Tesla CEO Elon Musk attends the Saudi-US Investment Forum in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, on May 13, 2025.
Hamad Mohammed | Reuters
Norway’s $2 trillion sovereign wealth fund has announced it will vote against Elon Musk’s multi-trillion dollar salary package. teslaheld its annual shareholder meeting this week to push back against Mr. Musk’s management guidance and threat to resign if the deal is rejected.
Norges Bank Investment Management (NBIM), which manages the fund and is the world’s largest of its kind and Tesla’s largest shareholder, announced on Tuesday that it had already voted against Musk’s compensation package as the automaker’s CEO.
“While we appreciate the significant value created under Mr. Musk’s visionary role, consistent with our views on executive compensation, we are concerned about the total compensation, dilution, and lack of risk mitigation for key personnel,” NBIM said in a statement.
The fund’s managers added: “We continue to seek constructive dialogue with Tesla on this and other topics.”
The Norwegian wealth fund owns 1.14% of Tesla, according to its June semi-annual filing. The value of this investment was last announced at NOK 118.3 billion ($11.6 billion).
Tesla shares fell 2.5% in premarket trading.
Tesla’s board of directors is asking shareholders to approve a pay plan that would give Musk about $1 trillion in stock and potentially give him more voting rights at the company. The full award is contingent on Tesla achieving certain milestones over the next 10 years.
The proposal raised eyebrows and faced opposition from some corporate watchers. Last month, the Take Back Tesla campaign, a coalition of labor unions and corporate watchdog groups, urged shareholders to reject the deal, while proxy advisory firms Institutional Shareholder Services and Glass Lewis also advised investors to vote against the compensation package.
Musk hit back at those recommendations on a conference call with analysts, labeling ISS and Glass Lewis “corporate terrorists.”
“Tesla is worth more than all other car companies combined,” Musk wrote in a post on X last month in response to critics of his pay proposal. “Which of these CEOs would want to run Tesla? It’s not me.”
Representatives for Musk and Tesla were not immediately available for comment on their votes against NBIM’s proposed CEO compensation package.
However, Musk has clashed with NBIM over pay in the past.
Last year, NBIM voted against reinstating Musk’s $56 billion compensation contract, which was struck down by a U.S. judge. The package was the largest public executive compensation plan in U.S. history and was ultimately approved by Tesla’s shareholders.
After the vote, the Financial Times and Norwegian newspaper E24 published text messages between Musk and NBIM CEO Nikolai Tangen, revealing that the Tesla CEO had declined an invitation to a dinner in Norway’s capital, Oslo.
“It’s rare that I ask you a favor and you do it, but if you say no, you shouldn’t ask me a favor until you make amends,” Musk reportedly wrote. “Friends are just like friends.”
According to Forbes, Musk is the richest person in the world with a net worth of $504.1 billion.
—CNBC’s Lora Kolodny contributed to this report.
