless, that pay package deal gives precedent from Tesla for this current one, though admittedly on a much more massive scale. Another admiration I have for this article is how neutral it presented the information, providing perspectives from those who are in support and skeptical of this pay package deal. For example, a large amount of investors are more apt to be in support of this deal, as it drive the stock price higher, which is great news for their portfolios. In contrast to this, there are some who feel like this could set new precedents for these types of pay package deals offered to executives in these publicly-traded companies and argue this is just another form of corporate greed (Davies, 2025).
My concluding thoughts on this topic is I am positive and receptive to Tesla offering Elon this pay package deal. From digging through additional sources, I’ve come to the conclusion a reason a motivating factor behind Tesla’s decision is to properly incentivize Musk to focus in on innovation and growth for the electric car company, as the man has been seen throughout the media preoccupied with his numerous other business ventures, as well as his brief stint involved in the Trump administration. This coupled with the fact that the electric vehicle market has grown exponentially and become much more competitive makes it apparent they need to continue to innovate— and who better to look towards but their CEO who has proven in the past to bring the company great success through past innovations? The clip I initially found does a fantastic job outlining the key details of this deal, however, because of the vagueness, it can leave one to draw their own conclusions without understanding just how ambitious this pay package actually is and what it will take in order for Musk to achieve it. The details of this claim are extremely important and without the full context, one can easily draw their own conclusions and can spread this information with their own biased opinion to others. This is how misinformation can proliferate and run rampant in society, whereas if one were to just take an extra few minutes to check additional sources for more information on a claim, this would not be an issue.
References:
Bromels, J. (2025, September 12). Why Elon Musk’s Trillion-Dollar Tesla Pay Package Isn’t as Crazy as It Sounds. The Motley Fool. https://www.fool.com/investing/2025/09/12/why-elon-musks-trillion-dollar-tesla-pay-package-i/
Davies, R. (2025, September 5). Tesla offers Elon Musk a trillion-dollar pay package. The Guardian; The Guardian. https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2025/sep/05/tesla-elon-musk-trillion-dollar-pay-package
Elon Musk Could Become a Trillionaire Under New Tesla Package. (2025). In TODAY. https://youtu.be/yLhPsSDF8nE?si=UN7JDuvR-MTs1Ccv
Sonnenfeld, J., & Henriques, S. (2025, September 9). Elon Musk’s Trillion-Dollar Pay Package Is Just Bad Corporate Governance. Yale Insights. https://insights.som.yale.edu/insights/elon-musks-trillion-dollar-pay-package-is-just-bad-corporate-governance