The people who give him credit are the same people who sold PayPal for $1.5 billion in July 2002:

Peter Thiel, Max Levchin, Luke Nosek, Reid Hoffman, David Sacks, Ken Howery, Jeremy Stoppelman, Russel Simmons.

Elon was removed as CEO in 2000, but he remained the largest individual shareholder when PayPal went public.