shareholders

Nov. 7 (UPI) — Tesla shareholders approved an unprecedented new package for CEO Elon Musk that could see him become the world’s first trillionaire.

The firm said 75% of shareholders with voting rights on Thursday backed Musk’s 10-year pay deal, which could net him $1 trillion over that time by boosting his stake in Tesla by more than 423 million shares.

The share bonanza is contingent on him delivering on a promise to drive up Tesla’s market capitalization five-fold from is current level of around $1.5 trillion to $8.5 trillion, roughly double the size of the Japanese economy.

Shareholders at the annual general meeting at Tesla HQ in Austin, Texas, voted it through on the recommendation of Tesla’s board, arguing Musk might quit if it were rejected and that the company could not afford to lose him.

Counsel from independent advisors Glass Lewis and Institutional Shareholder Services who said the “astronomical” deal should be rejected due to “unmitigated concerns surrounding the special award’s magnitude and design,” was largely ignored.

Addressing the meeting after the result, Musk thanked the board and shareholders, saying what Tesla was poised to do was not just “a new chapter in the future of Tesla, but a whole new book.”

Under the deal, Musk will receive the stock in tranches tied to delivering financial and production targets, including 20 million new electric vehicles rolling off production lines, 10 million full self-driving subscriptions​, 1 million Optimus humanoid robots and 1 million robotaxis in service.

The first block of stock gets paid to Musk when Telsa market capitalization reaches $2 trillion with the next nine awarded each time the company’s value rises by another $500 billion, up to $6.5 trillion.

Two additional rises in market capitalization, each of $1 trillion, bringing the value to $8.5 trillion, are required for the final two stock grants to kick in.

While the deal is performance-based, it’s not set in stone — with Musk still in line to earn more $50 billion even if he fails to meet the bulk of the targets — and includes riders for so-called “covered events” with the potential to impact Tesla’s future designs, manufacturing and sales.

These include natural disasters, wars, pandemics and changes to “international, federal, state and local law, regulations or other governmental action or inaction.”

In June 2024, Musk reincorporated Tesla in Texas, the company’s headquarters and center of operations, moving from Delaware six months after a court there struck down a $56 billion pay deal the board awarded to Musk in 2018, ruling it was “unfair” and that Musk held excessive power over the rules and size of the deal.

On the same day, shareholders voted to reinstate the package, at the time the largest in corporate history.

In December 2024, the Delaware judge in the case reaffirmed her ruling in favor of the complainant, shareholder Tornetta, and ordered Musk must return what he had already received from the package.

The board eventually awarded Musk a $29 billion “good faith” package in August, aimed at keeping Musk at the helm, that would see him granted 96 million shares after two years of service in a “senior leadership role” at Tesla.

Musk’s mega-deal on Thursday came three weeks after Tesla reported Tesla reported third quarter profits down 37%, despite a jump in revenue to a record $28.1 billion on stronger sales of its electric cars in the domestic market.

Shareholders approved the pay package with as much as 75 percent support on Thursday.

Tesla CEO Elon Musk has scored a resounding victory as shareholders have approved a pay package of as much as $878bn over the next decade, endorsing his vision of morphing the electric vehicle (EV) maker into an AI and robotics juggernaut.

Shares of Tesla rose more than 3 percent in after-hours trading after the shareholders voted on Thursday. The proposal was approved with more than 75 percent support.

Musk took to the stage in Austin, Texas, along with dancing robots. “What we are about to embark upon is not merely a new chapter of the future of Tesla, but a whole new book,” he said. “This really is going to be quite the story.”

He added: “Other shareholder meetings are like snooze fests, but ours are bangers. I mean, look at this. This is sick.”

Shareholders also re-elected three directors on Tesla’s board and voted in favour of a replacement pay plan for Musk’s services because a legal challenge has held up a previous package.

The vote, analysts have said, is a positive for Tesla’s stock, whose valuation hangs on Musk’s vision of making vehicles drive themselves, expanding robotaxis across the United States and selling humanoid robots, even though his far-right political rhetoric has hurt the Tesla brand this year.

A win for Musk was widely expected as the billionaire was allowed to exercise the full voting rights of his roughly 15 percent stake after the carmaker moved to Texas from Delaware, where a legal challenge has held up a previous pay rise.

The approval comes even after opposition from some major investors, including Norway’s sovereign wealth fund.

Tesla’s board had said Musk could quit if the pay package was not approved.

The vote will also allay investor concerns that Musk’s focus has been diluted with his work in politics as well as in running his other companies, including rocket maker SpaceX and artificial intelligence startup xAI.

The board and many investors who lent their endorsement have said the nearly $1 trillion package benefits shareholders in the longer run, as Musk must ensure Tesla achieves a series of milestones to get paid.

Goals for Musk over the next decade include the company delivering 20 million vehicles, having one million robotaxis in operation, selling one million robots and earning as much as $400bn in core profit. But in order for him to get paid, Tesla’s stock value has to rise in tandem, first to $2 trillion from the current $1.5 trillion, and all the way to $8.5 trillion.

Under the new plan, Musk could earn as much as $878bn in Tesla stock over 10 years. Musk would be given as much as $1 trillion in stock but would have to make some payments back to Tesla.

A group of Walt Disney Co. shareholders is demanding the company release information related to the suspension of late-night host Jimmy Kimmel, according to a recent letter.

The letter, dated Wednesday and sent by the American Federation of Teachers union and press freedom group Reporters Without Borders, said the groups want transparency into Disney’s decision last week to indefinitely suspend the show “Jimmy Kimmel Live!” following comments he made in his monologue about the shooter who killed conservative activist Charlie Kirk.

Disney reinstated Kimmel’s show Tuesday, saying in a statement that the initial decision was made to “avoid further inflaming a tense situation at an emotional moment for our country” and calling some of his comments “ill-timed and thus insensitive.”

The late-night host’s suspension set off a political firestorm and nationwide debate about free speech. Protesters demonstrated outside the El Capitan Theatre in Hollywood as well as Disney’s Burbank headquarters. More than 400 celebrities signed an open letter decrying attempts at government censorship. Some called for consumers to cancel their Disney+ streaming subscriptions.

“Disney shareholders deserve the truth about exactly what went down inside the company after Brendan Carr’s threat to punish ABC unless action was taken against Jimmy Kimmel,” American Federation of Teachers President Randi Weingarten said in a statement. “The Disney board has a legal responsibility to act in the best interests of its shareholders — and we are seeking answers to discover if that bond was broken to kowtow to the Trump administration.”

Prior to the initial suspension decision, Federal Communications Commission Chairman Brendan Carr had called for Disney to take action against Kimmel during a podcast interview that aired last week. Carr said there could be consequences for the TV stations that carry his show. Shortly before Disney announced Kimmel’s initial suspension, TV station groups Nexstar Media Group and Sinclair Broadcast Group each said they would preempt the show and have said they will not bring it back.

The letter calls for Disney to provide records, including any meeting minutes or written materials, related to the suspension or return of Kimmel’s show.

“There is a credible basis to suspect that the Board and executives may have breached their fiduciary duties of loyalty, care, and good faith by placing improper political or affiliate considerations above the best interests of the Company and its stockholders,” the letter said.

Disney did not respond to a request for comment.

Times staff writer Meg James contributed to this report.

Nvidia (NVDA 3.52%) has built an artificial intelligence (AI) empire thanks to the dominance of its AI chips and its expansion into a wide variety of other related offerings. But the company isn’t isolating itself, and instead, has looked to work with others — even much smaller players — in this AI boom. One company in particular has become a key Nvidia ally, and that’s CoreWeave (CRWV 0.39%).

CoreWeave launched an initial public offering in March, and the stock has since surged about 195%, buoyed by the company’s soaring sales — and its relationship with Nvidia. The AI chip giant held a 7% stake in CoreWeave as of the end of the second quarter, and CoreWeave makes up 91% of Nvidia’s investment portfolio. And CoreWeave’s business relies heavily on Nvidia as the company’s specialty is the following: It rents out Nvidia’s high-powered graphics processing units (GPUs) to customers through its cloud platform.

Now, Nvidia’s latest move — a $6.3 billion deal with CoreWeave — signals something big for shareholders of both companies. Let’s take a closer look.

Image source: Getty Images.

A 1,300% gain

First, though, a quick summary of the businesses of Nvidia and CoreWeave. As mentioned, Nvidia is the AI chip leader, with its GPUs and related products delivering record revenue and earnings over the past few years. Nvidia’s chips offer the highest performance on the market, so tech giants, prioritizing AI success, have rushed to get in on these essential tools. All of this has helped Nvidia stock climb 1,300% over the past five years — and pushed market value past $4 trillion to make Nvidia the world’s biggest company.

CoreWeave, as mentioned, offers customers access to Nvidia compute through its cloud platform. Customers may rent GPUs by the hour or for the long term, and this offers them great flexibility. CoreWeave holds about 250,000 GPUs across 32 data centers and has been the first to make Nvidia’s latest innovations generally available. All of this has translated into outsized revenue growth, with sales tripling in the latest quarter. CoreWeave clearly depends on Nvidia’s success as demand for Nvidia GPUs power its revenue higher — if demand were to decline, not only would Nvidia suffer, but so would CoreWeave.

And this brings me to the latest deal between the two companies. Nvidia signed a $6.3 billion order with CoreWeave, ensuring that the chip leader will buy any cloud capacity that CoreWeave is unable to sell to customers. The deal, extending a 2023 agreement, covers the period through April 13, 2032.

Eliminating a risk

This order signals something different — but significant — for both companies and their shareholders. For CoreWeave, this removes the big risk of the company being stuck with excess capacity. Though the future of AI spending looks bright, any dip in spending, even over a short period, could be costly for the company. So, Nvidia’s agreement to potentially step in means that if any drop in demand happens, it won’t hurt CoreWeave’s sales. As a result, shareholders may breathe a sigh of relief, and cautious investors who have worried about this risk may consider getting in on CoreWeave.

As for Nvidia, this move suggests the company truly is confident about the demand for AI capacity over the next several years. It’s unlikely the tech giant would agree to such a deal if it saw a major slowdown on the horizon. This reinforces Nvidia’s prediction a few weeks ago that AI infrastructure spending may reach $4 trillion by the end of the decade. Nvidia has said in the past that its customers offer it visibility about their upcoming needs — so the chip designer has a good idea of how the demand situation will evolve.

All of this means this latest deal between Nvidia and CoreWeave is fantastic news for shareholders of both companies — for CoreWeave, the agreement lowers risk, and for Nvidia, the agreement confirms that demand for AI is going strong.

Considering this, both of these companies make great AI stocks to buy and hold onto as this AI growth story develops.

The White House denies any involvement with the deal despite Nvidia’s CEO meeting US President Donald Trump only a day before.

Nvidia says it will invest $5bn into Intel, throwing its heft behind the struggling US chip company, but has stopped short of giving Intel a crucial manufacturing deal.

Nvidia, which is based in Santa Clara, California, announced the investment on Thursday.

The pact, which also includes a plan for Intel and Nvidia to jointly develop personal computer and data centre chips, represents a potential risk to Taiwan’s TSMC. TSMC currently manufactures Nvidia’s flagship processors, a business that the world’s most valuable company could one day extend to Intel. AMD, which competes with Intel for supplying chips to data centres, also stands to lose because of Nvidia’s backing of Intel.

Nvidia, whose must-have chips are powering a global artificial intelligence boom, said in a statement it will pay $23.28 per share for Intel common stock, a price slightly below the $24.90 at which Intel shares closed on Wednesday.

However, that is higher than the $20.47 price per share that the United States government paid for a 10 percent stake it took in Intel last month, an extraordinary development.

The White House has denied any involvement in the deal, which comes only a day after US President Donald Trump met Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang on Wednesday.

New opening

Nvidia’s latest investment will make it one of Intel’s largest shareholders, likely owning 4 percent or more of the company after new shares are issued to complete the deal.

Nvidia’s support represents a new opening for Intel after years of turnaround efforts at the famed US manufacturer failed to pay off.

Intel – once the chip industry’s flagbearer that claimed to put the “silicon” in Silicon Valley – appointed a new CEO, Lip-Bu Tan, in March. Tan has promised to make Intel’s operation lean and build factory capacity only when there’s demand to match it.

Crucially, the deal will not involve Intel’s contract manufacturing business, known as a “foundry” in the chip industry, making chips for Nvidia. Most analysts believe that for Intel’s foundry to survive, it would need to eventually win a large customer such as Nvidia, Apple, Qualcomm or Broadcom.

But the deal adds to a growing reserve of capital that Intel has accumulated weeks after it announced a $2bn investment from Softbank and received $5.7bn from the US government.

David Zinsner, Intel’s chief financial officer, told investors at a Deutsche Bank conference last month that the company was in a “good cash position” and would not require much more capital until it saw significant demand for 14A, a next-generation manufacturing process that it expects to invest heavily in building.

Under the deal announced Thursday, Intel is planning to design custom data-centre central processors that Nvidia will package with its AI chips, known as GPUs. A proprietary Nvidia technology will let the Intel and Nvidia chips communicate at higher speeds than before.

Those speedy links are a key differentiator in the AI market because many chips must be strung together to act as one to chew through massive amounts of data.

At present, Nvidia’s best-selling AI servers with those speedy links are only available using Nvidia’s own chips, but the deal would now put Intel on equal footing, giving it a chance to make money off each Nvidia server.

On Wall Street, Nvidia’s stock is trending upwards. As of 12pm in New York (16:00 GMT), it is up more than 3.4 percent from the market open. Intel stock is surging up more than 29 percent for the day.

ADVERTISEMENT

Banco Sabadell shareholders unanimously backed the sale of its UK subsidiary TSB to Banco Santander at an extraordinary meeting on Wednesday.

The deal, valued at a minimum of £2.65 billion (around €3.05 billion), represents a notable gain against the acquisition price. In 2015, Sabadell bought TSB for £1.7 billion, equivalent today to around €1.95 billion.

The approval of this divestment comes at a particularly sensitive time, as the Catalan bank is the target of a hostile takeover bid by BBVA. For this reason, the board of directors needed to obtain the explicit approval of the shareholders before closing any strategic operation of this calibre.

TSB, focused on the UK mortgage market, has been one of the key assets in Sabadell’s defence against the proposed hostile takeover.

The sale of TSB is part of Sabadell’s strategy to strengthen its independent position in the face of the takeover bid launched by BBVA. By divesting TSB, the Catalan bank seeks to reduce its international exposure, simplify its structure and generate liquidity to remunerate its shareholders.

The plan includes an extraordinary dividend of €2.5 billion in 2026, which must be approved this afternoon, plus additional ordinary payments.

This increases the attractiveness of maintaining the bank as an autonomous entity and complicates BBVA’s takeover attempt.

The proposed acquisition has sparked political controversy in Spain and in Brussels. Last month, the European Commission sent Spain a legal warning after the government sought to impose conditions on the merger.

A majority of Warner Bros. Discovery shareholders voted against the 2024 compensation package given to Chief Executive David Zaslav and other executives at the company’s annual meeting Monday, according to a regulatory filing.

Almost 60% of the votes cast came in against the 2024 executive pay package at the company, according to a regulatory filing Tuesday. The vote is nonbinding.

In a statement, the board said it “takes the results of the annual advisory vote on executive compensation seriously,” adding it “looks forward to continuing its regular practice of engaging in constructive dialog with our shareholders.”

Zaslav, 65, earned $51.9 million last year in salary, stock awards and other compensation. Shares of Warner Bros. declined 7.1% in 2024, while the S&P 500 index gained 23%.

Warner Bros. reported first-quarter financial results that missed Wall Street’s estimates last month. The company recently reorganized into two business units, fueling speculation it may split off cable TV networks like CNN and TNT into a separate company. The entertainment giant took a $9.1 billion writedown to reflect the declining value of its traditional TV networks last year.

Zaslav, who merged Discovery with WarnerMedia in 2022 to create Warner Bros. Discovery, has drawn criticism during his tenure as CEO. He recently changed the name of the company’s Max streaming service back to HBO Max after an unsuccessful brand overhaul. The company also announced it is launching a new online video service built around CNN, three years after canceling the short-lived CNN+ streaming service.

Miller writes for Bloomberg.