Elon Musk's 56th Birthday Countdown

Elon Musk Timeline

About Elon Musk

Musk co-founded PayPal's predecessor, then bet the proceeds on electric cars and rockets, building Tesla into the world's most valuable automaker and SpaceX into the first private company to send astronauts to orbit.

Betting the PayPal money on rockets

Musk left South Africa at 17, and by 31 he had sold two companies - Zip2 for $307 million in 1999, then the PayPal predecessor X.com, which eBay bought for $1.5 billion in 2002. Instead of retiring, he poured roughly $100 million into a rocket startup called SpaceX. By 2008, three straight Falcon 1 failures had nearly drained it; the fourth launch that September reached orbit - the first privately developed liquid-fuel rocket ever to do so - and a $1.6 billion NASA contract that December saved the company.

The day spaceflight went private

On May 30, 2020, SpaceX's Crew Dragon carried NASA astronauts Bob Behnken and Doug Hurley to the International Space Station, making SpaceX the first private company in history to fly humans to orbit. The same drive for doing what established players called impossible made routinely landed, reflown boosters a signature of Falcon 9 - and helped push Tesla, in October 2021, to become the first carmaker ever valued at $1 trillion.

A $100 million prize for pulling carbon from the sky

Musk's giving flows through the Musk Foundation, founded in 2001, which funds renewable energy, pediatric research, science education, and safe AI - and granted $237 million in 2023 alone. Its most visible project: the $100 million XPRIZE Carbon Removal, which drew 1,300 teams from 88 countries before Houston's Mati Carbon took the $50 million grand prize in 2025. In 2021, after the all-civilian Inspiration4 flight, Musk also gave $50 million to St. Jude Children's Research Hospital.

Quick facts

• Born June 28, 1971, in Pretoria, South Africa
• Runs Tesla and SpaceX, and founded xAI, Neuralink, and The Boring Company
• SpaceX was the first private company to fly astronauts to the ISS, in May 2020
• Falcon 1's fourth flight in 2008 was the first privately developed liquid-fuel rocket to reach orbit
• Co-founded X.com, which became PayPal and sold to eBay for $1.5 billion in 2002
• Funded the $100 million XPRIZE Carbon Removal competition