Elon Musk founded SpaceX in 2002.Britta Pedersen-Pool/Getty Images 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. SpaceX is now valued at almost $140 billion under Musk's unique leadership style. 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.