High-stakes AI gamble! Meta launches its first stock option incentive plan for executives, linked to a sixfold increase in market value

Ask AI · How will this incentive plan help Meta seize an early lead in the AI competition?

IT Home, March 25 news: According to Reuters, Meta has rolled out a stock option incentive plan for its executive team. The options are tied to the company’s valuation increasing sixfold to more than $9 trillion (IT Home note: using the current exchange rate, approximately 62.09 trillion yuan). Potential earnings could reach hundreds of millions of dollars, aiming to retain core talent and drive aggressive growth for the company in the AI era.

This is the first time the social media giant has offered such options to senior management. The options require achieving extremely high stock price targets. This move shows that, in the AI race, large technology companies are rethinking incentive mechanisms. They are investing thousands of billions of dollars to build data centers, and they are also changing the long-standing tradition of being unwilling to take on debt, in order to seize a competitive advantage.

Based on Tuesday’s closing price of $592.92 per share, Meta’s stock price needs to rise by at least 88.2% to $1,116.08 in order to unlock the option share portion with the lowest exercise price.

Regulatory filings submitted on Tuesday evening show that to unlock the option tranche with the strongest incentive level, the company’s stock price would need to surge more than sixfold, reaching as high as $3,727.12 per share.

After reaching this stock price level, Meta’s market capitalization would exceed $9 trillion, far surpassing Nvidia (market cap: $4.257 trillion), the company with the highest current global market cap.

Meta must achieve the above stock price target by February 14, 2028, for the options to vest. If it fails to meet the target, any unvested options held by executives will vest in installments starting August 15, 2030. If the options are not exercised, they will expire and become void on March 31, 2031.

Tesla previously also rolled out a similar options plan for CEO Elon · Musk; if certain operational targets are met, the related returns could be about $1 trillion.

Meta’s incentive plan this time does not include the company’s CEO Mark · Zuckerberg.

According to regulatory filings, the personnel eligible for this options incentive include: Chief Financial Officer Susan · Li, technology lead Andrew · Bosworth, product lead Chris · Cox, operations head Javier · Olivén, president Dina · Powell McCormick, and Chief Legal Officer Curtis · Ma-Aoni.

Apart from McCormick and Ma-Aoni, who joined Meta only in January of this year, the other executives will also receive an incremental increase in restricted stock awards. Based on the latest closing price, the total value of this portion is $170 million, and these shares will vest quarterly. Chief Accounting Officer Allen · Andersen receives restricted stock awards only.

Over the years, Meta has rolled out generous compensation packages to recruit top AI researchers to its newly formed superintelligence team, and has previously introduced proposals with some worth as much as hundreds of millions of dollars.

A Meta spokesperson said this compensation package is a “major bet,” adding that “only if Meta achieves tremendous success in the future and benefits all shareholders will these incentives be realized.”