What if you were the CEO of one company, and all you had to do to receive the equivalent of $1 trillion were to have that company buy another company you also happen to be CEO of? According to the Wall Street Journal, that hypothetical may just approximate the system of incentives and rewards currently on the table for a certain businessman named Elon Reeve Musk. Musk, the world’s first ex-trillionaire, was shown a nice, juicy carrot by the Tesla board of directors last year: the approval of a long-term pay package that included a potential payout in company shares that could, if all went according to plan, award him the equivalent of about $1 trillion. But the carrot in this metaphor was meant to be attached to an incredibly long stick at the other side of a very difficult maze. Tesla theoretically needs to hit a valuation of $8.5 trillion inside of ten years—about eight times more than it was worth when the package was approved. Tesla also has to hit some “Operational Milestones,” according to the deal: the 20 millionth Tesla vehicle delivered, the millionth Tesla robotaxi, and the millionth Tesla Optimus humanoid robot. It admittedly does sound tricky to accomplish all this production while steadily increasing the company’s valuation rather than, say, tanking it.