Elon Musk: CEO of Tesla and SpaceX, Founder of Neuralink
Business Owner · Automotive
From PayPal co-founder to the CEO of Tesla and SpaceX, Elon Musk has built companies spanning electric vehicles, rockets, AI and brain-computer interfaces. He became the first trillionaire on paper at the June 2026 SpaceX IPO.
About Elon Musk: CEO of Tesla and SpaceX, Founder of Neuralink
Elon Reeve Musk (born June 28, 1971, in Pretoria, South Africa) is a business magnate and one of the most influential and polarizing entrepreneurs in the world. He became a United States citizen in 2002 and today serves as chief executive and largest shareholder of both Tesla and SpaceX. Musk's route to the top ran through the early internet. He co-founded X.com, which merged into the payments company PayPal, and used the proceeds to bet on far more capital-intensive industries. At SpaceX he pursued reusable rockets and, eventually, a public listing: the company's June 2026 initial public offering made Musk the first US-dollar trillionaire on paper, although a subsequent SpaceX share-price collapse pushed him back under that threshold by the following month. He also co-founded OpenAI, and his later AI ambitions led him to establish xAI, which became a subsidiary of SpaceX in 2026. In 2022 he acquired Twitter and rebranded it as X in 2023. His other ventures include Neuralink, a neurotechnology company he co-founded in 2016, and The Boring Company, a tunnelling company he founded in 2017. In November 2025 Tesla's shareholders approved a pay package worth $1 trillion over ten years, payable only if milestones such as a market capitalization of $8.5 trillion are reached. Musk was the largest donor in the 2024 US presidential election, backing Donald Trump. After the January 2025 inauguration he served as Senior Advisor to the President and the de facto head of the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), leaving in May 2025 and later falling out publicly with the president. His political activity and public statements have made him a divisive figure; he has been criticized for misleading claims, and his Twitter takeover drew criticism over rising hate speech and misinformation. His role in DOGE, including cuts to USAID, prompted public backlash. According to Forbes, his net worth stood at roughly US$900 billion in September 2026, making him the richest person in the world. Sources: English Wikipedia (Elon Musk, accessed September 2026); Forbes.
Basic Information
CEO, Tesla and SpaceX; founder, Neuralink and The Boring Company
Company Details
Tesla / SpaceX
Automotive, Space Technology, Artificial Intelligence