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Tesla drops Musk’s $29B ‘interim’ award after Delaware court restored larger pay package

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Tesla has revoked the “interim” pay package worth $29 billion that it gave its CEO Elon Musk last year, after the Delaware Supreme Court recently restored his larger $56 billion compensation award from 2018.

The company had given Musk the interim package in August 2025 to hedge against the possibility of Delaware’s highest court rejecting his appeal. Tesla had explained to investors that the interim package would be voided should Musk prevail. “[T]here cannot be any ‘double dip’,” the company wrote last year.

Sure enough, Tesla confirmed in its quarterly filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission on Thursday morning that it spiked the interim award on April 21. Tesla said that the board voted without Musk or his brother (and fellow director) Kimbal Musk.

“These actions are consistent with the ‘no double dip’ principle, which precludes Mr. Musk from getting a windfall in the event that he may exercise the 2018 CEO Performance Award,” Tesla wrote in the filing.

Tesla granted the $56 billion package to Musk in 2018, and it was challenged in court by a shareholder who accused the CEO of essentially negotiating against himself in designing it, and not properly informing shareholders of this. That case took years to play out in Delaware’s Chancery Court before a judge ultimately decided in 2024 that the plaintiff was right, and struck down the pay package.

Tesla waged a public affairs campaign while it appealed the judge’s decision to the state’s supreme court. That included “re-voting” on the package to ostensibly prove that shareholders weren’t duped. Musk, meanwhile, threatened to leave Tesla altogether to develop artificial intelligence elsewhere. This spurred Tesla’s board to draw up the $29 billion award as a hedge, and also work on a much larger and far more ambitious compensation package worth up to $1 trillion.

The revocation of this interim award has no impact on Musk’s $1 trillion package. To access that full amount, Musk has to lead Tesla through a number of operational milestones (like deliver 20 million vehicles and a million robots, and put one million robotaxis on the road), and increase its valuation to more than $8 trillion over the course of 10 years.

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Interestingly, Tesla explained in the quarterly filing that it is starting to make its own estimates about what milestones Musk might and might not achieve. The company doesn’t specify which one it thinks Musk will accomplish, but wrote that it has “unrecognized stock-based compensation expense of $9.97 billion for the operational milestone that was considered probable of achievement over the term of the award.”

The company went on to say that it has unrecognized stock-based compensation expense of between $105.82 billion to $120.37 billion for the “operational milestones that were considered not probable of achievement,” though it did not specify which milestones it meant.

While Musk has 10 years to accomplish all of the goals tied to the trillion-dollar package, many of these operational milestones are watered down versions of promises he’s previously made. Yet, it seems Tesla itself isn’t sure he’ll be able to execute at least a few.

Tesla also explained in the filing that its board of directors has decided to put up some barriers on how and when Musk can sell shares from the now-restored 2018 package “to mitigate any negative impact of significant share sales on the Company.”

Those restrictions appear to track some of the more general ones laid out in the $1 trillion pay package. They dictate Musk has to remain CEO or a product development executive at the company through at least 2028 for the shares to vest, and require him to hold the shares for five years.

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EuroMatch NPFL: Kano Pillars, Sporting Lagos Share Points in Kano

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Kano Pillars and Sporting Lagos played out a 1-1 draw in an entertaining EuroMatch Nigeria Premier Football League Matchday 7 encounter in Kano, with both sides settling for a point after a closely contested battle.

Sports247 reports that the result means the Mai Su Gida have now followed up their previous goalless draw against Enyimba with another stalemate, while Sporting Lagos also recorded their second consecutive draw after being held to a barren 0-0 draw by Ikorodu City in the Lagos Derby.

Kano Pillars started the encounter with the intention of making home advantage count, but Sporting Lagos remained organised and disciplined as both teams searched for an opening.

The breakthrough finally arrived deep into first-half stoppage time when Valentine Ugwu put Sporting Lagos ahead in the 45+2nd minute, giving the visitors a valuable lead heading into the interval.

Kano Pillars responded strongly after the restart and quickly found a way back into the contest.

The hosts were rewarded in the 48th minute when Abdullahi Musa drew Kano Pillars level, finishing off a move created by veteran midfielder Rabiu Ali, whose assist once again underlined his influence in the Pillars midfield.

With the score level at 1-1, both sides pushed for a decisive second goal, but neither could find the breakthrough during the remainder of the encounter.

Kano Pillars will take encouragement from their ability to recover from going behind, while Sporting Lagos will also be satisfied with securing a point away from home after surrendering their lead.

For the Mai Su Gida, the draw represents another opportunity gained but also another two points dropped from a winning position, as they continue their campaign in search of consistency.

Sporting Lagos, meanwhile, remain unbeaten across their recent fixtures but will be looking to convert their promising performances into maximum points as the season progresses.

The 1-1 result leaves both teams with plenty to build on, particularly in attack, as they prepare for their next assignments in the EuroMatch NPFL.

With the league campaign continuing to gather momentum, Kano Pillars and Sporting Lagos will now turn their attention to their upcoming fixtures, hoping to turn future draws into victories.

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Federal judge calls Flock ‘indiscriminate mass surveillance’

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A federal judge ruled this week that a Tulsa, Oklahoma sheriff’s deputy violated a woman’s Fourth Amendment rights when using Flock Safety to search for her license plate without a warrant. 

As reported by 404 Media, this ruling does not create a binding precedent, but it is one of the first times that a federal judge has ruled that a Flock search is unconstitutional.

In this case, Judge Sara Hill said the deputy should have obtained a warrant before searching the Flock database for the woman’s license plate, as he had “no apparent reason” for the search “other than the fact that [the woman’s vehicle] had a California license plate.”

The deputy then used the woman’s travel history in Flock as part of the justification for searching her car, where he allegedly discovered 91 pounds of meth. But Judge Hill wrote that all evidence obtained after the Flock search “must be suppressed as the fruit of a poisonous tree.”

Judge Hill also took broader aim at warrantless searches of the Flock database, writing that tracking people’s location — even when they’re in public places — becomes “constitutionally problematic when law enforcement can indiscriminately and passively catalog your whereabouts over an extended period of time and then use that information for any purpose whenever convenient.”

“This is a type of indiscriminate mass surveillance,” Hill wrote. “It is not targeted on a single individual, as in [Carpenter v. United States, a Supreme Court case focused on how government agencies access location data from cell phones]. It is a tool that collects information about all vehicles that pass by any network-connected camera at all times, and it serves up the information to law enforcement on demand.”

Hill joins a growing chorus of Flock critics from across the political spectrum. Numerous local and state governments, including Florida and Texas, have said they will stop using the technology. And on Friday, Senator Bernie Sanders — a Democrat from Vermont — introduced the Block Flock Act, which would bar federal agencies from using automated license plate readers such as Flock.

Flock CEO Garretty Langley — who we’ll be interviewing on-stage at TechCrunch Disrupt — has called for a “compromise” between privacy and safety and offered an apology to women who have been stalked by law enforcement officers using the Flock system. And with all those cancellations, Flock has also reportedly offered voluntary employee buyouts as a way to shrink its workforce.

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