Luke Nosek
Co-founder, PayPal · Managing Partner, Gigafund · Early investor & board member, SpaceX
Key facts
- Born 29 June 1975 in Tarnów, Poland, as Łukasz Nosek.
- Emigrated to the United States with his parents Roman and Danuta Nosek in 1978.
- Co-founded PayPal with Peter Thiel, Max Levchin and Elon Musk; member of the “PayPal Mafia”.
- In 2008 became the first venture capital investor to back SpaceX; sits on the company's board.
- Co-founded Founders Fund and later Gigafund, which has invested over $1B in SpaceX.
- After SpaceX's stock market debut (company valuation $2.1T), his stake was worth over $6B (~PLN 22B), placing him at the top of Wprost weekly's list of the 100 wealthiest Poles.
Biography
Luke Nosek is a Polish-American entrepreneur and venture capitalist, best known as a co-founder of PayPal and one of the earliest backers of SpaceX. Born in Tarnów and raised in Chicago after his family's 1978 emigration, he studied computer engineering at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, where he met future PayPal co-founder Max Levchin. Today, through Gigafund, he remains one of Elon Musk's closest business partners.