Mark Elliot Zuckerberg (/ˈzʌkərbɜːrɡ/; born May 14, 1984) is an American business magnate, internet entrepreneur, and philanthropist. He is known for co-founding the social media website Facebook and its parent company Meta Platforms (formerly Facebook, Inc.), of which he is the executive chairman, chief executive officer, and controlling shareholder.

Zuckerberg attended Harvard University, where he launched Facebook in February 2004 with his roommates Eduardo Saverin, Andrew McCollum, Dustin Moskovitz, and Chris Hughes. Originally launched to select college campuses, the site expanded rapidly and eventually beyond colleges, reaching one billion users in 2012. Zuckerberg took the company public in May 2012 with majority shares. In 2007, at age 23, he became the world's youngest self-made billionaire. He has used his funds to organize multiple philanthropic endeavors, including the establishment of the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative.

Zuckerberg has been listed as one of the most influential people in the world on four occasions in 2008, 2011, 2016 and 2019 respectively and nominated as a finalist in 2009, 2012, 2014, 2015, 2017, 2018, 2020, 2021 and 2022. He was named the Person of the Year by Time magazine in 2010, the same year when Facebook eclipsed more than half a billion users.[3][4][5] In December 2016, Zuckerberg was ranked tenth on Forbes list of The World's Most Powerful People.[6] In the Forbes 400 list of wealthiest Americans in 2022, he was ranked 11th with a wealth of $57.7 billion, down from his status as the third richest American in 2021 with a net worth of $134.5 billion. As of May 2023, Zuckerberg's net worth was estimated at $85.0 billion according to the Forbes Real Time Billionaires making him the 14th richest person in the world.[7] A film depicting Zuckerberg's early career, legal troubles and initial success with the site, The Social Network, was released in 2010 and won multiple Academy Awards.

Elon Reeve Musk (/ˈiːlɒn/ EE-lon; born June 28, 1971) is a business magnate and investor. He is the founder, CEO and chief engineer of SpaceX; angel investor, CEO and product architect of Tesla, Inc.; owner, CTO and chairman of Twitter; founder of the Boring Company and X Corp.; co-founder of Neuralink and OpenAI; and president of the philanthropic Musk Foundation. Musk is the wealthiest person in the world according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index, and second-wealthiest according to the Forbes's Real Time Billionaires list as of June 2023, primarily from his ownership stakes in Tesla and SpaceX, with an estimated net worth of around $205 billion according to Bloomberg and $211.4 billion according to Forbes.

Musk was born in Pretoria, South Africa, and briefly attended the University of Pretoria before moving to Canada at age 18, acquiring citizenship through his Canadian-born mother. Two years later, he matriculated at Queen's University and transferred to the University of Pennsylvania, where he received bachelor's degrees in economics and physics. He moved to California in 1995 to attend Stanford University. After two days, he dropped out and, with his brother Kimbal, co-founded the online city guide software company Zip2. In 1999, Zip2 was acquired by Compaq for $307 million and Musk co-founded X.com, a direct bank. X.com merged with Confinity in 2000 to form PayPal, which eBay acquired for $1.5 billion in 2002.

With $175.8 million, Musk founded SpaceX in 2002, a spaceflight services company. In 2004, he was an early investor in the electric vehicle manufacturer Tesla Motors, Inc. (now Tesla, Inc.). He became its chairman and product architect, assuming the position of CEO in 2008. In 2006, he helped create SolarCity, a solar energy company that was later acquired by Tesla and became Tesla Energy. In 2015, he co-founded OpenAI, a nonprofit artificial intelligence research company. The following year, he co-founded Neuralink—a neurotechnology company developing brain–computer interfaces—and the Boring Company, a tunnel construction company. Musk has also proposed a hyperloop high-speed vactrain transportation system. In 2022, his acquisition of Twitter for $44 billion was completed.