Elon Musk

Technoking of Tesla and Chief Executive Officer Tesla

Last Reviewed: October 3, 2026

Executive Summary

Elon Musk has been chief executive of Tesla since October 2008 and a director since April 2004; the company also gives him the title Technoking. Tesla, now headquartered in Austin, Texas, makes electric vehicles at factories in California, Texas, Nevada, Shanghai and Berlin, as well as energy storage and solar products. Musk runs it alongside SpaceX, which he has led as chief executive and chief technical officer since 2002, and he heads Neuralink and founded The Boring Company. Before all of these he co-founded Zip2 and PayPal. Tesla’s own annual report makes the distinctive point: it calls the company highly dependent on his services while noting that he does not devote his full time to it.

Career Highlights

• Chief Executive Officer of Tesla since October 2008; director since April 2004.
• Chief Executive Officer, Chief Technical Officer and Chairman of SpaceX since May 2002.
• Chairman of SolarCity from 2006 until Tesla acquired it in November 2016.
• Co-founded Zip2, sold to Compaq in 1999, and PayPal, sold to eBay in 2002.
• Founder of The Boring Company and chief executive of Neuralink.

Professional Journey

Musk earned a bachelor’s degree in physics at the University of Pennsylvania and a bachelor’s degree in business at its Wharton School. He co-founded Zip2, a provider of internet enterprise software and services that Compaq acquired in March 1999, and then PayPal, the electronic payments system that eBay acquired in October 2002.

He founded SpaceX, which develops and launches rockets and spacecraft, and has served as its chief executive, chief technical officer and chairman since May 2002. He joined Tesla’s board in April 2004 and became chief executive in October 2008; the company credits him with guiding it from an early-stage startup through its 2010 initial public offering to its growth into one of the most valuable companies in the world. He was also chairman of the solar installer SolarCity from July 2006 until Tesla acquired it in November 2016.

His other ventures have grown alongside Tesla. He founded The Boring Company, an infrastructure business, and Neuralink, which develops brain-machine interfaces and where he is chief executive. From October 2022 he was chief technology officer and a director of the social media company X, and from March 2023 chief executive of the AI company xAI; after the two merged in March 2025 he led the combined X.AI Holdings, which became a subsidiary of SpaceX in February 2026. He was also a director of Endeavor Group Holdings from 2021 to 2022.

At Tesla, shareholders approved a new equity plan and a 2025 CEO Performance Award for him at the November 2025 annual meeting. His executive team is small by the standards of the Fortune 500: Tesla lists only two other executive officers, chief financial officer Vaibhav Taneja and Tom Zhu, who runs Asia-Pacific and global vehicle manufacturing.

Education

University of Pennsylvania

Bachelor of Arts, Physics

The Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania

Bachelor of Science, Business