Roelof Botha speaks onstage throughout day one in all TechCrunch Disrupt 2025 at Moscone Heart on Oct. 27, 2025 in San Francisco, California.
Kimberly White | Getty Pictures
Lower than every week after main SpaceX by a file IPO, CEO Elon Musk has bolstered the rocket maker’s board with one other longtime pal and ally, Roelof Botha.
In a submitting on Wednesday, SpaceX stated Botha will function an unbiased director and a member of the corporate’s audit committee beginning instantly. Botha turns into the eighth board member at SpaceX, the place Musk serves as chairman, along with his roles as CEO and expertise chief.
Since 2003, Botha has labored at enterprise agency Sequoia, ultimately climbing his technique to managing director in 2022, earlier than stepping down from that place final 12 months. He is now an adviser to the agency and is listed on its web site as a part of the seed and early-stage workforce in addition to the expansion workforce.
Musk recruited Botha to PayPal in 2000 throughout the early days of the web cost firm. Each males are from South Africa.
Sequoia has been a giant backer of Musk’s corporations, investing in SpaceX in addition to Neuralink and The Boring Firm. It additionally contributed to Musk’s leveraged buyout of Twitter, which is now often called X and is owned by SpaceX.
The agency first invested in SpaceX in 2019 and added to its place in future rounds, increase what now quantities to a stake of slightly below 1.5% valued at roughly $35 billion. Sequoia companion Shaun Maguire is the agency’s principal lead investor in SpaceX, and Botha isn’t representing Sequoia on the board.
Maguire instructed CNBC on Friday, as SpaceX was nearly to debut on the Nasdaq, that Sequoia will distribute some shares to buyers “if we really feel just like the valuation is manner forward of its skis.” He stated that, “as a person, I will maintain my shares endlessly.”
The submitting additionally stated Botha is expounded to a SpaceX worker, however did not identify the particular person.
A Sequoia spokesperson declined to remark and a consultant from SpaceX did not reply to a request for remark.
Musk controls extra than 82% of voting rights at SpaceX and owns shares within the firm price over $1 trillion. The governance mannequin provides exterior shareholders little skill to exert affect.
Botha exited his oversight function at Sequoia final 12 months because the agency was embroiled in controversy. The Monetary Instances reported that colleagues had been vital of Botha’s administration model, and he stirred up bother with some buyers by defending remarks made by Maguire that had been broadly criticized as Islamaphobic.
