TeslaEarnings calls are always fun to listen to, mainly because the company's CEO Elon Musk he never runs out of weird things to say.
This time, during the company's third-quarter 2025 earnings call on Wednesday, the comment that took over was Musk's insistence that he needed the proposed $1 trillion compensation package to control Tesla's “army of robots.”
The $1 trillion figure comes from manager salary package this was proposed to Musk by the Tesla board in September (a significant jump compared to the previous month). If Musk achieves a number of challenging company milestones, he will be eligible for Tesla shares worth almost $1 trillion over the next decade.
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Unsurprisingly, the high wage plan was met with great skepticism: a coalition of unions and corporate watchdogs launched “Bring Back Tesla” Campaign to prevent this from happening.
But during Tesla's earnings call yesterday, Musk said he doesn't plan to spend any money; instead, he needs it as a form of insurance.
“My main concern about how much money and control I have in Tesla is that if I build this huge army of robots, will I just get pushed out at some point in the future? Hmm, that's my biggest problem. That's really the only thing I'm trying to solve with this. It's called compensation, but I'm not going to spend the money,” Musk said. “It’s just that if we build this army of robots, will I even have much influence over this army of robots? Not current control, but strong influence.
Forgive us for missing the part where Tesla was building an “army” of robots to be “owned.” Yes, Tesla is working on humanoid robot named Optimusbut so far all we've heard is how it will be helping hand around the household. It looks like Musk has other ideas for how Optimus could be used.
