Nose to engines · Today → 1995
Read it like the rocket. The nose is where the story is right now, Starship Flight 14. Scroll down toward the engines and you go back in time, all the way to a two-brother startup in 1995. Tap a company to show only its milestones.
SpaceXTargeting September 28, 2026
Planned as Starship’s first fully orbital flight, launching from Starbase, Texas with the first 26 V3 Starlink satellites, each adding 1 Tbps of capacity. This is the nose of the rocket: where the story is right now.
Read more →SpaceX
In August, SpaceX and NVIDIA announce the chips for AI1, the first satellite in a planned million-satellite AI compute constellation.
Read more →Boring Co
Unveiled in August, it hauls tunnel wall segments underground — running on Tesla Model 3 battery packs and drive units.
Read more →Tesla
Tesla, SpaceX, and xAI announce a joint chip fab in Texas planned to be the largest building in the world.
Read more →xAI & X
In February, SpaceX buys xAI outright. SpaceX now owns xAI, which owns X — with Grok at the center of both.
Read more →Neuralink
Kenneth Shock receives his N1 implant in January as part of Neuralink’s speech trial. By September, a clip of him speaking through the device is shared by Neuralink and Musk himself.
Read more →SpaceX
Direct-to-cell service goes commercial in July, letting ordinary phones send texts through Starlink satellites where there’s no cell tower.
Read more →Tesla
In June, Tesla starts giving paid rides in driverless Model Ys in Austin, Texas.
Read more →xAI & X
In March, an all-stock deal puts the social platform and the AI company under one roof.
Read more →SpaceX
Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams, stuck on the Space Station since June 2024, return to Earth aboard a SpaceX Dragon in March.
Read more →SpaceX
In October, the launch tower’s mechanical arms catch a returning Super Heavy booster out of the air. Most people watching thought it was CGI.
Read more →SpaceX
In September, Jared Isaacman performs the first spacewalk ever done on a commercial mission.
Read more →Neuralink
In January, Noland Arbaugh, paralyzed from the shoulders down, becomes Neuralink’s first patient. Within weeks he’s playing chess and video games with his mind.
Read more →Tesla
After four years of waiting and a famous broken-window demo, the first Cybertrucks are delivered in November.
Read more →SpaceX
The biggest, most powerful rocket ever built flies for the first time in April. It doesn’t make it to space — but it clears the pad and SpaceX learns fast.
Read more →xAI & X
Musk starts xAI in March. Its assistant, Grok, launches later that year with near-live access to what’s happening on X.
Read more →xAI & X
Musk buys Twitter for $44 billion in October. It’s rebranded to X the following July.
Read more →SpaceX
The first orbital mission with no professional astronauts on board — four civilians, three days in orbit, raising money for St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital.
Read more →Boring Co
The Las Vegas Convention Center Loop starts carrying passengers in Teslas through tunnels under the convention center.
Read more →Neuralink
Neuralink shows a monkey named Pager playing Pong using only his thoughts — a preview of what the implant could do for people.
Read more →SpaceX
Crew Dragon Demo-2 carries two NASA astronauts to the Space Station — the first crewed orbital launch from U.S. soil since the Shuttle retired in 2011, and the first ever on a privately built spacecraft.
Read more →SpaceX
SpaceX launches the first 60 production Starlink satellites. This is the constellation that now serves millions of people, including in places no cable will ever reach.
Read more →SpaceX
The most powerful rocket flying at the time launches Musk’s own red Roadster, with a spacesuit-wearing mannequin at the wheel, into orbit around the sun. Both side boosters land side by side.
Read more →Tesla
The first lower-priced Tesla starts deliveries in July and goes on to become one of the best-selling electric cars ever made.
Read more →SpaceX
In March, a previously flown Falcon 9 booster launches again and lands again. Reuse is now routine, not a stunt.
Read more →Boring Co
Stuck in Los Angeles traffic, Musk tweets that he’s going to build a tunnel-boring machine and just start digging. He does.
Read more →Neuralink
A company built around one question: can a brain implant give people with paralysis their independence back?
Read more →SpaceX
On December 21, a Falcon 9 first stage flies back and lands upright at Cape Canaveral. Reusable rockets go from theory to reality overnight.
Read more →Tesla
Tesla’s first car designed from scratch goes on sale and goes on to win just about every major car-of-the-year award.
Read more →SpaceX
The first time a commercial spacecraft ever visited the International Space Station.
Read more →Tesla
Tesla’s IPO in June makes it the first American automaker to go public since Ford in 1956.
Read more →SpaceX
Falcon 9 flies for the first time in June. In December, Dragon becomes the first spacecraft from a private company to be recovered after orbiting Earth.
Read more →Tesla
The Tesla Roadster proves an electric car can be fast and desirable. In October, in the middle of the financial crisis, Musk takes over as CEO.
Read more →SpaceX
After three failed launches and with money nearly gone, the fourth Falcon 1 makes it — the first privately developed liquid-fueled rocket to reach orbit. NASA awards SpaceX a cargo contract that December.
Read more →Tesla
Tesla was incorporated in 2003 by Martin Eberhard and Marc Tarpenning. Musk leads the Series A and becomes chairman.
Read more →SpaceX
The goal from day one: make rockets reusable and cut the cost of getting to space enough to eventually reach Mars.
Read more →Early Days
eBay buys PayPal for $1.5 billion. Instead of retiring, Musk puts most of his share into two companies almost nobody expected to survive.
Early Days
He starts X.com, one of the first online banks. It merges with Confinity in 2000, and the combined company becomes PayPal.
Early Days
Elon and his brother Kimbal start Zip2, an online city-guide and maps company for newspapers. Compaq buys it in 1999 for about $307 million.
That's the base of the rocket. For what's been announced but isn't built yet, see What's Next. For why all of these pieces fit together, see How It All Connects.