Pay packages in the auto industry usually make headlines for the wrong reasons, but Tesla operates by its own arithmetic. Elon Musk takes no traditional salary from the company. Even so, Tesla has disclosed that his 2025 compensation came in at $158 billion. That’s around 3.3 times Ford’s entire market capitalization of $47.65 billion as of May 2026.

 

That figure is, for the sake of comparison, also 392 times what Rivian’s RJ Scaringe collected ($403 million) and 5,745 times Ford boss Jim Farley’s $27.5 million for the same year. None of it, however, is heading to Musk’s bank account in any conventional sense.