Elon Musk in a leather jacket poses on the red carpet of the Axel Springer Awards
Elon Musk founded SpaceX in 2002.
  • Elon Musk founded SpaceX in 2002, investing $100 million he made from the sale of PayPal.
  • The company nearly failed before receiving a $1.5 billion NASA contract in 2008.
  • Musk wants to colonize Mars and put a million people on the red planet by 2050.

Elon Musk is the CEO of several companies, but SpaceX might just be the most exciting given its ambition of colonizing Mars with reusable rockets. 

While Twitter, Tesla, and PayPal were all founded before he got involved, SpaceX was Musk's baby.

After receiving $175 million when eBay bought PayPal in 2002, he put $100 million into his new space exploration company.