See a timeline of all of Elon Musk's business ventures

Elon Musk's first company was an online business directory called 'Zip2'

Musk started the online alternative to Yellow Pages in 1995 with his younger brother. Musk sold the company for $305M in 1999.

See a visual representation Elon Musk's many tweets over a decade

Musk was known for tweeting often long before he purchased Twitter, later renaming the social network "X." One week in August 2024, Elon Musk posted 650 times. This data visualization shows an analysis of roughly 15,000 of his tweets from 2011 to 2021.

The evolution of X, from startup to Musk-owned giant, reflects rapid tech shifts

Twitter began in 2006 as a side project and grew into a major global platform, widely used for news, activism, and political discourse. Despite mainstream success, it faced ongoing management turmoil, business struggles, and rising concerns over misinformation and user safety.

Elon Musk reshaped Twitter into X with bold moves and polarizing decisions

What began in early 2022 as Musk quietly buying Twitter shares soon escalated into a $44 billion hostile bid to take the company private. When Musk officially took over Twitter, he walked into headquarters carrying a literal kitchen sink, captioning the moment, "Let that sink in."

SpaceX's S-1 or 'prospectus' revealed many previously unknown details about the company, including its unprofitability despite doing $18.7B in revenue in 2025, exactly how many voting shares Elon Musk will have in the company (roughly 85%), and more.

Elon Musk joined Tesla in 2004, investing $30M and becoming chair

The company went public in 2010, raising $226 million in its IPO just two years after beginning production on its first car. Tesla's first Supercharger stations were launched in 2012 with six locations in California.

Peter Thiel and Elon Musk formed PayPal after merging two dot-com companies

Elon Musk cofounded "X.com," an online banking service, in 1999 with the idea that the web would become a financial repository as internet access expanded and became ingrained in daily life. Peter Thiel cofounded "Confinity" as a digital security service that morphed into a payments system. In 2000, the two merged to form PayPal, and in 2002, they sold PayPal to eBay for $1.5B.

Elon Musk claims cutting costs fast was the only way to stop X from dying

Laying off 80% of X's workforce, says Musk, was required to avoid a financial collapse within months of him purchasing the platform. In 2023, he claimed X would be cash-flow positive within the year as advertisers returned to the platform.

Elon Musk follows a five-step decision-making process when simplifying technology

He begins by determining whether how something has been previously done is—in his words—"dumb," or if a certain feature should even exist, let alone be optimized. This first principles method has helped him develop some of the most valuable companies in the world.

Read a list of people Elon Musk has been romantically involved with, including musician Grimes

Elon Musk shares six children with his ex-wife Justine Musk, who he was married to from 2000 to 2008. He has also dated celebrities, including actresses Amber Heard and Talulah Riley.

A quick guide to everything SpaceX

SpaceX has single-handedly reignited commercial space exploration, with its reusable rockets, broadband satellite constellation, and plans to populate Mars. The company has gone from a mere idea in 2002 to the world's most well-known private space company. Learn the basics about this pivotal company with this quick guide from CNET.

Silicon Valley’s reign over tech, money, and politics

Tesla and X CEO Elon Musk, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, LinkedIn founder Reid Hoffman, and others are getting into politics. From Musk’s role in President Trump’s second term to Hoffman’s spending on former Vice President Harris’ presidential campaign, more tech CEOs are expanding into politics. This podcast episode by WBUR and American Public Media discusses what the impact could be with so many tech figures engaging in American politics. Listen here.

The Boring Company was created by Elon Musk in 2017

While it started out as a subsidiary of SpaceX, the Boring Company became an independent entity in 2018. Musk started it with the aim of helping reduce city traffic via underground tunnels.

Bezos' wealth primarily stems from his Amazon ownership stake

Three decades after founding Amazon, Jeff Bezos has built a sprawling empire of business and financial interests. A chart from Visual Capitalist details his many business interests outside of Amazon, including his ownership of the Washington Post; his private aerospace company, Blue Origin; and his personal stake in companies ranging from Airbnb to Uber and Google.

See Bloomberg's continuously updated Billionaire Index

This ranking, updated daily, shows a running tally of the world's 500 richest people. Tesla and SpaceX CEO has largely been atop the list, with a net worth of around $450B as of October 2025. Values fluctuate significantly as much of the wealth is tied to equity in companies.

How Elon Musk's businesses have shaped Texas' Bastrop County

After deadly wildfires in 2011 burned a significant portion of the county, the tech boom in Austin pushed development eastward. Elon Musk has since made the region a key hub of his businesses, including a Tesla gigafactory considered one of the largest factories in the world by volume. Watch this reporter visit the town to hear the pros and cons of the transformation.

Born to a well-off family in South Africa, Elon Musk left for Canada in 1989 before heading to the US

Musk was bullied as a child in South Africa, and even recalled being punched in the face, per a recent Walter Isaacson biography on the entrepreneur.

From 1986 to 2024, Microsoft has acquired at least 277 companies

Some of these acquisitions helped the company expand into enterprise software and services, including Visio, which integrated diagramming software into Microsoft Office, and Hotmail, which provided an email platform to customers. Recent acquisitions of Mojang and Activision Blizzard underscore an increasing emphasis on the video game industry.

Tesla's lack of business savvy and inability to commercialize led to his obscurity

For decades, despite pioneering technologies for large-scale electrical systems and telecommunications, Nikola Tesla had been forgotten to history. Rather than monetizing his work and becoming more well known, his inventor-first mentality saw him sell off lucrative patents to fund new experiments in the short term.

The Y Combinator startup directory includes every company YC has funded

The startup accelerator has funded more than 5,000 companies over the years. This YC-specific search engine lets you look up any company to find out if it's a YC alum.

Scroll through a Sears historical timeline, starting in the year 1886

The Sears story starts with railroad worker Richard Sears purchasing a declined shipment of watches for a discounted price. An interactive historical timeline chronicles the history of Sears from then onwards.

Mark Zuckerberg has been a huge advocate for open source technology

Open source technology is software, hardware, or code that's publicly accessible for viewing or editing. Zuckerberg has been an advocate for open source since 2003 and said he wouldn't have been able to build Facebook without open source code.

Explore a visual timeline of fintech’s history and growth

From the debut of the world’s first ATM in 1967, to Apple Pay launching in 2014, financial technologies have come a very long way in a relatively short historical period. A colorful visual timeline highlights some of the most important milestones along the way.

Explore Bessemer's anti-portfolio of missed opportunities

From Pinterest to Yelp, Bessemer Venture Partners—one of the most well-known VC firms—has invested in many successful companies over the years. But the firm has also kicked itself for passing on a few great opportunities, like Apple and Google. Check out the other companies in Bessemer's "anti-portfolio" here.

Twain was a notoriously bad investor

After becoming a famous writer, Twain invested in railroad stocks, a magnetic telegraph, and a printing press that weighed four tons. Eventually, he founded his own publishing company, which ultimately led to his bankruptcy. “He is, in business,” one lawyer said, “just a big overgrown boy.”

A short biography of Apple cofounder Steve Jobs

Steve Jobs led Apple for almost a quarter century, first from 1976 through 1985 and then from 1997 through just before his death in 2011. A brief synopsis of his career underscores the impact he made during that timespan, across everything from technology to smartphones, moviemaking, retail and much more.

Venture capital is a form of funding provided to early-stage companies with high growth potential, typically in exchange for an equity (or ownership) stake

The name 'Silicon Valley' arose from the founding of Shockley Semiconductor Laboratory in Fairchild Semiconductor in 1956-57, founded near Stanford University in Palo Alto

How Amazon operates a 'flywheel' business model, a self-reinforcing cycle that drives continuous growth

The Nasdaq's 'Magnificent 7' companies are responsible for roughly 40% of the Nasdaq 100 index's gains, while the remaining 93 companies account for the other 60%.

Memecoins are a type of cryptocurrency—a form of digital currency with a wide variety of uses—created around popular 'memes,' or viral internet jokes.

In 2025, four executives from large tech companies were given positions in the US Army Reserves—including Palantir Chief Technology Officer Shyam Sankar, which reinforced Palantir's ties with the US military and its role as a leading defense partner.

While the first exchange-traded fund (a 'basket' of different assets that can be bought and sold on a stock exchange) in the US only launched in 1993, the global ETF market has grown to more than $10T in the short time since.

A century of Billboard issues documenting the evolution of popular music.

In 2019, a laptop loaded with six of the worst malware in history and described as 'an exhibit of historical weaponry' sold for $1.3M.

Sears sold DIY house kits starting at $600 in its famous catalog from 1908 through the 1940s, resulting in roughly 10,000 'Sears and Roebuck houses' being built.

Fast-casual restaurant Chili's is experiencing a resurgence, with its parent company recently reporting a nearly 32% increase in sales, thanks to passionate Gen Z fans on TikTok.

The history of many kitchen appliances involves unexpected discoveries and applications, including wartime radar turned hamster defroster and replacing an 'ice king' with heat-stealing boxes.

A 2019 Facebook event called on attendees to "Storm Area 51, They Can't Stop All of Us," resulting in countless memes, the creation of a music festival, and eventually the arrests of those who did try to approach the area.

Mark Twain spent decades feuding with the US Postal Service, convinced its costs and regulations were bureaucratic overreach.

The United States has had a tumultuous relationship with Cuba since its 1959 revolution, highlighted by a nuclear crisis and a decades-long trade embargo.

Visualize the path of every solar eclipse from 1900 to 2099 and see what each looks like when observed from different locations on Earth.

This site reaches millions of visitors who are tired of AI chatbots and seeking human connection. Pretend to be an AI chatbot and ask questions, provide answers, and draw for people in real time.

As of 2025, the most cited papers in science include a review of graphene, methods to improve image recognition, streamlining electron density calculations, and optimizing protein studies.

Budweiser stores yeast derived from the original 1800s strain in a secret bunker, which only the Head of Yeast Management can access—not even the CEO

See a 3D reconstruction of Tenochtitlan, the Aztec capital that was home to an estimated population of 200,000 to 400,000.

Watch how viruses like Ebola can spill over from animals to humans—and vice-versa.

Search a massive database of over 4 decades of clues from the TV quiz show 'Jeopardy!'

Use this tool to calculate the dollar value of your parental mental load, from meal planning to coordinating after-school care, then see resources that help generate solutions.

Researchers believe the brain consolidates memories, processes emotions, and plans for the future during dream states