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Gwynne Shotwell has appeared for the first time on the list of Forbes billionaires, with a fortune that the magazine estimates at 1.2 billion dollars.
Billionaire The Spacex President It only has a 0.3% participation in the Aerospace Company of Elon Musk, but the company’s last investment round, which does not quote on the stock market, fired its valuation to 350,000 million dollarswhich has given a good push to Shotwell’s heritage.
According to Forbes, Gwynne Shotwell’s fortune, 61, It is now 1.2 billion dollarshis first “billion” on the American short scale. As the data is not public, the figure is based on the compensation on actions received by the first Spacex employees.
Faith jump. Shotwell joined Spacex in 2002 as employee number 11, changing a safe job in Microcosm for a company that had everything to demonstrate, at a time when Boeing and Lockheed Martin had no competition and Shotwell was divorcing with two young children.
Mechanical training engineer, he told Musk “I’m a complete idiot” when he asked why he wanted to change a company established to Spacex. His first big challenge in the company was to sell to customers the Falcon 1 rocket and obtain permits for its launch. When the first three attempts failed, Shotwell had the difficult task of maintaining investors.
Path. In 2007, Shotwell managed to convince Iridium, another consolidated company, to sign a contract with Spacex, despite the fact that at that time their rockets had not yet been successful.
After three failures, Falcon 1 first reached orbit in 2008, which promoted a decisive contract with NASA to develop the Dragon ship, which would begin to transport load to the International Space Station.
That same year, Musk amounted to Shotwell to President and Operations Director. Since then, Gwynne Shotwell has achieved key contracts with NASA, Pentagon and many commercial companies.
Orchestra Director. In addition to the boss in Musk’s shadow, Shotwell is the only executive who has been working with the complicated entrepreneur for more than two decades. Musk is the visionary, but Shotwell contributes almost everything: stability, operational efficiency and diplomatic management.
Shotwell has managed to accelerate the Rhythm of Development of Spacex, keeping in balance the many elements of a company that designs and manufactures its own rockets and satellites, and operates its own releases.
There are no two spacex. In 2024, Spacex completed 134 orbital launches, almost triple that its closest competitor: the state company China Casc with 48 launches. Thanks to Starlink, Spacex puts in orbit 83% of all world’s satellitesself -confinction with its satellite Internet service the development of Starship, which will allow you to launch Starlink at an even greater pace.
The constellation Starlink grew up to 7,000 satellitesreaching 5 million users (90% more than in 2023). Morgan Stanley estimates that Starlink generated 900 million dollars of operational benefit on revenues of 9.3 billion last year. Pragmatic and effective, Shotwell has been key in all these operations, an effort that now sees rewarded with his first “Billón”.
Images | NASA, Spacex
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