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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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Trump shares video of Nigerian cleric Dachomo at mass burial for terrorist attack victims

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President Donald Trump on Saturday posted footage of Reverend Ezekiel Dachomo of the Church of Christ in Nations (COCIN), Plateau State, conducting a mass burial for victims of a terrorist attack, while calling on the United Nations and the United States to stop the killing of Christians in Nigeria. 

Mr Trump posted the video on Truth Social without adding any text. 

In the video, Mr Dachomo, a cleric known for speaking out against alleged killings of Christians in Nigeria, is seen lamenting as he buries his church members killed in attacks in a mass grave. 

“Look at it today. Is there any Muslim here?” Mr Dachomo said, pointing to scores of corpses piled in a mass grave as he conducted the mass burial. 

Calling on the international community to stop the alleged killing of Christians in Nigeria, Mr Dachomo said: “United Nations, I know you are watching me. American Senate, I know you are watching what I am doing here. Please tell Trump to save our lives in Nigeria. They are killing Christians in Nigeria. They are massacring Christians.” 

Mr Trump’s posting of the video comes a day after U.S. and Nigerian forces eliminated ISIS second-in-command Abu-Bilal al-Manuki and his fighters in an airstrike. 

The government of Mr Trump had said that the execution of Mr Al-Manuki and his foot soldiers on Nigerian soil was a reminder that American forces will go after enemies of the country and those killing Christians around the world.

“So, for months, we hunted this top ISIS leader in Nigeria who was killing Christians, and we killed him — and his entire posse,” U.S. Secretary of War Pete Hegseth said on X, praising American and Nigerian forces for the successful operation. 

He added, “Operations like last night’s demonstrate the exceptional lethality, patience and skill of U.S. forces, amplified alongside willing and capable partners, to address shared threats. This should serve as a reminder that we will hunt down those who wish to harm Americans or innocent Christians, wherever they are.” 

The killing of Mr Al-Manuki comes five months after Mr Trump ordered airstrikes against terrorists in their enclave in Sokoto State on December 25, 2025, following a months-long campaign over alleged killings of Christians in Nigeria. 

Though the Nigerian government has repeatedly denied allegations of a Christian genocide in the country, it confirmed that it collaborated with U.S. forces to eliminate Mr Al-Manuki. 

Mr Trump had also redesignated Nigeria as a country of particular concern last year, warning of continued military action against terrorists in Africa’s most populous country. 



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The haves and have nots of the AI gold rush

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The vibes around the current AI boom aren’t great, even in the tech industry, according to a lengthy social media post from Menlo Ventures partner Deedy Das. 

Das described San Francisco as “pretty frenetic right now,” as “the divide in outcomes is the worst I’ve ever seen.”

Using a “back of the envelope AI calculation,” he projected that there are around 10,000 people — founders and employees at companies like OpenAI, Anthropic, and Nvidia — that have “hit retirement wealth of well above $20M,” while everyone else worries “they can work their well-paying (but

Plus, “layoffs are in full swing,” and “many software engineers feel that their life’s skill is no longer useful,” leading to confusion about the best career paths and “a deep malaise about work (and its future),” Das said. 

This prompted some eye-rolling on X, with entrepreneur Deva Hazarika arguing that “most of the people in this post” are “incredibly fortunate and can simply make a choice to be happy.”

Another user suggested it’s “pretty damn novel & also kinda nasty” that in the current cycle, “the same technology is both the lottery ticket & the thing eating your fallback.”

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