Elon Musk made his first fortune by selling his first internet company, Zip2, for nearly $300 million in 1999. Zip2 was a web software company that provided online business directories and maps to newspapers. Musk co-founded the company in 1995 with his brother, Kimbal Musk, and the company's software was used by major media companies, including The New York Times, Chicago Tribune, and Hearst Corporation. Musk invested $28,000 of his own money to start Zip2 and served as the company's CEO. After the company's successful sale, Musk founded X.com, an online payment company that later became PayPal. Musk served as PayPal's CEO and made an additional fortune when PayPal was sold to eBay for $1.5 billion in 2002. After PayPal's sale, Musk went on to found several other successful companies, including SpaceX, Tesla, Neuralink, and The Boring Company. Musk's entrepreneurial ventures have made him one of the wealthiest people in the world, with a net worth estimated t