Max Levchin
PayPal
Online payments platform for sending money over email and the internet · Mountain View, California
Portrait: TechCrunch / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY 2.0
The founder
Max Levchin, a Ukrainian-born computer scientist, co-founded Confinity in 1998 with Peter Thiel, building its core security and fraud-prevention technology. Confinity merged with Elon Musk’s X.com in 2000; the combined company was renamed PayPal in 2001, with Levchin serving as CTO. He was 26 and worth roughly $34 million when the eBay deal closed. After leaving PayPal, he founded Slide (acquired by Google in 2010) and later Affirm.
How it was sold
eBay acquired PayPal in an all-stock transaction announced in July 2002 and closed that October, unifying its dominant online marketplace with the leading independent payments service. The deal cemented the so-called "PayPal Mafia," whose alumni went on to found or fund YouTube, LinkedIn, Tesla, Palantir and Yelp.
Sourced & verified
In the news
Coverage of the PayPal deal from independent outlets — read the original reporting, not just our summary.
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