Tesla was incorporated in 2003 by Martin Eberhard and Marc Tarpenning. In February 2004 Elon Musk, fresh from about $176 million in PayPal proceeds, put in $6.5 million to lead the Series A and became chairman and largest shareholder. He led the Series B and co-led a $40 million Series C that brought in Larry Page and Sergey Brin. In 2007 the board ousted Eberhard, and in October 2008 Musk became CEO. Eberhard sued in 2009; the case was dismissed, and the settlement let Musk call himself a co-founder. His 2006 master plan ran from the Roadster to the mass-market Model 3, which drew 325,000 paid reservations in a week in 2016 and then stalled in what Musk called production hell.

On August 8, 2018, Musk posted that he was considering taking Tesla private with “funding secured,” which was false; the SEC charge ended with a $20 million fine and his removal as chairman. Tesla joined the S&P 500 in 2020 and reached a $1 trillion valuation in October 2021. A Delaware court struck down his $56 billion pay package, and shareholders later approved a $1 trillion package in November 2025. In 2025 his alignment with Donald Trump and a government efficiency role coincided with a seven-week stock slide, more than 200 protests and the loss of Tesla’s title as top EV maker. The company then dropped the Model S and Model X to make room for the Optimus robot.

• Musk had put roughly $70 million of his own money into Tesla by 2009.
• He wanted an automated “alien dreadnought” factory, but robots jammed tasks like threading wiring harnesses that humans did by feel.
• Institutional shareholders flagged a board that included his brother Kimball Musk and investors tied to SpaceX.
• The Cybercab, unveiled in late 2024, has no steering wheel or pedals.
• In March 2026 Musk launched Terafab, a $20 billion joint venture targeting a terawatt of AI computing capacity.