Tesla filed the proxy for its 2026 annual shareholder meeting on October 19, 2026. The meeting is set for December 3 at Gigafactory Texas (and online), for shareholders of record as of October 13, with online voting open until 11:59 p.m. ET on December 2.
A short ballot
Shareholders vote on three items, all recommended “For” by the board:
- Re-electing Elon Musk, board chair Robyn Denholm and JB Straubel as Class I directors for three-year terms.
- A non-binding say-on-pay vote on 2025 executive compensation.
- Ratifying PricewaterhouseCoopers as Tesla’s auditor for 2026.
Electrek reports there are no shareholder proposals on the ballot so far, and the board won’t bring back last year’s failed attempts to declassify the board or drop supermajority voting rules, so the staggered board stays.
The pay figure
The proxy reports Musk’s 2025 compensation at about $158.4 billion, almost all of it the 2025 CEO Performance Award valued as if every milestone is hit, plus an interim award he later forfeited. Tesla’s own “realized” table shows he received $0 in 2025.
Why people are reading it as merger prep
Electrek highlights several details that line up with a possible Tesla-SpaceX combination:
- Change-in-control terms: In a change in control, the 2025 award drops its operational milestones and measures Tesla’s market cap once, using the deal price, so tranches can vest immediately.
- Retail auto-voting: A new Voluntary Retail Voting Program lets ProxyVote and Robinhood users set a standing instruction to vote with the board, either on everything or on everything except contested elections and mergers. It starts with the meeting after December 3.
- Board links: Director Ira Ehrenpreis joined SpaceX’s board in February, and with Elon and Kimbal Musk, three of Tesla’s nine directors have SpaceX ties.
No deal has been announced. Analysts at Barclays have floated the idea of an announcement before the December meeting, and Tesla stock rose about 3.1% Monday morning to around $365.59, according to Investing.com. Tesla reports Q3 results on Wednesday, October 21, a day after SpaceX’s own Q3 report.
Sources: Electrek, Tesla DEFA14A filing, Investing.com