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Tesla investors are lobbying to shoot down the largest moonshot compensation plan in history.

A group including the New York City pension funds filed a notice on Monday urging others to vote against Tesla CEO Elon Musks $46 billion stock-option package at the companys shareholder meeting on June 13. New York City Comptroller Brad Lander, who serves as investment advisor to the citys funds with $260 billion in assets, is marshaling the charge.

According to the letter he signed, the Tesla board is overly beholden to Musk and hasnt bothered to step in when Musk ignores Tesla to focus on his roles at the Boring Company, Neuralink, SpaceX, X, and other companies. The investors complained about Musk splitting his time between the companies by focusing on one company per day. The board has yet to ensure that Tesla has a full-time CEO, investors said.

Meanwhile, hes siphoning key talent away from Tesla. More recently, Musk has begun poaching top engineers from Teslas AI and autonomy team for his new company, xAI, including Ethan Knight, who was computer vision chief at Tesla, the investor letter said.

The notice has the makings of a showdown next month between some of Teslas pension fund investors, who believe theyre overpaying for a part-time CEO, and the EV makers base of individual retail investors who see Musk as a visionary leader who must remain at Tesla at all costs. At stake is a shareholder vote to ratify Musks pay plan, now valued at about $46 billion, after it was rescinded by a judge in January. Tesla proposed the pay plan a second time in the spring, and has thrown its support behind the proposal.

Musk has rallied the retail base of support with tweets thanking them for voting and Teslas own ads promoting a vote in favor of Musks pay plan. Since April 29, Tesla has notified investors 11 separate times that Musk has tweeted about the meeting or that it has updated its website devoted to the vote, titled Protecting Your Investment and Teslas Future.

According to the dissident investors, which include Amalgamated Bank, AkademikerPension, and SOC Investment Group, Musk represents a key risk to stock values because he has pledged a portion of his 20% stake in Tesla as collateral for loans. If Musk were ever forced to sell his pledged stock, it could lead to a massive drop in stock price to the detriment of shareholders, the investor letter said.

Plus, the hands-off nature of the board means Musk treats Tesla as a coffer for himself and his other businesses, the investors argue. Musk has admitted to using Tesla engineers to work on issues at X, formerly Twitter, and defended himself by saying that no Tesla board member had stopped him from using Tesla staff for his other businesses, according to the letter. Those distractions have played a material role in Teslas underperformance relative to the S&P 500, General Motors, and Ford, investors said.

The Tesla board begs to differ, however. The website Tesla set up to support its pay-ratification vote features voting instructions and other information about the shareholder meeting, including a video with independent board chair Robyn Denholm. In it, Denholm said Musks comp plan was set up a decade ago with targets so far-fetched, so extraordinarily ambitious that skeptics called them laughingly impossible.

If he failed, Elon was entitled to receive no salary, no cash bonuses, and no equity, said Denholm. But if Elon was able to make it happen, you and all other stockholders would reap the benefits. The award worked. In half the time, Musk grew revenues from $11.8 billion to $96.8 billion, and turned profitability from $2.2 billion in the red to a $15 billion profit, Denholm said.

Indeed, one of the key reasons the vote to ratify Musks moonshot pay plan succeeded in 2018 was because the stakes were markedly different from other CEOs. The Tesla board was prepared to pay Musk $0 if he didnt hit the targets, rather than applying what is known as so-called board discretion, where corporate directors still pay CEOs who have failed to hit financial markers.

Oftentimes, boards tell investors they dont want to hold CEOs or executives responsible for economic headwinds or other factors out of their control that contributed to them missing stated financial targets or goals. Although, boards must balance the need for discretion with the need to keep executives and CEOs in their roles. Only in an extreme case would a CEO take home no pay for a long-term awardin addition to no salary, cash bonus or time-based stockbecause the risk of losing the executive and destabilizing the company would be too high.

What makes Musks pay plan complicated is that investors likely see troubles ahead for Tesla, while the board appears to be focused on paying Musk for the targets he achieved in the past. Further, the magnitude of his pay and the fact that Teslas performance has struggled this year has added to the complexity. The company announced it would lay off 10% of its staff and even slashed its summer internship program, all while the company is devoting resources to reinstating Musks moonshot. Musk himself famously ignores the norms most publicly traded company CEOs abide by and appears to actand tweetimpulsively and without conferring with the independent directors on the board, which does little to reassure investors.

In addition to ratifying his pay plan, Tesla is seeking investor approval to move from being incorporated in Delaware to Texas, a change that seems motivated by the Delaware judges ruling on Musks pay. According to the voting website: The Delaware Court has shown that it will ignore the will of our stockholders. We believe in stockholder rights. We believe Texas Courts will respect those rights.

In addition to rallying other investors to vote down Musks pay, the dissident group is asking shareholders to withhold support from Musks brother, Kimbal Musk, and former 21st Century Fox CEO James Murdoch. Kimbal has served on the board for 20 years, and Murdoch is Musks friend. Neither is truly independent, the investors said.

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Investors clash over Elon Musk's $46 billion pay package: 'The board has yet to ensure that Tesla has a full-time CEO' - Fortune

When Robert F. Kennedy Jr. was considering potential running mates for his presidential run, his shortlist was initially topped by two well-known men with unusual rsums: Aaron Rodgers, the N.F.L. quarterback and frequent purveyor of conspiracy theories, and Jesse Ventura, the former governor of Minnesota and professional wrestler known as The Body.

Instead, Mr. Kennedy made a surprise pick a woman and a little-known figure with an unusual background: Nicole Shanahan.

Ms. Shanahan, 38, a onetime Silicon Valley lawyer, has never held public office and has scant name recognition. But she was selected after Mr. Rodgers and Mr. Ventura fell through as vice-presidential candidates and Mr. Kennedys campaign needed money to fund its efforts to get onto state ballots, three people familiar with the events said. And money was something that Ms. Shanahan could provide in abundance.

Ms. Shanahan has a fortune of more than $1 billion that stems largely from her divorce settlement last year with Sergey Brin, a founder of Google, whose net worth exceeds $145 billion, three people with knowledge of her finances said. During their five-year marriage, Ms. Shanahan partied with Silicon Valleys elite and used recreational drugs including cocaine, ketamine and psychedelic mushrooms, according to eight people and documents reviewed by The New York Times. Ms. Shanahan and Mr. Brin separated after she had a sexual encounter with Elon Musk in 2021, three of the people said.

The incidents were part of a rarefied and sometimes turbulent life that Ms. Shanahan led in the nations tech capital before her turn to politics, according to interviews with more than 20 people who know her or were briefed on her actions, as well as property records, court documents, tax records, emails and other messages reviewed by The Times. Many of the details of her life, including those of her divorce settlement, have not been reported.

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Inside the Life of Nicole Shanahan, RFK Jr.s Running Mate - The New York Times

Welcome toForeign Policys South Asia Brief.

The highlights this week: Billionaire entrepreneur Elon Musk meets with Sri Lankas president in Bali, the United States issues travel restrictions on a former Bangladesh Army chief for alleged corruption, and South Asian governments mourn Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi.

Sri Lankan President Ranil Wickremesinghe met billionaire entrepreneur Elon Musk at a conference in Bali last Sunday, where they spoke about Musks Starlink satellite internet service, which he is launching in Indonesia. Starlinks expansion could be particularly transformative for countries like Sri Lanka, Wickremesinghe said in a post on X after their meeting.

Musk is aggressively marketing Starlink around the world: He says that the service is now available in 99 countries. (In 2021, that figure was just 14.) It isnt yet available in South Asia, which is an especially attractive market due to its large and young population, its emerging technology sectors, and government pledges to ramp up digital economies. But financial, legal, and logistical constraints pose challenges that could hurt Starlinks prospects in the region.

In the last few decades, internet penetration rates increased rapidly across South Asia. India and Pakistan rank in the worlds top 10 countries for total internet users. However, this masks the massive number of South Asians989 million people, including more than 683 million in Indiawho remain offline. Only 47 percent of South Asias total population uses the internet, according to DataReportal.

This presents an opening for Starlink, especially given that the services low-orbit satellites are intended to reduce connection problems and better serve remote regions, which Musk describes as a key investment target. Despite rapid urbanization in recent years, most of South Asias population remains in rural areas.

But Starlink faces multiple challenges making inroads in South Asia, mainly because the services drawbacks will be especially glaring there. First, Starlink isnt cheap: In Indonesia, its more than twice the average cost of internet service. In South Asia, recent inflation has resulted in sluggish private consumption growth, including within well-performing economies like India. Many wont want to pay for Starlink.

Additionally, there are mixed reviews of Starlinks ability to withstand the elements. Some users in the West concur with the companys assurances that connections remain strong during extreme weather events, but others report disruptions. In South Asia, where extreme weather is frequent, this could be another turnoff.

Furthermore, many South Asian governments seek influence over foreign firms operations, which may rankle Starlink. This disconnect has played out publicly in Nepal, where Starlink officials have balked at a law that requires foreign companies to agree to a domestic stake of at least 20 percent.

As a result, Starlink may struggle to penetrate South Asian markets with no shortage of cheaper alternatives. Bangladesh is the only state in the region known to have formally agreed to provide a license to Starlink, although its unclear when the service will be available there. (The company says 2025.) India is close to a licensing agreement after Starlink reportedly found a solution to Indian data localization concerns.

Starlinks challenges in the region underscore a broader irony: South Asia is an attractive destination for global tech investors, but the region also throws up a striking number of obstacles: cost and local ownership issues, a lack of skilled workers, and periodic crackdowns on online content.

In India, Musk may fare better with another of his prized companies. New Delhi is rapidly expanding its electric vehicle sector, and it is keen to attract Tesla. But despite repeatedly signaling his desire to enter the Indian market, Musk abruptly postponed a meeting in India with Prime Minister Narendra Modi last month. He did manage to visit Beijing, though, raising some eyebrows in New Delhi.

For now, at least, when it comes to Musk and South Asia, it seems that the stars have not yet aligned.

U.S. bans former Bangladesh Army chief. On Monday, the U.S. State Department announced travel restrictions on Aziz Ahmed, who served as Bangladeshs Army chief from 2018 to 2021, over alleged corruption. The announcement accused Ahmed of helping his brother evade justice for illegal activities and said Ahmed accepted improper military contracts and bribes. (These allegations and more were laid out in detail in a 2021 Al Jazeera documentary.)

The United States sanctioned Bangladesh for the first time in 2021, focusing on a paramilitary organization accused of human rights abuses. Several unnamed Bangladeshis were also hit with visa restrictions last year related to undermining the democratic election process.

Still, the Monday announcement caught Dhaka by surprise. The United States had taken a softer public line on Bangladesh in the months since the countrys January elections, which the U.S. State Department labeled not free or fair. Public messaging has struck a more positive tone: During a trip to Dhaka last week, Donald Lu, the U.S. assistant secretary of state for South and Central Asian affairs, spoke of the importance of moving ties forward.

The restrictions on Ahmed are a reminder that human rights and democracy promotion remain a core element of the U.S.-Bangladesh relationship. And given Washingtons desire to ensure a cordial partnership, the decision is actually a fairly safe bet: Its a relatively light punishment that doesnt go after economic assets, and it targets a retired official. Tellingly, Bangladeshs government hasnt come to Ahmeds defense.

South Asian leaders mourn Raisi. Leaders across the region expressed condolences for Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi after his death in a helicopter crash last weekend alongside Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian and six others. Several South Asian governments declared a period of mourning, including Indias.

As South Asia Brief explained last month, Iran is looking to expand engagement across the region; one of Raisis last foreign trips was a visit to Pakistan and Sri Lanka last month. Although Raisis death isnt likely to directly affect the regions interests, Irans sudden power transition will be watched closely in South Asian capitals, especially given surging instability in the Middle East.

Officials will keep an eye on whether Raisis successor introduces any significant policy shiftsnot only in terms of policy toward the Israel-Hamas war, but also toward Saudi Arabia, a key partner of both India and Pakistan.

Indian election update. India completed its fifth phase of voting in ongoing national elections on Monday, when voters in six states and two union territories went to the polls. They included the major electoral prize of Uttar Pradesh, Indias most populous state and a ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) stronghold; and the disputed region of Kashmir.

One of the big storylines in recent days has been the question of anti-incumbency, even as the BJP is expected to win. In private conversations, some Indian political analysts have predicted that Modi and the BJP will struggle to earn the parliamentary supermajority they seek. Some are even predicting that the party will fall short of its margin of victory in the 2019 elections. (Of course, other analysts argue that the BJP could do better than 2019.)

The skeptics have cited relatively low voter turnout compared to 2019 in the early phases of voting, which some analysts think may reflect voter apathy and unhappiness with the BJP. According to initial data released by Indias election commission for the current election phase, turnout was pegged at a robust 60.48 percent, just a bit lower than in 2019.

Some of the highest turnout occurred in states not currently governed by the BJP, such as West Bengal. Meanwhile, turnout in Kashmir rose to its highest level since 1984a boost for the BJP, which has argued that the situation in Indian-administered Kashmir has stabilized since New Delhi revoked its special autonomous status in 2019.

Hundreds of Pakistani students living in Kyrgyzstan have flown home in recent days after local mobs attacked university facilities housing Pakistanis and other foreign students in the capital, Bishkek, last weekend.

The circumstances surrounding the violence are unclear; what is known is that mobs began targeting foreign students after some locals got into an argument with Egyptian students. Because of their relatively large numberPakistanis comprise about 12,000 of the roughly 60,000 international students in KyrgyzstanPakistanis may have been an easy target.

Both the Kyrgyz and Pakistani governments have confirmed that there were several injuries to students and no deathsdespite initial unconfirmed social media reports. Pakistani Foreign Minister Ishaq Dar visited Bishkek on Tuesday. Yet the damage was done: Hundreds of students have left, and the incident angered many Pakistanis, who accused the government of not acting swiftly enough.

In the Print, former civil servant Sanjeev Chopra discusses the idea of adding a second time zone in India, in the countrys east. He asks, Considering that countries like France have thirteen time zones [including overseas territory], and Russia and the US have eleven each, with daylight savingsis it time for India to at least discuss the pros and cons of this issue threadbare?

An Express Tribune editorial laments the frequency of wildfires in Pakistans Margalla Hills National Park, including one this month that spread across a nearly two-mile area. Let this recent incident serve as a call to action. Enhancing our firefighting capabilities will go a long way in safeguarding the Margalla Hills and ensuring their beauty and biodiversity endure for generations to come, it argues.

Journalist Sohrab Hassan decries new rules that forbid journalists from entering Bangladeshs central bank. When the journalists get information from various sources, they need to go to Bangladesh Bank to clarify these stories. If this is seen as conspiratorial or if attempts are made to conceal the facts, this will not bode well for Bangladesh Bank, he writes in Prothom Alo.

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Will Elon Musk Test the South Asian Market? - Foreign Policy

Elon Musks AI company, xAI, is making progress on adding multimodal inputs to its Grok chatbot, according to public developer documents. What this means is that, soon, users may be able to upload photos to Grok and receive text-based answers.

This was first teased in a blog post last month from xAI which said Grok-1.5V will offer multimodal models in a number of domains. The latest update to the developer documents appear to show progress on shipping a new model.

In the developer documents, a sample Python script demonstrates how developers can use the xAI software development kit library to generate a response based on both text and images. This script reads an image file, sets up a text prompt, and uses the xAI SDK to generate a response.

This is a big update for Grok, which xAI first released in November 2023 and is available to users who pay for the X Premium Plus subscription. The last update was Grok 1.5 in March, which came with improved reasoning capabilities.

The model is trained on a variety of text data from publicly available sources from the Internet up to Q3 2023 and data sets reviewed and curated by ... human reviewers, according to a blog post from X. Grok-1 was not trained on X data (including public X posts), the blog added. However, Grok does have real-time knowledge of the world,including posts on X.

xAI, founded by Elon Musk in March 2023, is relatively new in the AI field and trails behind competitors such as OpenAIs ChatGPT. However, according to a blog post from xAI, their Grok 1.5 model is closing the gap with GPT-4 on various benchmarks that span a wide range of grade school to high school competition problems. Its important to note that benchmarks for large language models are often criticized because the models can perform well on benchmarks if those benchmarks are included in their training data. Its sort of like memorizing test answers, rather than actually learning the material.

Multimodal conversational chatbots seem to be the next frontier for AI, with multiple advancements announced at Google I/O and OpenAI releasing GPT-4o, so Grok lacking multimodal capabilities has put it behind the curve until now.

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Elon Musk's xAI is working on making Grok multimodal - The Verge

Over a month into Chief Executive Officer Elon Musks plans to slash at least10% of the companys workforce, hes still not done. This means anxious employees wake up each dayto check their messages, wondering if they still have a job. The rolling job cuts are likely to extend through at least June, according to people familiar with the matter, who werentauthorized to speak publicly about the layoffs.

Its difficult to imagine the feeling of walking on eggshells every day at work, uncertain whether or not youll be able to pay your bills or feed your family, Michael Minick, a former Tesla sales representative who was laid off in April,wroteon LinkedIn. It would be a relief to know that they can breathe and focus on their work, without the gray cloud of uncertainty looming over.

Teslas workforce already has endured dramatic transformation the last few years the onetime Silicon Valley upstart with a maniacal vision on clean energy is now concentratedin Texasand fixated on other undertakings, includingartificial intelligenceandrobots.

Somestill with the company say Musk has sapped morale by prioritizinga robotaxi over a $25,000 electric vehicle. They also say amission that had inspired legions of Musk acolytes has been muddied.

Musk has yet to give staff an all clear indication that the job cuts are over, leading co-workers to darkly joke with one another about anxiety andinsomnia. One current employee described the atmosphere as akin toSquid Game, the hit television series in which characters facing financial hardship fight for their lives playing deadly childrens contests.

The waves of dismissals, which already have hit thousands across departments including sales, human resources and virtually the entireSuperchargerdivision, are expected to gut significant parts ofTesla, whichstarted the year with more than 140,000 employees. Musk has pushed for a 20% reduction in headcount, Bloomberg reported last month.

In the Supercharger division, some employees found out that Max de Zegher, the director of charging for North America, had been laid off afterhis Microsoft Teams icon suddenly went gray,indicating that he was no longer with the company.

Many on theteam spent the next several dayssaying their goodbyes, cracking jokes and making references to the Titanic,according to Joel Musial,who was laid off from his job as a Tesla construction manager.We were just missing the string quartet! Musialwroteon LinkedIn.

The gallows humor pervaded the Supercharging team, which had set upmore than 6,200 stations and 57,000 connectors worldwide and was in the process ofopening the networkto other automakers, which should increase usage.

Musk says Teslastill plans to growthe network, albeit at a slower pace.Herehiredde Zegher, but hasnt said how many others will be asked to return.

Its also unclear whether the company will have enough personnel to sustain Supercharger stations, after layoffs hit several technician groups. A former employee in California said two dozen people were cut from an 80-person team that maintained and fixedSuperchargersin Northern California, leaving gaps in both geography and specialties.

The region now has just one employee in an over 200-mile stretch between Santa Rosa and Eureka, said the person, who was cut two weeks after the initial layoff announcement.

Another person in a similar role based in Canada predictedchaos after he and dozens of others were let go, since many Tesla charging stations are hours apart,and the amount of work requiredwill only increase once more companies customers get access.

He said hed worked for two weeks after the initial layoff announcement in a state of distraction and uncertainty, where an ever-growing workload and constantly disappearing co-workers made it difficult to concentrate. On his last day at Tesla, he said he was dispatching technicians and attending his daily slate of meetings,only to find himself locked out of his company laptop at 10:45 p.m. By 11:01 p.m. that night, hereceived the layoff noticeat his personal account.

The cuts are hitting at a time of sluggish demand for the broader EV industry, which is heapingpressure on a workforce already coming to grips with changes in the companys culture, according to a former sales employee.The person saidhed already seen significant turnover in his near-decade with Tesla, and that each departurecostthe carmakercrucialinstitutional knowledge.

Great companies are made up of equal parts great people and great products, and the latter are only possible when its people are thriving,Rich Otto, who resigned as Teslas head of product launches this month, said in a LinkedIn post that he deleted after media outlets reported on it. The recent layoffs that are rocking the company and its morale have thrown this harmony out of balance, and its hard to see the long game.

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Elon Musk still hasn't finished his 10% layoffs at Tesla and employees are 'walking on eggshells every day' - Fortune