SpaceX adds a third 'PayPal Mafia' member to its board

By William Gavin

Former PayPal CFO and venture capitalist Roelof Botha is joining SpaceX's board and will serve on its audit committee

SpaceX is bulking up its board after last week's IPO.

Roelof Botha has just become the third member of the so-called "PayPal Mafia" to join SpaceX's leadership.

Botha was the chief financial officer at PayPal (PYPL), the financial-services company that went public in 2002. He helped take PayPal public alongside Peter Thiel, the Palantir (PLTR) co-founder who has financially backed SpaceX since 2008.

At SpaceX (SPCX), Botha joins venture capitalist Luke Nosek, who helped found Thiel's Founders Fund and was also an executive at PayPal. SpaceX CEO and board chairman Elon Musk was also a leader at PayPal after his X.com merged with Confinity, PayPal's precursor. However, he was ousted from his role as CEO in 2000.

In 2003, Botha joined the venture-capital firm Sequoia Capital, which has supported SpaceX for years. Sequoia has a roughly 1.5% stake in SpaceX after investing at least $1.8 billion, according to Forbes. Botha left his role as managing partner at Sequoia last November but stayed on as an adviser.

"I believe SpaceX is the most important company of all time," Sequoia partner Shaun Maguire said in a post on X this week.

SpaceX is what's called a "controlled company," which means it can have a board mostly composed of non-independent directors. However, SpaceX's audit committee does require some independent directors, or those who have no material relationship with the company.

The company announced Wednesday afternoon that Botha will become a board member effective immediately and will remain in that role until its next annual meeting of shareholders and until a successor has been elected. He'll also join the audit committee alongside board members and venture capitalists Randy Glein and Steve Jurvetson.

SpaceX's board also includes Antonio Gracias, a major investor, as well as Ira Ehrenpreis, a longtime Tesla (TSLA) board member. There's also Google executive Donald Harrison, who joined the board in 2015 after Google first invested in SpaceX.

Botha is also a board member at several tech companies. That includes Jack Dorsey's financial-technology firm Block (XYZ) and Unity Software (U), a software developer. He was also a member of YouTube's board before it was acquired by Alphabet (GOOG) (GOOGL) and Instagram's board ahead of its purchase by Meta Platforms (META).

-William Gavin

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06-17-26 1737ET