This Former Musk Assistant Ran His Calendar. Now She's Backing His Companies.
In 2016, when she was 25 years old, Elissa Butterfield, a Los Angeles native working in the entertainment industry, accepted a new job that would change her life—she went to work for Elon Musk.
At the time, Musk was not the household figure he is today. He was worth closer to $10 billion, or 38 times less than he is now. For two years, as one of Musk's team of executive assistants, Butterfield helped manage her mercurial boss' calendar and ever-changing priorities, from rescuing kids in a cave in Thailand to tunneling holes in Tesla's parking lot. She coordinated calls with investors, moved around meetings, and juggled Musk's wide-ranging portfolio, from Tesla and SpaceX duties to his eccentric extracurriculars and new ventures. In 2018, she graduated to operational roles at both Tesla and SpaceX, before leaving Musk's payroll in 2022.
'I got the impression she was incredibly loyal and must have been incredibly effective,' says a former SpaceX employee. Now, Butterfield is capitalizing on her experience and connections. Since she joined Los Angeles-based venture capital firm Island Green Capital Management in 2024, the firm has made investments in xAI and SpaceX, Musk's two fastest-growing companies.
Island Green, founded in 2023 by former Goldman Sachs trader Ateet Ahluwalia, was one of at least 61 investors to participate in xAI's $6 billion investment round last May, which valued the startup at $24 billion, according to Pitchbook. In January, Island Green bought a stake in SpaceX from an unknown seller, likely at a valuation of around $350 billion (which the company hit last December in a $1.25 billion share sale). Island Green's SpaceX bet was through a special-purpose vehicle, a structure popular with investors clamoring to get a piece of SpaceX (and willing to pay a fee), according to a person familiar with the matter.
Island Green's Musk-linked bets have already appreciated on paper. xAI raised an additional $6 billion in November at a $50 billion valuation. The valuation hit $80 billion in Musk's merger last month between xAI and his social media company X; and now Musk is reportedly seeking to raise even more money for xAI at a 'proper value,' one that Bloomberg recently suggested could be as high as $120 billion. Likewise, SpaceX shares are now trading in secondary markets at valuations of between $380 million to $400 billion, according to market data trackers PM Insights and Caplight.
Island Green has also backed Impulse Space, the startup of another SpaceX alum, Tom Mueller, who was one of the rocket maker's first employees and lead engineer on its rocket. Butterfield's firm participated in a $150 million fundraising round last October, which valued the startup at $510 million, according to PitchBook. Before Butterfield's arrival, Island Green – which now reports $88 million of assets under management — had made just two other bets, in defense company Shield AI and robotics company Formic.
Butterfield joins the growing list of Musk alumni to strike deals and launch companies in the Musk-influenced venture capital and startup world. Several of Musk's top executives have amassed hundred-million, even billion-dollar fortunes. Veterans of SpaceX have so far launched 116 companies and raised $6.1 billion in venture capital, according to the SpaceX alumni founders website. Musk's chief of staff from 2014 until 2019, who hired Butterfield, Sam Teller joined Valor Equity Partners, the firm run by Musk's billionaire pal and investor Antonio Gracias, and was a partner there for three and a half years.
Unlike her former boss, Butterfield keeps a low profile. She did not return Forbes' requests for comment for this article. The 34-year-old Los Angeles native graduated Cum Laude in 2013 from Belmont University, a private Christian university in Nashville, with a music business degree, according to the university registrar's office. She began her career at talent agency WME, rising to the role of assistant to the head of events, according to her LinkedIn. She then jumped to Musk's team of executive assistants.
There was always something to do in those days. In 2016, when Musk ordered his lieutenants to start digging a pilot project in the Tesla parking lot for his nascent tunneling startup (which became the Boring Company), Butterfield was the one who scrambled to get all the Tesla workers to move their cars, as recounted in author Walter Isaacon's biography of Musk. In 2018, when Musk decided to turn SpaceX's launch pad in Boca Chica, Texas into the dedicated base for Starship (SpaceX's newest and largest rocket), he put Butterfield in charge of manufacturing a community for the hundreds of engineers and construction workers working around the clock; she brought in Airstream trailers, palm trees, a tiki bar, and a deck with a fire pit, according to Isaacson's book.
She also got dragged into Musk's flights of fancy. In July 2018, when he assigned a group of engineers at SpaceX and the Boring Company to manufacture a mini submarine to help save a group of boys stuck in a cave in Thailand, Butterfield was among those coordinating the details. She helped schedule Musk's flight to Thailand and was apparently relaying Musk's engineering ideas (something involving a 'zero-force zipper solution' for a 'Thai cave tube') to Musk's chief of staff Sam Teller and engineer Steve Davis, president of the Boring Company and one of Musk righthands, per exhibits from a 2018 lawsuit (in which British cave diver Vernon Unsworth unsuccessfully sued Musk for defamation after Musk called him a 'pedo guy' on Twitter).
And like any effective company employee, Butterfield learned to manage the boss's moods. In organizing his SpaceX duties, Butterfield tried to 'avoid ever skipping [the] Mars Colonizer [meeting], because that was the most fun meeting for him and always put him in a good mood,' she told Isaacson.
According to her LinkedIn, Butterfield became a director of SpaceX's office of the CEO in 2021. One person familiar with her role says she was brought back on then as an executive assistant to cover for a colleague out on maternity leave. Either way, Butterfield left SpaceX for good in 2022 and joined a biotech company as its chief operating officer and founded her own company, Bread and Butterfield LLC. But she left her new gig after a year, and her LLC, while still active, does not appear to be affiliated with any operating business. Guess she wasn't quite ready to leave Musk's orbit for good.
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