[justanotherhn]

Read this article and tell me this company was not bootstrapped by Elon. [0] Just because they went on to raise huge amounts of VC money doesn't mean anything. He was the one who took all that risk and nearly went bankrupt, not the VC's that now are about to reap the rewards. This is not to knock the VC money, those guys are awesome for believing in the mission.

[0] https://www.wired.com/2007/05/ff-space-musk

[hef19898]

SpaceX received billions of VC money on top of government contracts while Ariane and Co. got government contracts and government funding. So no, SpaceX is not bootstrapped. We also don't know for sure as SpaceX is privately held and not publishing financial reports. The one leak back up to 2017 wasn't that stellar.