How Did Elon Musk Make His Money?
Elon Musk is an entrepreneur and business magnate who co-founded PayPal and Tesla Motors. He has also founded SpaceX, and is now working on developing the Hyperloop. So how did this man make his money?
Musk was born in South Africa in 1971. His father was an engineer and his mother a model and dietician. He showed an early interest in computers and technology, and when he was 12, he created a video game called Blastar that earned him $500.
He attended Stanford University for two days before dropping out to pursue his entrepreneurial dreams. In 1995, Musk co-founded Web software company Zip2 with his brother Kimbal. The company provided online city guide software to newspapers such as The New York Times and the Chicago Tribune.
In 1999, Compaq Computer Corporation bought Zip2 for $307 million in cash. Musk made $22 million from the sale of Zip2. He then co-founded X .
com that same year, an online bank . In 2000 , the company merged with Confinity , which had developed a money transfer service called PayPal . The newly merged company focused on PayPal and was renamed PayPal in 2001 .
eBay acquired PayPal in 2002 for $ 1 . 5 billion in stock , of which Musk received $165 million .
Elon Musk Paypal Story
In 2002, Elon Musk co-founded PayPal, an online payments system that was later acquired by eBay. Prior to PayPal, Musk co-founded Zip2, a web software company that was acquired by Compaq for $307 million in 1999. He then founded X.com, an online bank that merged with Confinity in 2000 to form the company we know today as PayPal.
Musk served as PayPal’s CEO until December of 2002, when he stepped down to become the company’s chairman and focus on strategic initiatives. In October of 2002, PayPal went public on the Nasdaq stock exchange at a valuation of $1.5 billion. Three years later, eBay acquired PayPal for $1.3 billion in stock.
At the time of the acquisition, PayPal had more than 100 million registered accounts and was available in 45 countries around the world. Today, Musk is the CEO and CTO of SpaceX, a private aerospace manufacturer and space transport services company founded in 2002. He also serves as chairman of Tesla Motors, a luxury electric vehicle manufacturer founded in 2003.
He attended Queen’s University but transferred to the University of Pennsylvania two years later to study economics and physics. After graduating from college, he moved to California to pursue a PhD in energy physics at Stanford University but decided instead to pursue his entrepreneurial dreams. In 2002, Musk co-founded SpaceX, an aerospace manufacturer and space transport services company, with the goal of reducing space transportation costs and enabling the colonization of Mars.