Elon Musk bears many titles — CEO of Tesla and SpaceX, Dogecoin enthusiast, revolutionary of space exploration, and richest man in the world — and has become a household name we all know well.
Musk founded quite a few companies most people are familiar with, but not everyone knows the role Musk has played in their success.
SpaceX
To reduce the cost of space exploration, Musk created SpaceX in 2002. SpaceX designs, manufactures, and launches advanced aircraft.
Since its founding, SpaceX has launched 246 rockets and spacecraft, 207 of which successfully landed. Its most recent mission on July 15, dubbed the “Starlink Mission,” saw Falcon 9 launch 54 Starlink satellites to low-Earth orbit from Space Launch Complex 40.
SpaceX is the only private company to return a spacecraft from low-Earth orbit and take humans to and from the International Space Station. The company believes in the power of a reusable rocket; it has reflown 183 of its own to embody this philosophy.
The company, valued at over $100 billion, is one of the most valuable private companies in the world.
X, Previously Known as Twitter
The acquisition of Twitter — now known as X — by Musk spanned from April to October 2022. In January of the same year, Musk began buying shares of the American social media site before becoming its largest shareholder in April. When Musk offered to purchase the company, Twitter’s board of directors unanimously accepted his $44 billion offer.
Musk’s goals for the social media site include promoting free speech, ridding of "bot” accounts, and making its algorithm open-source. While Musk had plans to terminate the agreement, he officially took over as owner and CEO of the company on October 27, 2022, and Twitter was taken private.
In July 2023, Musk rebranded Twitter, naming it X.
xAI
On July 12, 2023, Musk announced via Twitter the launch of a new artificial intelligence (AI) company, xAI. With a goal to "understand the true nature of the universe,” some of the team’s members include previous employees of Google Research, DeepMind, and Microsoft Research.
According to xAI’s website, the company is separate from X Corp but will work closely with Twitter and Tesla to accomplish its mission. Musk plans to position the company to compete with the companies behind chatbots like ChatGPT.
The Boring Company
Musk founded American construction company The Boring Company in 2016. Its projects are primarily designed for intra-city transit systems to solve traffic challenges and enable point-to-point transportation.
According to its website, The Boring Company believes major cities need either flying cars or tunnels in order to get rid of traffic. Musk settled on the latter solution because tunnels aren’t impacted by weather changes and “won’t fall on your head.”
In April 2021, The Boring Company introduced its first project at the Las Vegas Convention Center. The company created two parallel tunnels measuring 1.7 miles long, each with Tesla vehicles carrying passengers to their desired destination across the center.
Neuralink Corporation
Musk is also the owner and co-founder of Neuralink Corporation, a neurotechnology company developing implantable brain-machine interfaces. The company’s main goal is to create brain implants that can communicate with phones and computers as well as help people with paralysis regain independence.
“Our devices are designed to give people the ability to communicate more easily via text or speech synthesis, to follow their curiosity on the web, or to express their creativity through photography, art, or writing apps,” Neuralink’s website states.
As of this year, the total investment in the company is around $5 billion.
Zip2
Although Zip2 is no longer in business, it was the first enterprise Musk founded back in 1995. The company provided a searchable business directory — basically an “internet version of the yellow pages” with maps included.
The company’s mission, according to Musk, was “that everyone ought to be able to find the closest pizza parlour and to be able to figure out how to get there.”
In 1999, Compaq Computer Corporation acquired Zip2 for $307 million.
OpenAI
Musk founded OpenAI, a nonprofit research and development company, in 2015. Although he resigned from the board in 2018, he remains a major donor.
The company is a DeepMind competitor with the goal of ensuring that “artificial general intelligence benefits all of humanity.”
OpenAI is one of the leading AI research labs in the world, with the ultimate goal of being the first company to design a machine with the learning and reasoning powers of a human mind.
Tesla
The company Musk is probably most well known for is Tesla. An American electric vehicle and clean energy company, Tesla has made headlines since its founding in 2003 thanks to its advancements in the automotive industry and its clean energy efforts.
Tesla hopes to accelerate the transition to sustainable energy by producing energy storage systems such as solar panels and solar roof tiles, as well as batteries for electric vehicles. While the company has a number of accolades under its belt, it notably designed the first premium all-electric sedan.
The company currently holds the spot as the number one automotive company in the world, with a market cap of $910 billion.
SolarCity
Tesla also acquired SolarCity, a company focused on door-to-door sales of solar energy generation systems. The company, which was founded in 2004 by two of Musk’s cousins, was acquired by Tesla in 2016 for $2.6 billion.
However, some investors didn’t approve of the deal, as Musk had ties to the founders and “overpaid for SolarCity, ignored their own conflicts of interest and failed to disclose ‘troubling facts’ essential to a rational analysis of the proposed deal.”
PayPal
This one may be a shock, but Musk is also a co-founder of PayPal. PayPal is a multinational financial technology company that works as an electronic alternative to checks or money orders by supporting online money transfers.
Founded in 1998, PayPal merged with Musk’s former company, X.com, in 2000. Since then, PayPal has become a Fortune 500 company and had its best year yet in 2020 with nearly 73 million net new accounts.