Elon Musk says he wasn’t fired by Peter Thiel, calls PayPal exit a “palace coup”

Elon Musk has rejected the long-standing narrative that Peter Thiel fired him as CEO of PayPal in 2000. In a post on microblogging site X (formerly known as Twitter), Musk said that his removal was a “palace coup” orchestrated by the executive team of the payment platform. The tech billionaire was responding to a podcast clip which claimed “Peter Thiel fired Elon Musk” but suggested that Thiel handled the situation kindly. The podcast had framed the leadership change as a difficult but respectful decision by Thiel, noting that Musk left the company with about a 12% stake. It also highlighted how their relationship later continued in business, pointing out that Musk allowed Thiel’s Founders Fund to invest $20 million for a 10% stake in SpaceX — a deal the podcast described as “perhaps the greatest investment of all time.”


Musk said the description was wrong. He replied sharply to the post, stating:


“I was CEO and Peter reported to me, so could not fire me. It was a palace coup by most (not all) of the exec team and most of the board, who were worried that my decisions were too risky.”


“I was the largest shareholder in the company. There was nothing anyone could have done to take my shares away from me,” he further added.

When Elon Musk was ousted from PayPal’s CEO role

According to Musk biographer Walter Isaacson, he was ousted by the so-called PayPal mafia while he was on vacation for his honeymoon. As per reports, several senior executives and board members moved to replace Musk during his absence, citing concerns about his strategic direction. Specifically, Musk’s push to shift PayPal’s infrastructure from Unix to Microsoft technology was then seen as a ‘high-risk decision’. As per Fox Business reports, the plotters were joined by investor Peter Thiel, board member Reid Hoffman and product chief David Sachs in September 2000.


After his removal, Peter Thiel, who had previously served as PayPal CEO, was reinstated as chief executive in Musk’s place.

Elon Musk started to sense a problem while in Australia when he got more pushback to his decisions from the PayPal team. In order to preserve his role, Muks cut short his honeymoon and travelled back to Bay Area. "I was pretty angry at first," Musk told Isaacson. "I had thoughts of assassination running through my head. But eventually I realized that it was good I got cooped. Otherwise I’d still be slaving away at PayPal… Of course, if I had stayed, PayPal would be a trillion-dollar company."