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Despite recent fanfare surrounding a record-breaking pay package for its CEO, Tesla workers have been warned of a storm ahead as the company's AI chief illustrates that it will be the 'hardest year' of their lives.
There's no doubt that Tesla is at the top of the food chain when it comes to electric vehicles, as is by public market cap the most valuable car company in the world, valued at around $1.39 trillion in total.
This has led the company's board members to vote in favor of a jaw-dropping pay package worth $1 trillion for its CEO Elon Musk, which he would achieve when Tesla hits a number of key milestones over the next decade or so.
These include an increasing market value, dramatically ramped up delivery figures, and the success of new products like robotaxi and the company's Optimus robots.
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While that might make Musk himself a happy man, and Tesla would benefit significantly if he's able to get that record-breaking fortune, it might not look so sunny for the company's employees as they've now been issued a rather eerie warning from the inside.
As reported by Fortune, information obtained by Business Insider indicates that Ashok Elluswamy, Tesla's 'AI chief', attempted to rally the company's artificial intelligence teams by telling them that 2026 will be the 'hardest year' of their lives.
Elluswamy recently took the place of Milan Kovac as the lead on Tesla's Optimus division after the latter left in June, but production and development is failing to keep up with the aggressive timelines that have been laid out, which is presumably why 2026 could be a rough year for workers.
They'll be expected to deliver on arguably unrealistic goals in the attempt to meet many of the conditions laid out in Musk's pay package, and they won't be the ones on the receiving end of a trillion-dollar check.
Musk himself previously claimed that Optimus "could become the largest product in history" with around 80 percent of Tesla's income coming from sales of the robot, but that's merely a pipe dream at the moment as progress continues to stall.
Additionally, progress on the robotaxi project is continuing to fall behind rivals despite the product actually being deployed, as while Google's Waymo service is expanding into new areas with fresh partnerships, Tesla only has promises of roll outs that are still yet to happen to fall back on, and it's up to the company's workers to make that happen.
