Editing Elon Musk (section)

== Business Career ==

=== Early Ventures (1995-2002) ===
Musk's first major business venture was Zip2, an online city guide co-founded with his brother Kimbal in 1995. Compaq acquired the company for $307 million in 1999, with Musk receiving $22 million. He then co-founded X.com, an online financial services company that later merged with Confinity to become PayPal. When eBay acquired PayPal in 2002 for $1.5 billion, Musk, as the largest shareholder, received $176 million.

=== SpaceX (2002-present) ===
Founded in 2002 with $100 million of Musk's PayPal proceeds, Space Exploration Technologies Corp. (SpaceX) develops and manufactures space launch vehicles. The company achieved significant milestones including:

* First successful private liquid-fueled rocket to reach orbit (Falcon 1, 2008)
* First private company to launch, orbit, and recover a spacecraft (Dragon, 2010)
* First private company to send a spacecraft to the ISS (2012)
* First successful vertical landing of an orbital rocket booster (2015)
* First private company to launch astronauts to orbit (2020)

=== Tesla (2004-present) ===
Musk joined Tesla Motors (now Tesla, Inc.) in 2004 as chairman and its largest investor, becoming CEO in 2008. Under his leadership, Tesla has become one of the world's most valuable companies and a leader in electric vehicle manufacturing. Key products include:

* Tesla Roadster (2008)
* Model S (2012)
* Model X (2015)
* Model 3 (2017)
* Model Y (2020)
* Cybertruck (2023)

=== Other Major Ventures ===

* SolarCity (2006): Co-founded by Musk's cousins and later acquired by Tesla in 2016
* Neuralink (2016): Develops brain-computer interface technology
* The Boring Company (2016): Focuses on tunnel construction and infrastructure
* Twitter/X (2022): Acquired for $44 billion and rebranded as X in 2023
* xAI (2023): Artificial intelligence research company