Zip2 to Tesla to Twitter, how Elon Musk built his business empire

Billionaire businessman Elon Musk recently closed the deal to buy Twitter for $44 billion to add to his already massive business empire.

Even before acquiring Twitter, 51-year-old Musk, the world’s richest person, had co-founded several companies, the first one being way back in 1995, when he was 24 years old.

Also read: Elon Musk to begin laying off employees at Twitter: Report

Musk was born in Pretoria, South Africa, on June 28, 1971. Now, he owns six companies including Twitter.

Zip2

In 1995, Musk started his first company – Zip2, one of the first internet maps and directions services. According to Musk, it was started with an investment of $15,000 and angel funding from his father.

Also read: Elon Musk family: 3 marriages, 10 children, and why his mom sleeps in garage

“We started Zip2 with ~$2k from me plus my overclocked home-built PC, ~$5k from my bro & ~$8k from Greg Kouri (such a good guy — he is greatly missed). My Dad provided 10% of a ~$200k angel funding round much later, but by then risk was reduced & round would’ve happened anyway,” Musk had tweeted in December 2019.

We started Zip2 with ~$2k from me plus my overclocked home-built PC, ~$5k from my bro & ~$8k from Greg Kouri (such a good guy — he is greatly missed).

My Dad provided 10% of a ~$200k angel funding round much later, but by then risk was reduced & round would’ve happened anyway.

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) December 28, 2019

X.com and PayPal

In April 1999, Compaq acquired Zip2 for an aggregate purchase price of $341 million consisting of $307 million in cash, the issuance of employee stock options to purchase AltaVista stock with a fair value of $28 million and other acquisition costs.

Musk, with his Zip2 money, started fintech company X.com. Later, it was merged with Confinity and resulted in the creation of PayPal.

Thanks PayPal for allowing me to buy back https://t.co/bOUOejO16Y! No plans right now, but it has great sentimental value to me.

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) July 11, 2017

Also read: Elon Musk gets a dose of Twitter ‘mayhem’ soon after he takes over

According to a report on Investopedia, Peter Thiel ousted Musk as PayPal’s CEO before eBay bought the payments company for $1.5 billion, but Musk still profited from the buyout via his 11.7% PayPal stake. “My proceeds from PayPal after tax were about $180 million. $100 million of that went into SpaceX, $70 million into Tesla, and $10 million into SolarCity. And I literally had to borrow money for rent,” Musk said in a 2018 interview.

Tesla

Though it is widely believed that Musk founded electric automaker Tesla, it is not.

“While Musk has become synonymous with electric automaker Tesla, he did not found the company. Rather, he was the lead investor in the company’s 2004 series A funding round, becoming the company’s largest shareholder in exchange for $6.5 million. Musk assumed greater control over Tesla in subsequent years, becoming the company’s CEO in 2008 and overseeing the rollout of its first commercially available car, the Roadster, in 2009,” a report on NY Post said.

Also read: New Twitter boss Elon Musk tweets ‘let the good times roll’

Tesla acquired SolarCity, a solar energy company, in 2016.

SpaceX

Musk co-founded rocket producer SpaceX in 2002. 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.

According to Forbes, SpaceX is worth $127 billion after a funding round in May 2022; it quadrupled its value in three years.

SpaceX designs, manufactures, and launches advanced rockets and spacecraft. The company was founded in 2002 to revolutionise space technology, according to the company’s portal.

Also read: Starlink in Ukraine: Elon Musk says SpaceX not seeking Pentagon funding

Neuralink, The Boring Company

Musk is also CEO of Neuralink, which is developing ultra-high bandwidth brain-machine interfaces to connect the human brain to computers, as per Tesla website.

He also launched The Boring Company, which combines fast, affordable tunnelling technology with an all-electric public transportation system in order to alleviate soul-crushing urban congestion and enable high-speed, long-distance travel. The Boring Company built a 1.15-mile R&D tunnel in Hawthorne, and is currently constructing Vegas Loop, a public transportation system at the Las Vegas Convention Center. Boring Co had raised $675 million in April this year at a $5.7 billion valuation.

Also read: Who are Parag Agrawal and Vijaya Gadde, of whom Musk ‘freed’ Twitter?

In April, Musk said Boring Co will attempt to build a working Hyperloop. In the coming years, Boring Co will attempt to build a working Hyperloop. From a known physics standpoint, this is the fastest possible way of getting from one city center to another for distances less than ~2000 miles. Starship is faster for longer journeys.”

In the coming years, Boring Co will attempt to build a working Hyperloop.

From a known physics standpoint, this is the fastest possible way of getting from one city center to another for distances less than ~2000 miles. Starship is faster for longer journeys.

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) April 24, 2022

The Boring Company had an interesting product launch earlier this month. It launched a perfume called Burnt Hair. For this, Musk updated his Twitter bio to “Perfume Salesman”.

As per Forbes, Musk’s net worth was $2.7 billion in 2013, and today it is $219 billion, making him the world’s richest.