Elon Musk
Elon Musk's SpaceX is the third company founded that he has founded. SpaceX was formed to revolutionize the access to space using its Falcon Explorer launch vehicle. Prior to SpaceX, Musk co-founded PayPal, the world's leading electronic payment system, and served as the company's Chairman and CEO. Today, PayPal has over twenty million customers in 38 countries, processes several billion dollars per year and went public on the NASDAQ under PYPL in early 2002. The company was acquired by eBay for $1.5 billion in October 2002. Before PayPal, Elon co-founded Zip2 Corporation in 1995, a leading provider of enterprise software and services to the media industry, with investments from The New York Times Company, Knight-Ridder, MDV, Softbank and the Hearst Corporation. He served as Chairman, CEO and Chief Technology Officer and in March 1999 sold Zip2 to Compaq for $307 million in an all cash transaction. Mr. Musk's early experience extends across a spectrum of advanced technology industries, from high energy density ultra-capacitors at Pinnacle Research to software development at Rocket Science and Microsoft. He has a physics degree from the University of Pennsylvania, a business degree from Wharton and originally came out to California to pursue graduate studies in energy physics at Stanford. Elon has also established a foundation (www.muskfoundation.org) to support philanthropic objectives in education, clean & renewable energy and medical research. Mr. Musk currently sits on the X Prize Board of Trustees, the National Academies Aeronautics and Space Engineering Board, the Surrey Satellite Technology Limited Board, and he is a voting member of COMSTAC.