Elon Musk · Entrepreneur

Founded SpaceX to cut the cost of access to space and make humanity multi-planetary. In 2008 Falcon 1 became the first privately developed liquid-fuel rocket to reach orbit; Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy followed as workhorses.

Dragon became the first commercial spacecraft to resupply the ISS (2012); in 2015 SpaceX achieved vertical first-stage landing and reuse, slashing launch cost; Crew Dragon flew the first commercial astronauts in 2020.

Built Starlink low-orbit satellite internet (thousands in orbit) and is developing the fully reusable Starship super-heavy system.

Early investor and chairman, then CEO and product architect. The 2008 Roadster and 2012 Model S proved EV performance and experience; Autopilot popularized driver assistance.

Drove Model 3 mass production, built Gigafactories and the Supercharger network — for a time the world’s most valuable automaker — and expanded into energy storage (Powerwall/Megapack) and solar.

Neuralink (2016) — implantable brain–computer interfaces; The Boring Company (2016) — tunnels and urban transport; xAI (2023) — the Grok large language model.

Founded the online-payments company X.com, which became PayPal; acquired by eBay in 2002 (~$1.5B), where he was a top shareholder — funding what came next.

Co-founded Zip2, an online city-guide and mapping platform for newspapers; acquired by Compaq in 1999 (~$307M) — his first exit.

First orbital-class rocket to land and re-fly its first stage, rewriting launch economics.

First commercial crewed spacecraft; restored U.S. domestic human spaceflight.

Low-orbit satellite internet constellation delivering broadband to remote areas.

The mass-market EV that crossed “production hell” to become one of the best-selling cars in the world.

Fully reusable super-heavy launch system aimed at the Moon and Mars.

Dual bachelor’s in physics and economics; began a Stanford applied-physics PhD but left within days for the internet boom.