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| Twitter (X) and Tesla CEO |
Born:
Elon Reeve Musk
June 28, 1971 (age 52)
Pretoria, Transvaal, South Africa
Education:
University of Pennsylvania (BA, BS)Title:
Founder, CEO, and chief engineer of SpaceX
CEO and product architect of Tesla, Inc.
Owner and CTO of Twitter
President of the Musk Foundation
Founder of the Boring Company, X Corp., and xAI
Co-founder of Neuralink, OpenAI, Zip2, and X.com (part of PayPal)Spouses:
Justine Wilson
(m. 2000; div. 2008)
Talulah Riley
(m. 2010; div. 2012)
(m. 2013; div. 2016)Partner:
Grimes (2018–2021)[1]Children:
10[a][3]Parents:
Errol Musk (father)
Maye Musk (mother)Family:
Musk familySignature:
Elon Musk, a South African-born American entrepreneur who cofounded PayPal and SpaceX, a manufacturer of launch vehicles and spacecraft, was born on June 28, 1971, in Pretoria, South Africa. In addition, he served as the company's CEO and one of the company's earliest significant investors in Tesla. Additionally, in 2022, Musk bought Twitter.
Musk was born to a Canadian mother and a South African father. Early on, he showed aptitude for computers and entrepreneurship. He made a video game at the age of 12 and sold it to a computer magazine. Musk left South Africa in 1988 after getting a Canadian passport because he didn't want to participate in the country's mandatory military service, which supported apartheid, and because he wanted to pursue the better economic opportunities in the United States.
Musk studied at Queen's University in Kingston, Ontario, before transferring to the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia in 1992. There, he earned bachelor's degrees in economics and physics, which he later acquired in 1997. He enrolled in Stanford University's physics graduate program but dropped out after just two days because he believed that working in the field of the Internet would have a greater impact on society than studying physics. He established Zip2, a service that offered maps and business directories to online publications, in 1995. After the computer maker Compaq paid $307 million for Zip2 in 1999, Musk launched X.com, which eventually changed its name to PayPal, a company that specialized in online money transfers. PayPal was purchased by the online auction site eBay in 2002 for $1.5 billion.
Musk has long held the belief that for life to continue, humans must evolve into a multiplanetary species. He was not pleased with the rocket launchers' high cost, though. He established Space Exploration Technologies (SpaceX) in 2002 to produce rockets at lower costs. The Falcon 1 (first launched in 2006) and the bigger Falcon 9 (first launched in 2010) were the company's first two rockets, and both were created to be considerably less expensive than rival rockets.
A third rocket, the Falcon Heavy, which made its debut in 2018, was made to lift 117,000 pounds (53,000 kg) into orbit, more than double the capacity of its main rival, the Boeing Company's Delta IV Heavy, for only a third of the price. The Super Heavy-Starship system, which will replace the Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy, has been unveiled by SpaceX. 100,000 kilograms (220,000 pounds) would be able to be lifted into low Earth orbit by the Super Heavy first stage.
The Starship, a spacecraft made for creating bases on the Moon and Mars as well as offering quick travel between cities on Earth, would be the payload. The International Space Station (ISS) supply ship, the Dragon, was also created by SpaceX. Up to seven astronauts can fit on a Dragon spacecraft, which carried astronauts Doug Hurley and Robert Behnken to the ISS in 2020 on a crewed voyage.
Musk served as the company's CEO in addition to serving as the Dragon, Starship, and Falcon rockets' principal designer. NASA's Artemis space program has hired SpaceX to build the lander for the astronauts who will visit the Moon again by 2025.
Musk has long been intrigued by the potential of electric vehicles, and in 2004 he contributed significantly to the funding of Martin Eberhard and Marc Tarpenning's electric vehicle startup, Tesla Motors (later renamed Tesla). Tesla unveiled their first vehicle, the Roadster, in 2006. It had a range of 245 miles (394 km) on a single charge. It was a sports car that could accelerate from 0 to 60 miles per hour (97 kilometers per hour) in under four seconds, in contrast to the majority of previous electric vehicles, which Musk believed to be stodgy and boring. The company's initial public offering in 2010 generated around $226 million in revenue. Tesla unveiled the Model S car two years later, and automotive journalists praised both its performance and appearance. The business received additional recognition for its 2015 launch of the Model X luxury SUV. The less priced Model 3 entered production in 2017 and quickly rose to the position of best-selling electric car of all time.
Musk proposed the Hyperloop in 2013, a pneumatic tube in which a pod carrying 28 passengers would travel the 350 miles (560 km) between Los Angeles and San Francisco in 35 minutes at a top speed of 760 miles (1,220 km/h), almost the speed of sound, in response to dissatisfaction with the estimated cost ($68 billion) of a high-speed rail system in California. Musk asserted that the Hyperloop would only cost $6 billion and could carry the six million passengers who use that route annually with pods leaving on average every two minutes. He claimed he could not spend enough time to the development of the Hyperloop due to his responsibilities as CEO of SpaceX and Tesla.
Twitter & X
Musk signed up for the social media platform Twitter in 2009, and as @elonmusk, he quickly rose to prominence, amassing more than 85 million followers as of 2022. In August 2018, he tweeted about taking Tesla private for $420 per share, expressing his concerns about the firm being publicly listed and claiming to have "secured funding." (The $420 value was seen as a playful allusion to April 20, a day commemorated by cannabis enthusiasts.) In the month after, the U.S.
Musk was sued by the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) for securities fraud, according to the SEC, who claimed the tweets were "false and misleading." Soon after, the SEC's settlement proposal was reportedly rejected by Tesla's board because Musk had threatened to leave. A harsher settlement was ultimately agreed, but the announcement caused Tesla shares to plunge. The agreement stipulated that Musk would give up his position as chairman for three years while remaining CEO, that his tweets would need to be reviewed by Tesla attorneys before being posted, and that $20 million in fines would be imposed on both Tesla and Musk.
In light of Twitter's content-moderation restrictions, Musk questioned the company's dedication to free speech values. According to Twitter's SEC filings from the beginning of April 2022, Musk had acquired more than 9% of the business. Shortly after, Twitter announced that Musk will join the board of directors. However, Musk changed his mind and instead offered $44 billion for the entire firm, valued at $54.20 a share. The acquisition, which would make him the sole owner of the business, was approved by the board of Twitter.
According to Musk, his goals for the business include "enhancing the product with new features, making the algorithms open source to increase trust, defeating the spam bots, and authenticating all humans." The corporation was in "material breach of multiple provisions" of the purchase agreement, according to Musk, who stated that Twitter had not provided enough information concerning bot accounts when he announced in July 2022 that he was withdrawing his offer.
In response, Twitter's board chair Bret Taylor stated that the business was "committed to closing the transaction on the price and terms agreed upon with Mr. Musk." To compel Musk to acquire the business, Twitter sued him. Twitter's shareholders decided to accept Musk's offer in a vote held in September 2022. Musk ultimately decided to move forward with the deal in the face of a judicial challenge, and it was finished in October.