Confinity

The company was launched in 1998 as Fieldlink and later renamed Confinity.^[2] Many of Confinity's initial recruits were alumni of The Stanford Review, also co-founded by Thiel, and most early engineers hailed from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, recruited by Levchin.^[3] Early investors included Nokia Ventures, Deutsche Bank, and William N. Melton, the founder of CyberCash.^[4]

Confinity's second office, 165 University Avenue in Palo Alto, California, is also known for being the former office of Google and Logitech.^[5]

Confinity launched its milestone product, PayPal, in late 1999.^[1] Confinity merged with X.com, founded by Elon Musk, in March 2000.^[6] The merged company became known as X.com because this was thought to be a name with broader long-term potential than Confinity or PayPal.^[7]

PayPal made an Initial Public Offering on the NASDAQ stock exchange on February 14, 2002.^[8] The company was purchased by eBay in a $1.3 billion stock deal announced on July 8, 2002.^[9] eBay and PayPal became separate companies in 2015.^[10]