Elon Musk Wins Shareholder Approval for Record $1 Trillion Tesla Pay Plan

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Elon Musk has secured shareholder approval for a record-breaking $1 trillion Tesla pay package, cementing his grip on the company as he pushes to transform the electric vehicle maker into a global leader in AI and robotics.

The plan received over 75% support during Tesla’s annual shareholder meeting in Austin, Texas, where Musk appeared on stage alongside dancing robots, calling the moment “a whole new book” in Tesla’s story.

The approved package could grant Musk up to $878 billion in stock over the next decade, contingent on ambitious performance milestones — including delivering 20 million vehicles, deploying 1 million robotaxis, and generating $400 billion in core profit. Tesla’s market value would need to climb from $1.5 trillion to $8.5 trillion for Musk to unlock the full payout.

The vote follows months of intense debate over Musk’s compensation and influence. The Tesla board warned that Musk could shift his focus to other ventures — such as SpaceX or his AI startup xAI — if shareholders rejected the plan.

“This isn’t just another chapter,” Musk said to cheering investors. “It’s the start of something entirely new.”

Critics, including Norway’s sovereign wealth fund and proxy advisory firms Glass Lewis and ISS, opposed the plan, citing governance concerns and the risk of excessive power consolidation. Yet supporters argued that tying compensation to Tesla’s market success aligns Musk’s incentives with shareholders’.

Shareholders also voted to invest in xAI, though analysts noted that many abstentions signaled caution over potential conflicts of interest.

The approval clears a major uncertainty clouding Tesla’s future and reinforces Musk’s position as both the visionary and lightning rod behind the company’s AI and robotics ambitions.

China’s AI Strategy Leans on Huawei Chip Clusters and Cheap Energy to Counter the U.S.

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China has found a powerful workaround to the U.S. chokehold on advanced semiconductors — combining Huawei’s massive chip clusters with abundant cheap energy to accelerate its artificial intelligence (AI) ambitions.

While Nvidia remains the global gold standard for AI chips, U.S. export restrictions have cut China off from the American company’s most powerful processors. Yet, Chinese tech giants like Huawei, Alibaba, and DeepSeek continue to build large-scale AI models using domestically produced hardware.

At the core of this effort is Huawei’s Ascend series — less advanced than Nvidia’s GPUs individually, but competitive when linked together in vast, high-speed “clusters.” One example is the Huawei CloudMatrix 384, which connects 384 Ascend 910C chips to deliver performance rivaling Nvidia’s GB200 NVL72, despite relying on five times as many chips.

“This approach leverages high-speed interconnects to compensate for weaker chips,” said Brady Wang, associate director at Counterpoint Research. “It suits China’s strengths — large-scale engineering and manufacturing.”

The tradeoff is power consumption. Huawei’s architecture demands far more energy than Nvidia’s — but China’s cheap and plentiful electricity turns that disadvantage into an asset. Supported by investments in solar, wind, and nuclear energy, as well as local government subsidies, Beijing has created a favorable environment for energy-intensive AI infrastructure.

“Less efficient chips are sustainable in China because energy is inexpensive and government-backed,” said Wendy Chang of the Mercator Institute for China Studies.

Still, a structural weakness remains. Huawei’s chips are made by SMIC, China’s top semiconductor foundry, using older 7-nanometer tools that lag far behind TSMC’s cutting-edge technology. Export restrictions, especially on ASML’s extreme ultraviolet lithography machines, limit China’s ability to close that gap.

“China’s main challenge isn’t scaling power or hardware clusters,” said Hanna Dohmen from Georgetown University’s CSET. “It’s whether they can keep up technologically as Nvidia and TSMC push performance forward.”

For now, though, Beijing’s combination of Huawei’s hardware muscle and low-cost power is proving enough to keep China in the global AI race.

Datadog Shares Surge 23% After Revenue Beat and Strong AI Demand

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Datadog shares soared 23% on Thursday, marking the company’s second-best trading day ever, after the cloud software firm posted third-quarter results that exceeded Wall Street expectations and projected robust growth for the final quarter of the year.

The New York-based company reported $885.7 million in Q3 revenue, up 28% year-over-year and well above analyst estimates of $852.8 million, according to LSEG data. For the current quarter, Datadog forecasts between $912 million and $916 million in revenue, surpassing Wall Street’s $887 million projection.

Adjusted earnings reached 55 cents per share, topping FactSet estimates of 45 cents. The company also recorded net income of $33.9 million, or 10 cents per share, compared to $51.7 million, or 14 cents, a year earlier.

CEO Olivier Pomel credited the company’s momentum to continued innovation in artificial intelligence (AI) and cloud security tools. “The Datadog R&D team is innovating rapidly to help our customers solve problems in the AI space,” he said in a statement.

Datadog has rolled out a series of AI-focused products this year, including Bits AI Agents for SRE, which can automatically investigate system alerts and generate response drafts, and expanded features for LLM Observability, designed to monitor large language models. The firm also unveiled its MCP Server, which connects AI agents to enterprise data sources, and TOTO, its proprietary foundation model.

The company said the number of customers generating over $100,000 in annual recurring revenue rose 16% in the quarter, signaling sustained enterprise adoption.