Who is the CEO of SpaceX?

 The CEO of SpaceX is Elon Musk. 

Here’s an explanation of what that means, and how his role works in practice:

Who is Elon Musk in relation to SpaceX

• Elon Musk founded SpaceX in 2002. 
• He is the Chief Executive Officer (CEO), which means he is the top executive responsible for direction, strategy, leadership and major decisions of the company. 
• He also holds the title of Chief Designer / Chief Technology Officer (CTO) in many respects — being deeply involved in engineering, design, and technical development of rockets, spacecraft, etc. 

What the CEO at SpaceX does (his responsibilities)

• Sets the vision: Musk helps define what SpaceX aims to achieve long-term (e.g. making life multiplanetary, developing reusable rockets like Starship) 
• Oversees major technical programs and product development. Because he also acts as the chief technical designer, he often is directly involved in engineering decisions. 
• Makes high-level strategic decisions — about what projects to pursue, which contracts to take, how to scale. 
• Coordinates with other senior executives. For example, Gwynne Shotwell is President & COO, and she handles much of the day‑to‑day operations, finance, legal, sales, business development etc. Musk focuses more on engineering, design, strategy. 

The distinction between CEO vs other leadership roles

• The CEO is the top leader, often more outward‑facing (vision, investors, big contracts, long‑term projects).
• The COO / President (in SpaceX’s case Gwynne Shotwell) handles much of the internal operations to ensure the company runs smoothly. 
• Musk, because of his additional technical titles, bridges both top leadership (vision, strategy) and deep technical involvement. That is somewhat unusual: many CEOs are less involved in engineering themselves. SpaceX’s model is atypical in that sense.