AUSTIN, Texas — Elon Musk has exercised the entirety of his 2018 Tesla pay package, converting options on 303,960,630 shares into stock for a paper gain of roughly $116 billion — and he did it without selling a single share.
According to a new SEC filing, Tesla submitted a Form 4 and a Schedule 13G amendment on June 17, both reporting a transaction dated June 16. The exercise closes the book on one of the most closely watched compensation sagas in corporate history and cements Musk as Tesla's largest shareholder by a wide margin.
How the Numbers Work
Musk exercised the options at a split-adjusted strike price of $23.34 per share. Tesla closed at $404.66 that day, leaving a spread of $381.32 per share — about $115.9 billion in total value created in a single transaction.
Rather than pay roughly $7.1 billion in cash to cover the exercise cost, Musk used net settlement. Tesla withheld 17,531,857 shares to cover the bill, leaving him with 286,428,773 net new shares. Those shares are restricted and do not vest until January 19, 2028, meaning Musk cannot sell them today even if he wanted to.
The original 2018 grant covered 20,264,042 shares at $350.02. Tesla's 5-for-1 split in 2020 and 3-for-1 split in 2022 adjusted that down to the current figures.
A Vote of Confidence
Crucially, the filing states plainly that the transaction did not involve any open-market sales of securities. For shareholders, that detail matters: no new shares hit the market to pressure the stock, and Musk's economic interest in Tesla deepened rather than diminished.
The move lifts Musk's ownership stake to roughly 20%, tightening his alignment with the company at a moment when its ambitions stretch well beyond cars. The same forces powering Tesla's valuation — autonomy, robotics, and energy — are also drawing investors toward a quietly building SpaceX-Tesla merger conversation that could reshape Musk's sprawling empire.
The exercise also ends a six-year legal fight. A Delaware court rescinded the 2018 award in 2024, but the Delaware Supreme Court reversed that ruling in December 2025, finding full rescission too extreme. Tesla's board signed an implementation agreement in April 2026, and Musk filed his exercise notice on June 9, triggering the window that closed June 16.
What Comes Next
Because the options are non-qualified, the $116 billion spread is taxed as ordinary income. At the top federal rate plus surtaxes, that points to a federal tax bill in the neighborhood of $45 billion — though Musk's Texas residency spares him an estimated $15 billion in state taxes that California would have claimed.
The milestone lands as Wall Street grows more bullish on Tesla's near-term trajectory. Analysts have been raising their targets, and Goldman Sachs recently lifted its Q2 delivery forecast to 420,000 vehicles, citing strengthening demand.
With his stake now locked in through 2028, Musk has tied his fortune more tightly than ever to Tesla's mission. For a company betting its future on self-driving fleets, humanoid robots, and grid-scale energy, having its founder remain its largest shareholder may prove the most valuable signal of all.
