Tesla was incorporated in July 2003 by Martin Eberhard and Marc Tarpenning as Tesla Motors. The company’s name is a tribute to inventor and electrical engineer . In February 2004, via a $6.5 million investment, Elon Musk became the company’s largest shareholder. He became CEO in 2008.
Incase anyone wanted to know the timeline:
There’s some irony that a company named after an overlooked inventor was founded by two overlooked inventors…
For $6.5 million he became CEO of what became an $800 billion dollar company? That’s not bad.