Elon Musk, the CEO and founder of SpaceX and Tesla, has paid himself one of the biggest performance-based compensations in US history.

The Iron Man of real-life paid himself $700 million.

The news was confirmed by Tesla on Thursday.

The payout of Musk comes after the company reached a number of their targets, which includes reaching the $20 billion USD mark total revenue for its last 4 quarters.

Elon Musk does not have a salary with Tesla, however, he gets discounted shares of the company.

The payout is considered as one of the biggest single performance-based compensation in the history of the United States of America.

It is the first of 12 bundles that he will be receiving when his company will meet their financial goals.

However, another stockholder in Tesla, the company that Musk founded, is challenging the actions of Musk, saying that the money he got is an excessive amount.

Not only that, but the stockholder said that it is a breach of the moral integrity of board members.

The filing said that Musk is able to purchase 1.69 million shares of Tesla stock, costing $350.02 each.

It was not made clear whether he did or did not purchase them.

The payout Musk got was based on the difference between the option price and the closing share price of Thursday, which was at $805.81.

The option that he had was part of a compensation package that was approved by the board back in 2018.

They said at that time:

We believe compensation incentives for executive officers should promote the success of our company and motivate them to pursue corporate objectives. We have put an emphasis on structuring compensation incentives so as to reward clear, easily measured performance goals that closely align their incentives with the long-term interests of our stockholders.

Tesla was also confirmed to have reached the milestones of hitting a total market value of $100 billion on a 30-day and 6-month average.

It was also confirmed that Tesla reached $1.5 billion in adjusted pretax earnings.

That milestone however needs to be certified.