Elon Musk

Elon Musk co-founded and leads Tesla, SpaceX, Neuralink and The Boring Company.

As lead designer at SpaceX, Elon oversees the development of rockets and spacecraft for missions to Earth orbit and ultimately to other planets. In 2008, the SpaceX Falcon 1 was the first privately developed liquid fuel rocket to reach orbit, and SpaceX made further history in 2017 by re-flying both a Falcon 9 rocket and Dragon spacecraft for the first time. Soon after, Falcon Heavy, the most powerful operational rocket in the world by a factor of two, completed its first flight in 2018. In 2019, SpaceX’s crew-capable version of the Dragon spacecraft completed its first demonstration mission, and the company will fly NASA astronauts to the International Space Station for the first time in 2020.

Building on these achievements, SpaceX is developing Starship – a fully reusable transportation system that will carry crew and cargo to the Moon, Mars and beyond ­– and Starlink, which will deliver high speed broadband internet to locations where access has been unreliable, expensive, or completely unavailable. By pioneering reusable rockets, SpaceX is pursuing the long-term goal of making humans a multi-planet species by creating a self-sustaining city on Mars.

Previously, Elon co-founded and sold PayPal, the world's leading Internet payment system, and Zip2, one of the first internet maps and directions services.