Marc Tarpenning was born on June 1, 1964, in Sacramento, California. He earned a computer science degree at UC Berkeley in 1985.
In 2003 he and Martin Eberhard founded Tesla Motors. Tarpenning became chief financial officer. Later he moved to vice president of electrical engineering.
In February 2004 Elon Musk led a $6.5 million Series A round and became chairman. Tarpenning remained at the company until 2008, the year the Roadster went into production.
After Tesla he worked with UC Berkeley's Sutardja Center for Entrepreneurship and Technology and its SkyDeck accelerator. In 2019 he joined the venture capital firm Spero Ventures.