Elon Musk Just Joined the Inc. 5000—and He May Have Created the Next PayPal Mafia

Thousands of SpaceX employees suddenly have the capital, networks, and experience to launch the next wave of fast-growing companies.

BY MARIA ASPAN @MARIAASPAN

Illustration by Golden Cosmos

Elon Musk’s company SpaceX—and his net worth—broke records in June with its blockbuster IPO, raising $75 billion and overnight becoming one of the most valuable companies on the planet. Though the space-launch company’s stock price has been volatile, it is surely one of the year’s defining business stories. It blazed a path for two other much-anticipated Silicon Valley IPOs, from OpenAI and Anthropic. And it briefly made Musk, already the world’s wealthiest person, its first trillionaire.

Musk also hit another milestone this year: His first time on the Inc. 5000. SpaceX (No. 1,147) generated $18.7 billion in revenue in........

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