Friday May 1, 2026
“One hundred eighty-two billion dollars”
SpaceX just offered Elon Musk $182 billion to colonize Mars and build data centers in space. Before you laugh, remember the last time everyone laughed at one of his compensation packages.
In 2018, Elon Musk proposed a compensation plan at Tesla TSLA 0.00%↑ . Everyone thought it was a joke. At first it was the size, over “$50 billion” for meeting the objectives, which seemed insane on its face. But as you looked closer, it got even more audacious. Elon would only receive this award if he achieved 12 different market cap and operational milestones. He would not get paid for hitting some and missing others. He had to reach all 12. All or nothing. I remember listening to the CNBC anchors practically laughing on air, calling it a fantasy, but conceding that if Elon was crazy enough to actually pull it off, he deserved every penny.
To everyone’s surprise, Elon hit all 12. Between 2018 and 2023, Tesla added ~$600 billion in market cap, an 11x increase from where the company stood when the package was granted. A well deserved bonus in my mind, and frankly one of the greatest shareholder value creation stories in corporate history.
Then came the lawsuit. A former drummer who owned exactly nine shares of Tesla sued the company, arguing investors were misled when asked to approve the package. The real story was the belief Elon was getting paid too much. In 2024 a Delaware judge voided the package retroactively. Fortunately, last December the Delaware Supreme Court reversed that decision and restored it. End of chapter, or so we thought.
As I reported earlier this week, Elon has received a new compensation package from SpaceX, and this one makes the Tesla deal look modest. Elon can earn up to 200 million super-voting shares if SpaceX reaches a market cap of $7.5 trillion and establishes a permanent human settlement on Mars with at least one million residents. Let me repeat that. A permanent human settlement on Mars with at least one million residents. Not a research outpost. Not a flag in the ground. A functioning civilization on another planet with at least one million residents. Only then do we get to the financial math, which is that the $7.5 trillion target represents a 4.3x increase from the expected IPO valuation, an increase that alone equals $5.75 trillion in new value created. He can also earn up to 60.4 million additional shares contingent on delivering 100 terawatts of orbital computing power through space-based data centers. For context, all operational data centers across the US today produce roughly 41 gigawatts combined. The orbital target is more than 2,400 times that. Once again, it is all or nothing. His base salary, by the way, remains at $54,080 per year.
Based on our estimates of a $1.75 trillion IPO, the share price comes out to roughly $700 per share, putting the total value of the SpaceX package at approximately $182 billion if the stock does not move a dollar from the offering price.
So what is more audacious, the size of the package or the objectives required to earn it? I keep coming back to the same answer. In 2018, the people laughing on CNBC were wrong. I’d bet on Elon.
◾ Congress approves ban on members trading prediction markets (X)
◾ US seizes ~$500M in crypto from Iran (Fox Business)
◾ $MARA to acquire Long Ridge Energy for $1.5B (GlobeNewswire)
Government & NGO Actions
◾ White House drafting AI deployment guidelines for national security agencies (Bloomberg)
◾ SEC approves Nasdaq proposal to launch binary-style prediction options tied to Nasdaq-100 (Reuters)
◾ CFTC sues Arizona, Connecticut, and Illinois to affirm jurisdiction over prediction markets (CFTC)
◾ Sen. Warren questions Commerce Secretary over Tether loan to Lutnick children’s trust (Senate Banking)
◾ South Korea seeks 20-year sentence for Delio CEO in $250M crypto fraud case (Yonhap)
◾ UK FCA finalizes rules to accelerate tokenized funds (FCA)
◾ Australia launches public consultation on modernizing account-to-account payments system (RBA)
Financial Notices & Public Company Releases
◾ Financial updates:
Apple $AAPL Q2’26: Revenue $111B | Products $80B | Services 30B | Op income $35B | Net income $29B (Apple)
Robblox $RBLX $Q1’26: Revenue $1.4B +39% y-y | Net loss $248M | aEBITDA $99M | DAU 132M +35% y-y | Hours engaged 31B +43% y-y (Roblox)
Reddit $RDDT Q1’26: Revenue $663M +69% y-y | Net income $204M | aEBITDA loss $266M | DAUq 126M +17% y-y (Reddit)
Riot Platforms $RIOT Q1’26: Revenue $167M | BTC mining revenue $111M | Data center revenue $33M | Net loss $500M | aEBITDA loss $311M (RiotPlatforms)
◾ $META raises $25B in new bond sale (Reuters)
◾ $HUT closes $3.25B investment-grade senior secured debt offering (Hut 8)
Restructuring, Hacks, Losses & Legal Updates
◾ Elon Musk wraps first day of cross-examination in OpenAI suit; head of Musk family office expected next on stand (CNBC)
Crypto Protocols, Applications & Business News
◾ $BAKKT completes acquisition of agentic payments and stablecoin firm Distributed Technologies Research (Bakkt)
◾ SBI Holdings $SBHGF considering acquisition of Japan’s Bitbank (SBI Group)
◾ Stripe introduces digital wallet for agentic AI (TechCrunch)
◾ Anchorage to partner with M0 on stablecoin infrastructure (Anchorage)
◾ MoonPay to support Korea’s won-backed stablecoin distribution globally (PR Newswire)
◾ $GEMI receives derivatives clearing license from CFTC (GlobeNewswire)
◾ $FIS launches platform enabling banks to issue, manage, and settle digital money (FT)
AI Models, Applications & Developments
◾ $AAPL CEO warns of memory market shortage, weighing range of options (CNBC)
◾ OpenAI adds passkey support for ChatGPT and Codex (OpenAI)
◾ Anthropic opens Project Glasswing to public beta (Anthropic)
◾ $GOOGL to sell Tensor chips to select customers in latest challenge to Nvidia (Yahoo Finance)
◾ Khan Academy to launch AI-powered degree program (SF Standard)
The Attention Economy, Gaming & Interactive Shifts
◾ $SPOT rolling out badges to distinguish human artists from AI-generated music (TechCrunch)
◾ Polymarket launches Prediction Market Report with Bitget, citing $25.7B monthly volume (GlobeNewswire)
Space Systems, Satellites & Cosmic Activity
◾ Russia successfully test-launches new Soyuz-5 rocket from Kazakhstan (Reuters)
◾ China expects to double size of Tiangong space station as NASA phases out ISS (SCMP)
◾ Space Force selects K2 to test laser communications on missile-defense systems (SpaceNews)
◾ York Space to acquire All.Space satellite terminal company (BusinessWire)