Luke Nosek

In the mid-1990s he was one of a team of computer engineering students and entrepreneurs at the University of Illinois Urbana-ChampaignUniversity of Illinois Urbana-ChampaignThe University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign is a public research university in Urbana-Champaign, Illinois, United States, and the flagship campus of the University of Illinois System. Founded in 1867 as Illinois Industrial University, one of America’s original land-grant institutions, it took the name University of Illinois in 1885.Open the full entry who went on to create and invest in new ventures.⁠[1]

While a student, he founded the advertising company SponsorNet New Media (written “Sponsor Net New Media” in his Grainger College of Engineering Hall of Fame biography) with his fellow students Max LevchinMax LevchinMax Levchin is an entrepreneur and computer scientist, one of the co-founders of PayPal and the founder and chief executive officer of the consumer payments and credit company Affirm.Open the full entry and Scott Banister; Max Levchin’s first ventures, the early internet application developer NetMeridian Software and SponsorNet New Media, Inc., were started with him and Scott Banister.⁠[1][2]

He graduated from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign in 1996 with a B.S. in computer engineering; his profile page on the Founders Fund website gives his degree as a bachelor’s degree in computer science.⁠[2][3][4]

After graduating he worked as an evangelist at Netscape.⁠[1][4]

From November 1998 to February 2002 he was at PayPal, which he co-founded with Max Levchin, Peter Thiel, Elon MuskElon MuskElon Musk is an entrepreneur who founded SpaceX and has long served as chief executive of Tesla; he also took part in creating PayPal, OpenAI, Neuralink, The Boring Company, and xAI. He acquired Twitter in 2022, and his businesses span spaceflight, electric vehicles, energy, artificial intelligence, and social media.Open the full entry and Ken Howery, serving as its vice president of business development, vice president of marketing and vice president of strategy; the Hall of Fame biography gives his title as vice president of marketing and strategy.⁠[3][1]

Max Levchin continued recruiting fellow engineers from the university to join Max Levchin and him in the San Francisco Bay Area to work for the company that became PayPal; the first 10 engineers at PayPal, including him, went to school with Max Levchin. A photo caption in the Grainger College of Engineering’s feature on Max Levchin calls him a PayPal “co-founding engineer.”⁠[2]

At PayPal he oversaw the company’s marketing at launch, growing the user base to 1 million customers in the first six months, and he created “Instant Transfer,” which the Hall of Fame biography calls PayPal’s most profitable product.⁠[1][4]

His time at PayPal ended in February 2002. PayPal was sold to eBayeBayeBay Inc. is an online marketplace company headquartered in San Jose, California, United States, founded in 1995 by Pierre Omidyar; it started out with person-to-person online auctions and listed on Nasdaq in 1998. As of the end of 2025, it had 135 million active buyers, and its platform’s gross merchandise volume in 2025 was nearly $80 billion.Open the full entry in 2002 for $1.5 billion.⁠[3][5]

The San Francisco Chronicle wrote in December 2006 that Peter Thiel launched The Founders Fund in early 2005 and recruited two former PayPal colleagues, Ken Howery and him, both then 31. The Gigafund website states that after PayPal was sold to eBay he launched the venture capital firm Founders Fund with Peter Thiel and Ken Howery; SpaceX’s prospectus states that he co-founded Founders Fund in April 2006 and served as a general partner through July 2017.⁠[6][7][3]

Before launching Founders Fund he invested actively as a venture capitalist in his personal capacity. Founders Fund went on to manage assets of over $1 billion and invested in companies such as AirbnbAirbnbAirbnb is a travel platform for booking stays, experiences, and services, co-founded by Brian Chesky, Joe Gebbia, and Nathan Blecharczyk and headquartered in San Francisco, United States; its Class A common stock trades on Nasdaq under the symbol ABNB. The business began with hosting guests in the founders’ home in 2007, then joined YC’s Winter 2009 batch, and gradually expanded into local experiences, services, and boutique hotels.Open the full entry, Facebook and Palantir TechnologiesPalantirPalantir is a U.S. enterprise software company founded in 2003 that provides data and artificial intelligence platforms including Gotham, Foundry, Palantir Apollo, and AIP, serving government and commercial organizations. The company went public through a direct listing in 2020 and now trades on Nasdaq under the ticker PLTR.Open the full entry.⁠[1][4]

In October 2007 he was photographed with other former PayPal colleagues at Tosca in San Francisco; the picture ran with Fortune’s article “The PayPal Mafia,” published that November, whose caption identifies him as “managing partner The Founders Fund,” first from the left in the second row.⁠[8]

The Hall of Fame biography states that he co-founded the DNA sequencing company Halcyon Molecular, Inc. in 2008 and served as its founding president. A 2012 Silicon Valley Business Journal article, by contrast, states that the company had been started about four years earlier by the brothers William and Michael Andregg, was based in Redwood City and was backed by the PayPal co-founders Peter Thiel and Elon Musk.⁠[1][9]

The Hall of Fame biography calls him “A space enthusiast from an early age.” He helped lead a $20 million Founders Fund investment in SpaceX; the Gigafund website states that at Founders Fund he led the first venture investment in Elon Musk’s SpaceX, in 2008. He has served on SpaceX’s board since July 2008.⁠[1][7][3]

On August 2, 2008, after a Falcon 1 launch failure, Elon Musk wrote in a message to employees that the company had secured outside money as a safeguard in case the third flight did not reach orbit, without naming the investor or the amount. On August 4, SpaceX announced in a statement that it had accepted $20 million from Founders Fund, which then had $220 million under management and was managed by Elon Musk’s fellow PayPal co-founders. In the statement Elon Musk said the company would “welcome [Founders Fund managing partner] Luke Nosek to our Board.”⁠[5]

By September 24, 2009, he had joined the human genome sequencing company Halcyon Molecular as its founding president, with leading and advising the company as it prepared to launch as his main job, while continuing to lead Founders Fund’s genomics investing; he also sat on the boards of SpaceX and Pathway Genomics at the time. Peter Thiel joined Halcyon Molecular’s board.⁠[10]

In an e-mail made public at the time, he wrote that genetic research had underdelivered because sequencing was too slow and too expensive, and that Halcyon Molecular had developed a method that sequenced DNA faster, more completely, more accurately and more cheaply, aiming to sequence a full genome in under ten minutes for under $100, whereas existing methods took weeks, covered about 90% of the genome and cost tens to hundreds of thousands of dollars. He wrote that Founders Fund and he had made a significant bet on the firm, perhaps the most significant since their investment in Facebook; that the company had raised significantly more capital than it needed, had hired world leaders in biochemistry, nanofabrication and electron microscopy, had expanded academic collaborations with Harvard UniversityHarvard UniversityHarvard University is a private research university in Massachusetts, established by the Massachusetts Bay Colony legislature in 1636 and named in 1639 for early benefactor John Harvard. Its principal campuses are in Cambridge and the Allston and Longwood neighborhoods of Boston. It includes Harvard College, graduate and professional schools, and the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study. Two governing boards share oversight. Alan M. Garber was president as of October 2026, and the endowment stood at $56.9 billion at the end of fiscal 2025.Open the full entry, Stanford UniversityStanford UniversityStanford University is a research university in California founded by Leland and Jane Stanford in 1885 and opened in 1891.Open the full entry and the University of California, BerkeleyUniversity of California, BerkeleyThe University of California, Berkeley (UC Berkeley) is a campus of the University of California system; the University of California was founded in 1868 through a merger of two institutions and moved to Berkeley, California, in 1873.Open the full entry, and had received a $2 million electron microscope on loan from the Department of Energy. He wrote that he had moved closer to the company’s future offices in Stanford Research Park.⁠[10]

The idea for the Thiel FellowshipThiel FellowshipThe Thiel Fellowship is a two-year grant program started by investor Peter Thiel and run by the Thiel Foundation that funds young people who skip or stop out of college to build new things instead. The program has been criticized by figures in education for encouraging young people to leave college.Open the full entry came together in 48 hours: the day before Peter Thiel announced the program on stage at TechCrunch DisruptTechCrunch DisruptTechCrunch Disrupt is a technology and startup conference organized by TechCrunch, combining interviews, product demonstrations, startup competitions and industry networking for founders and investors.Open the full entry in 2010, he travelled to San Francisco with Peter Thiel, Jonathan Cain and Jim O’Neill, and on the way the group brainstormed what they called “the anti-Rhodes scholarship.”⁠[11]

By August 2012 Halcyon Molecular had quietly shut down: the company had been developing low-cost DNA sequencing technology, a British firm had reached that goal first earlier in the year, and Halcyon Molecular had then looked for a new strategy; it had raised more than $20 million, which was gone.⁠[9]

On February 22, 2016, Tom CurrierTom CurrierTom Currier is an entrepreneur who was selected for the first class of the Thiel Fellowship in 2011. He co-founded the solar-tracking robotics company QBotix, the co-living network Campus and the overnight sleeper-bus company Cabin.Open the full entry published “Build Something People Want” on Medium, describing his plan to buy undeveloped land and build new cities from scratch; he wrote that a group of about 40 people were fully on his side, the “biggest two being Luke Nosek and Dave Fontenot.”⁠[12]

As of July 27, 2017, he was leaving Founders Fund, which he had co-founded with Peter Thiel, to take a leadership role at a new investment firm, Gigafund, which would initially focus on raising capital for SpaceX; a person familiar with the matter said he had been spending a growing share of his time on SpaceX. In a filing with the SECU.S. Securities and Exchange CommissionThe U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission is the federal securities regulator of the United States. Created during the Great Depression by the Securities Exchange Act of 1934 and led by five commissioners, it has a three-part mission of protecting investors, maintaining fair, orderly and efficient markets, and facilitating capital formation.Open the full entry, Gigafund was seeking an initial $100 million, with Stephen Oskoui, a former Founders Fund venture partner, also involved; Gigafund had no formal ties to Founders Fund.⁠[13]

By then Founders Fund had invested about $200 million in SpaceX, its largest investment to date; he would keep Founders Fund’s seat on the SpaceX board and had not yet decided what would happen to his seats on the boards of two other Founders Fund portfolio companies. Brian Singerman, a Founders Fund partner, said, “Luke is leaving Founders Fund to launch a new endeavor,” and that “His unwavering commitment to entrepreneurs and passion for technology shaped the founding ethos of Founders Fund.” John Taylor, a SpaceX spokesman, said the company wished him well but that “there is no guarantee of future investment allocations in SpaceX,” adding that this also applied to other companies associated with Elon Musk.⁠[13][14]

A Form D filed on Thursday, July 27, indicated that $100 million had been allocated for Gigafund and listed Stephen Oskoui, who had also worked at Founders Fund. TechCrunchTechCrunchTechCrunch is an American technology news outlet founded in 2005 by Michael Arrington and Keith Teare and headquartered in San Francisco; it mainly covers technology companies, startups, and venture capital, and hosts events such as TechCrunch Disrupt. Its ownership passed successively through AOL, Verizon, and Yahoo, and in 2025 Regent announced its acquisition.Open the full entry’s article of July 28 described him as a member of the “PayPal Mafia” who had stayed in contact with Elon Musk as a director of SpaceX, and said he was unable to comment for the story. He co-founded Gigafund in July 2017 and has been its managing partner since inception.⁠[14][3]

By September 2, 2017, Cabin, an overnight sleeper-bus company whose CEO and co-founder was Tom Currier, had secured $3.3 million in seed financing led by Founders Fund’s FF Angel. He commented, as a partner at Founders Fund: “Cabin will turn costly and draining regional trips into affordable, comfortable, enjoyable experiences,” and “We’re excited to support Cabin as it re-imagines the future of transportation.”⁠[15]

SpaceX’s initial public offering prospectus, dated June 11, 2026, lists him among its directors, aged 50, in a table giving information as of May 1, 2026. At that time he also served on the boards of various private companies, including Last Energy, a nuclear energy company that designs and manufactures small modular reactors; Emerald Cloud Lab, which operates remotely accessible and largely autonomous life science laboratories; and ResearchGate, an online platform connecting scientists and researchers; and he had served on the board of DeepMindGoogle DeepMindGoogle DeepMind is Google’s artificial intelligence research organization, formed in April 2023 by merging DeepMind, which Google acquired in 2014, with the Brain team from Google Research, and led by CEO Demis Hassabis. It developed AlphaGo, AlphaFold, and the Gemini family of models, and Hassabis and John Jumper received the 2024 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for AlphaFold’s protein structure prediction work.Open the full entry before its acquisition by GoogleGoogleGoogle is an American technology company founded by Larry Page and Sergey Brin and incorporated in 1998. It became an Alphabet subsidiary in 2015. Its businesses include internet search, advertising, software platforms, cloud computing, and artificial intelligence.Open the full entry.⁠[3]

Upon completion of the offering he was to serve with Elon Musk, Gwynne Shotwell, Antonio J. Gracias and Donald Harrison as one of the initial Class B directors and to sit on the compensation and nominating committee; SpaceX’s board had determined that he is independent under the listing standards of Nasdaq and Nasdaq Texas.⁠[3]

As of May 1, 2026 he beneficially owned 32,987,360 shares of SpaceX Class A common stock, less than 1%, of which 24,987,340 were held of record by him and 8,000,020 by Nosek Capital, LLC, of which he is the managing member; 2,381,000 of these shares were pledged as security for personal indebtedness.⁠[3]

On October 7, 2026, when Atomic MachinesAtomic MachinesAtomic Machines is a micro-machine manufacturing technology company in the San Francisco Bay Area, founded and led as chief executive by former Uber chief product officer Jeff Holden. After six years of stealth development it emerged in October 2026, announcing $250 million in total funding, the Matter Compiler, an AI-native manufacturing system that builds micro-machines directly from code, and its first product, PrimeSwitch, a relay for AI data centers.Open the full entry emerged from stealth and announced its funding, with Gigafund among its investors, he commented as Gigafund’s managing partner: “If vibe coding is how software gets made now, this is the start of vibe manufacturing.”⁠[16]

As of November 2026 he is co-founder and partner of Gigafund and sits on the boards of Last Energy, ResearchGate and Luminous Computing. Gigafund is located in Austin, TexasTexasTexas is a U.S. state in the south-central United States, with its capital at Austin and its largest city Houston. It was admitted to the Union on December 29, 1845, as the 28th state, and the 2020 census (April 1, 2020) counted 29,145,505 residents.Open the full entry, and says it has invested over $1 billion in SpaceX since it started in July 2017.⁠[7]

He also co-founded two other consumer internet companies; the Hall of Fame biography and his Founders Fund profile both state that one of them built the web’s first advertising network.⁠[1][4]

He has also served as a director of ResearchGATE GmbH, Halcyon Molecular, Inc. and Zivity, LLC.⁠[1]

PayPal: Official website: https://www.paypal.com/ (opens in a new window).⁠[17]

Founders Fund: Official website: https://foundersfund.com/ (opens in a new window).⁠[4]

SpaceX: Official website: https://www.spacex.com/ (opens in a new window).⁠[18]

Gigafund: Official website: https://www.gigafund.com/ (opens in a new window).⁠[7]

LinkedInLinkedInLinkedIn is a social networking platform for professionals. It was founded in 2002 by Reid Hoffman and others, launched in 2003, and listed on the New York Stock Exchange in 2011; after Microsoft acquired it for approximately $26.2 billion in 2016, it became a wholly owned Microsoft subsidiary. Its revenue comes from membership subscriptions, advertising, and recruitment solutions.Open the full entry: Public profile: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lukenosek/ (opens in a new window).⁠[7]