Tesla‘s earnings calls are always a fun listen, mostly because company CEO Elon Musk never runs out of weird things to say.
This time, during the company’s Q3 2025 report on Wednesday, the comment that took the cake was Musk’s insistence that he needs the proposed $1 trillion compensation package to control Tesla’s “robot army.”
The $1 trillion figure is from the executive pay package that was proposed for Musk by Tesla’s board in September (a significant jump from the month before). Should Musk hit a number of tough company milestones, he’d be entitled to nearly $1 trillion worth of Tesla stock over the next decade.
Mashable Light Speed
Unsurprisingly, the lofty pay plan was met with a lot of skepticism, with a coalition of unions and corporate watchdogs launching a “Take Back Tesla” campaign to stop it from happening.
But during yesterday’s Tesla earnings call, Musk said he doesn’t plan to spend the money; instead, he needs it as a form of insurance.
“My fundamental concern with regard to how much money and control I have at Tesla is if I go ahead and build this enormous robot army, can I just be ousted at some point in the future? Um, that’s my biggest concern. That is really the only thing I’m trying to address with this. It’s called compensation but it’s not like I’m gonna go spend the money,” said Musk. “It’s just, if we build this robot army do I have at least a strong influence over that robot army? Not current control but a strong influence. That’s what it comes down to in a nutshell. I don’t feel comfortable wielding that robot army if I don’t have at least a strong influence.”
Forgive us for missing the part where Tesla was building a robot “army” which requires “wielding.” Yeah, Tesla is working on a humanoid robot called Optimus, but so far all we’ve heard was how it’s going to be a helping hand around the household. It appears that Musk has other ideas on how the Optimus could be used.
