Volkswacht Bodensee - Musk's SpaceX bonus comes with unique condition: colonize Mars

The bonus structure, laid out in SpaceX's prospectus filed with US regulators Wednesday, reads less like a compensation agreement and more like a science fiction plot.

Musk's bonus is contingent on SpaceX's stock market value hitting targets ranging from $400 billion to $6 trillion -- along with the company moving a million people to a planet 140 million miles (225 million kilometers) away.

Musk describes that ambition as essential to the long-term survival of the human race, though most experts see it as being at least decades away.

Still, Musk will do just fine if the IPO goes ahead in the coming weeks as planned.

At the company's reported target valuation of $1.75 trillion, Musk's existing stake would be worth an estimated $735 billion -- before a single person sets foot on the Red Planet.

A second, smaller bonus ties an additional 60 million shares to a different moonshot: building data centers in orbit capable of delivering 100 terawatts of computing power per year -- a figure that dwarfs anything that exists on Earth today.

SpaceX filed for its long-awaited IPO Wednesday, targeting a listing on the Nasdaq stock exchange under the ticker "SPCX" in what could be the largest public offering in Wall Street history.

The company's Starship rocket -- whose latest iteration could launch Thursday -- is explicitly designed with Mars colonization in mind.

G.Schmid--VB