List of startups funded by Elon Musk

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A visionary and successful entrepreneur, Elon Musk is known for his innovations ranging from electric cars to space travel. Musk is one of the most famous billionaire entrepreneurs and the CEO of Tesla, SpaceX, and several other companies. Counted among the richest people in the USA, he is also one of the most influential investors in the startup ecosystem. For some years now, Musk has been regarded as a combination of visionary thinking and a high-risk, high-reward personality. His actions to found, fund, or acquire many cutting-edge startups reflect a deeply rooted philosophy.

Elon Musk is a visionary who supports creative ideas and is willing to help startups achieve success. In this article, you will learn about some of the startups funded by Elon Musk.

About Elon Musk

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A real tech billionaire and a businessman in today’s world, with what he said in 2025, Elon Musk ups the ante of activity with headlines that, though at any place, continue to appear for his jobs, going beyond his public life. With Neuralink executive Shivon Zilis, his latest and 14th child, Seldon Lycurgus, is with Musk, who is now the father of four children with that very person. The couple has twins, Strider and Azure, as well as a daughter, Arcadia. The announcement came by way of a post on X by Zilis, who expressed delight in the news; however, the date of the child’s birth was not mentioned.

Meanwhile, apart from his emerging family, Musk has appeared to be political. From 2025, Musk has been a senior adviser to U.S. President Donald Trump and is also the de facto head of the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), a post in which he finds great contentment as it plays into his zeal to streamline systems and cut red tape.

List of Startups Funded by Elon Musk

Startups Funded by Elon Musk

PayPal

Elon Musk started X.com in 1999 as an online financial services and email payment company with the intention of pioneering the management of funds and transferring them over the Internet. In the following year, X.com merged with another financial technology company called Confinity, and the two renamed the merged company PayPal in 2001. This occasion is truly a landmark in the annals of digital payment history, an occasion that brought to life what is today perhaps the most popularly used online payment platform.

On October 3, 2002, PayPal was sold to eBay for $1.5 billion; at the time of the sale Musk was the single largest shareholder of the company. He owned 7,109,989 shares, which represented an 11.7% equity stake in the company. Following the signing, Musk then sold off these shares and invested the money into several of his now household names, such as SpaceX, Tesla, and SolarCity. In this way, such reinvestment out of PayPal greatly helped pave Musk’s way toward becoming one of the most significant innovators of the twenty-first century.

SpaceX

Space Exploration Technologies Corp., or SpaceX, was founded by Elon Musk in 2002 with a rather large aim-to change space travel so that humans could one day reach Mars and other parts of the solar system. Musk fantasized about a day when space technology would be much more affordable, sustainable, and scalable. Beginning in 2006, this vision was slowly materializing, and with NASA giving SpaceX its first major contract that year, it started to signal its faith in the role of the private sector in space exploration.

In 2008, a major landmark for SpaceX was reached- Falcon 1 was launched, making SpaceX the first private company to orbit a rocket-and thus placing another row of stars in its design. In 2010, the Dragon spacecraft traveled to the ISS. In 2012, NASA awarded another critical contract to SpaceX for transporting astronauts to and fro between ISS and Earth. SpaceX is now a key partner in the NASA Artemis program to return human presence on the Moon and eventually on Mars. In 2021, the company signed a $2.9 billion contract with NASA to deploy its Starship for lunar missions, followed by another $1.15 billion contract in 2022-securing its role in future space exploration even further.

DeepMind Technologies

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On one of the very first occasions in 2010, Elon Musk joined the angel investors of DeepMind Technologies, an AI startup known for advanced research in deep reinforcement learning, a training paradigm where you optimize for rewards while learning pattern recognition. While in the past he had voiced numerous times his concern about the threat of AI, this was not necessarily in the intent of earning a profit but rather to be able to watch the speed and direction of AI development.

In 2014, Google acquired DeepMind for an undisclosed sum. DeepMind merged with Google’s Brain team in 2023 and became Google DeepMind, which is now at the cutting edge of AI research. It fuels the company’s core products like Search, YouTube, and Gmail. Although he has parted ways with the company, Musk’s early investment reflects a strategic concern from his end regarding the shaping of future AI. According to reports, as of January 2025, his net worth was $430.4 billion.

Boring Company

Founded in 2016, The Boring Company set out to transform the futurescape of urban transportation by digging underground tunnels meant to alleviate traffic on the surface. Musk had, in the middle of 2018, over $100 million of his own funds in The Boring Company, accounting for over 90% of a $112.5 million equity round. The rest from early employees, without bumping into any venture capitalists or outside investors. In 2019, The Boring Company raised another $120 million after the first round of external investments, closing their valuation at $920 million. 

In 2022, the company managed to pull off a $675 million Series C funding round led by Vy Capital and Sequoia Capital, valuing the company at $5.675 billion. Musk’s heavy financial backing gives evidence of his commitment to changing how urban transportation infrastructure is done.

Neuralink

But they have Neuralink, founded by Elon Musk back in the year 2016, one of the neurotechnologies working in order to develop advanced brain-machine interfaces, or BMIs, connecting the human brain directly to computers, at first treating neurological conditions such as paralysis, loss of eyesight, or memory. To achieve a complete connection between the mind and machine and perhaps even create a symbiotic relationship between man and machine-derived intelligence in the long run.

For a long time, he has been the primary investor of the company, having reportedly invested over $100 million in the company himself, according to the reports in 2021. His vision and his money all put into Neuralink are heading toward reshaping how the world views the future of human cognition as well as the future of AI integration.

OpenAI

OpenAI was created in 2015 with a mission to ensure that artificial general intelligence is for the benefit of humankind. Originally, it was an open non-profit AI research lab but finally caved in to the reality of a capped-profit arrangement that would enable it to raise much-needed funding while still keeping its promise for ethical and safe AI development.

Elon Musk was co-founder of the venture and among the very earliest ones to donate to its cause, contributing around $100 million in support of its vision. In 2018, he stepped down from the board, citing possible conflicts of interest created with Tesla’s own AI initiatives. His involvement helped lay OpenAI’s foundation, even after he left.

Tesla Motors

Elon Musk was not a founding force of Tesla, but under his watch the company started capitalizing on its early success. He was instrumental in leading the company’s large round of financing in 2004, investing $6.5 million of his own money in the $7.5 million of Series A financing. As such, he became the largest shareholder and was awarded the chairmanship of the board. In 2008, Musk became CEO, notwithstanding overseeing SpaceX.

Tesla offered an IPO on the Nasdaq at a price of $17 on June 28, 2010. Since then, the performance of its stock has been stellar, reaching a peak of around $400. Aimed at hastening the world’s transition to sustainable energy, Tesla has launched several classes of electric vehicles, including the Model S, 3, X, Y, the high-performance Roadster, and electric semi-trucks. In 2017, the company unveiled electric tractor-trailers, which were pre-ordered by large companies such as UPS and PepsiCo, marking yet another milestone in the transportation sector.

Vicarious

Established in 2010, Vicarious is a robotics and AI firm that endeavors to advance a general AI application for robotic systems. This organization aims to engineer an AI that can think and learn tantamount to a person, so robots can perform intricate tasks flexibly and accurately.

Just as other tech luminaries such as Mark Zuckerberg and Ashton Kutcher had done, Elon Musk, around 2014, added himself to the list by contributing a part of the US$40 million funding round for Vicarious. The specific amount of Musk’s investment was not indicated. The lead investor was Formation 8, and the others included Peter Thiel, Vinod Khosla, and Dustin Moskovitz. The total support of this bunch of industry leaders speaks volumes about how interestingly these people value the way Vicarious looked into AI.

X “Twitter”

The year 2022 saw Elon Musk making waves for the acquisition of Twitter for a sum of $44 billion, thereby changing social media forever. Right after the acquisition, he changed the name of the platform to X and started rolling out daring and sometimes controversial changes. Although Linda Yaccarino was appointed as CEO for the day-to-day running, Musk retains the power to forge the strategic direction, treating X essentially as a petri dish for trying out his ideas on free speech and digital interaction.

Under Musk, X has brought back Donald Trump’s account and others, changed the verification system, and opened itself to further new areas of content and policy. Musk has called it a “digital town square” crucial for the life of a civilization, while his critics allege that many of his changes have led to the propagation of misinformation and have weakened content moderation.

SolarCity

SolarCity was founded in 2006 as a renewable energy company specializing in solar power installation for homes, businesses, and governmental entities, intending to make clean energy easier and more affordable so as to transition from fossil fuels.

Elon Musk was the key person and pioneer in financing, while the day-to-day operations were handled by cousins Lyndon Rive and Peter Rive. In 2016, SolarCity was acquired by Tesla for $2.6 billion, leading to its integration into Tesla’s energy division and its rebranding as Tesla Energy. This acquisition aligned with Musk’s broader agenda of creating a sustainable energy ecosystem that would integrate electric vehicles, solar power, and energy storage.

Conclusion

Raising funds is a fundamental factor for every startup and business in the world. The above list of startups funded by Elon Musk includes some of the most successful companies performing well today. In a highly competitive business world, startups and companies need more creative solutions for day-to-day problems.

Musk helped startups that had great ideas to provide solutions to some of the most pressing problems, including those related to the digital world, automobiles, social media platforms, and science.