3 hours ago 2

Tesla stock surges as Elon Musk buys $1 billion in shares

Mon, Sep 15, 2025, 8:48 AM 2 min read

Elon Musk bought $1 billion worth of Tesla shares after the company proposed a decade-long, trillion-dollar pay package , sending the stock higher Monday morning.

The billionaire bought the shares on Sept. 12, according to a regulatory filing , placing it on the same day Tesla Chair Robyn Denholm defended the pay plan, calling Musk a “generational leader.”

Shares in the electric car company jumped 7% in early trading in New York, putting its value 12% up so far this year. The stock has recovered from a 45% slump in early April.

The filing comes five years after Musk last bought Tesla stock in the open market, which was in February 2020. He sold more than $20 billion worth of shares in 2022, the same year he bought Twitter.

Earlier this month, directors proposed a 10-year pay package that could deliver Musk as much as $1 trillion in stock awards if the company clears a set of extraordinary performance hurdles.

The deal would grant Musk roughly 423 million Tesla shares, currently worth about $143 billion, but the full value only materializes if Tesla executes on the series of ambitious targets.

The purchase amounts to a show of confidence in Tesla’s prospects after a challenging first half of the year in which vehicle sales slumped 13% worldwide. While Musk has talked up Tesla’s pursuit of robotaxis and humanoid robots, he’s also cautioned that the company could be in for “ a few rough quarters ” after the U.S. phases out electric-car purchase incentives at the end of this month.

The chief executive has also been increasingly preoccupied with politics and side projects, controversially heading President Donald Trump’s Department of Government Efficiency for part of this year. Some shareholders have openly pressed him to commit at least 40 hours a week to Tesla, worried that his forays into Washington and social media are draining focus at a time when execution is critical.

Denhom said on Sept. 12 that Musk’s political forays had not hurt the company. “What he does from a personal perspective, in terms of his political motivations, is up to him,” she said. “We’re in a democracy, so everybody gets to voice their points of view.”

The next day, Musk appeared remotely at a march in London organized by the far-right activist Tommy Robinson. He said “violence is coming” to the U.K. and told attendees: “You either fight back, or you die.” His comments were condemned by a spokesperson for Prime Minister Keir Starmer as dangerous.