SpaceX's initial public offering (IPO) has brought challenges to retaining key leadership—these executives' stakes in the satellite and spacecraft manufacturing company, valued at $2.1 trillion, have pushed their personal wealth to new heights.

According to the company's prospectus, Bret Johnsen, the chief financial officer who has been with the newly public company for 15 years, held more than9 million shares of Class A common stockbefore SpaceX's historic IPO last Friday. Its IPO closing price was$160.95 per share—which, according to related reports, boosted the finance chief's net worth to approximately $1.4 billion, while also making founder Elon Musk the world's first trillionaire.

But "once employees reach that level of wealth creation, retention becomes a real issue," Shawn Cole, president of boutique executive search firm Cowen Partners, said in an email response to CFO Dive.

Cole noted that anyone focused on future C-suite stability should closely monitor SpaceX's retention policies for its executives following the highly anticipated listing. This could include examining whether there are additional retention incentives for the CFO, or how much of the finance chief's wealth is tied to his continued tenure or the company's future performance.

Johnsen is a long-time employee of Musk's company, joining as CFO in 2011—when the company began considering going public, according to a press release at the time of his hiring. A Broadcom alum—where he served as corporate controller for eight years—Musk said in the press release that Johnsen's expertise in "high-profile, publicly traded technology companies" would be "invaluable" to the company's future growth, as quoted in the release.

Cole said his recent jump in personal wealth means he "may not stay on as CFO for the long term." "Why would he? Look at Zach Kirkhorn."

Kirkhorn worked at Musk's Tesla for 13 years, serving as CFO of the electric vehicle company for four years, and left in 2023 with anet worth of $590 million, CFO Dive reported at the time. Tesla completed itsIPO in 2010。

In Musk-led companies, a common pattern is that most of those millions represent Kirkhorn's Tesla stock and options—for example, he received $16.3 million in stock awards in 2022, CFO Dive previously reported. His successor, Vaibhav Taneja, became one of the highest-paid finance chiefs in 2024, receiving acompensation package of $139 million, mostly consisting of stock awards and options, CFO Dive reported.

According to the prospectus filing, Johnsen's compensation for 2025 also largely consisted of stock options, with total compensation of $9.8 million, including a base salary of $825,000, with the remainder made up of those options.

The filing submitted to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) last Friday also outlined Johnsen's future compensation plan, which may indicate that the spacecraft manufacturer has taken steps to further incentivize the Broadcom alum to remain in the top financial position he has held for 15 years.

His long-term incentive award for SpaceX's fiscal year 2025 consists "entirely" of options to purchase 324,325 shares of Class A stock, granted by the company's board on May 10 of that year. The vesting schedule for the award is: 40% vests in equal monthly installments from January 1, 2027 to December 1, 2027, and 60% vests in equal monthly installments from January 1, 2028 to December 1, 2030, "in each case, subject to Mr. Johnsen's continued employment with us through the applicable vesting date," the company said.

In January of this year, the space technology company's board also approved an amendment to 4 million performance-based stock options granted to Johnsen in 2024, which stipulates that "instead of vesting based on free cash flow achievement above a baseline, they will now vest such that for every $10 billion in adjusted EBITDA achieved during fiscal years 2025 through 2029, 371,125 stock options will vest," according to the filing.

For that award, SpaceX defines EBITDA as operating income, excluding depreciation and amortization, share-based payments, impairment, and restructuring impacts, according to the SEC filing.

Cole said that in high-growth, capital-intensive companies with "enormous investment needs," tying performance incentives to EBITDA makes sense. In such cases, meaningful free cash flow may not be achievable for some time, making EBITDA a more "practical metric" for measuring operational performance or scale.

According to last Friday's filing, SpaceX reported adjusted EBITDA of $6.5 billion for fiscal year 2025, with an operating loss of $2.5 billion.

Although EBITDA is a common incentive metric in executive compensation, "performance-based stock options tied to very large, absolute adjusted EBITDA thresholds are not common," Cole said. "This structure is typically more targeted at high-growth pre-IPO companies, which we often see in private equity-backed enterprises, rather than public companies."

However, Cole noted that this arrangement is broadly consistent with Musk-led companies' "historical emphasis on ambitious operational milestones," and pointed out that retail investor participation in SpaceX's IPO was "also relatively limited, which to some extent changes the dynamics of the public market."

Therefore, "this compensation structure may face scrutiny, but not necessarily the broad retail pressure seen in traditional public listings," he said. "It's worth watching whether these targets are achievable and sustainable, especially as the company operates under higher disclosure expectations and public market scrutiny."