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, the 51- year- old served as the company’s CEO and one of the company’s earliest significant investors in Tesla. Additionally, in 2022, Musk bought Twitter.
Elon Musk’s Profile Summary
| Name | Elon Musk |
|---|---|
| Born | 28 June 1971 |
| Birthplace | Pretoria, South Africa |
| Age | 51 |
| Nationality | South African, Canadian, American |
| Education | Queen’s University in Kingston, Ontario University of Pennsylvania Stanford University |
| Profession | Businessman; Media proprietor; Art Collector |
| Position | Founder, CEO and chief engineer at SpaceX; CEO and product architect of Tesla; CEO of Twitter |
Elon Musk’s Early Life
Musk was conceived by 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 obtaining 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 greater economic opportunities in the United States.
| Net worth | $139 billion (Bloomberg Billionaires and Forbes 2023) |
| Father | Errol Musk |
| Mother | Maye Musk |
| Spouse | Justine Wilson (2000-2008); Talulah Riley (2010-2012), (2013-2016) |
| Children | 10 |
Elon Musk’s Education
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 received 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.
Elon Musk’s Career
Zip 2 and PayPal
He established Zip2, a business that offered maps and business directories to online newspapers, in 1995. After the computer maker Compaq paid $307 million for Zip2 in 1999, Musk founded X.com, which later changed its name to PayPal, a company that specialized in online money transfers. The online auction eBay bought PayPal in 2002 for $1.5 billion.
SpaceX
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 larger 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 kg (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 building bases on the Moon and Mars as well as providing quick travel between cities on Earth, would be the payload.
The Dragon spacecraft, which delivers supplies to the International Space Station (ISS), 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 flight.
In 2020, the Super Heavy-Starship system launched its initial test flights. Musk served as the company’s CEO in addition to serving as the Dragon, Starship, and Falcon rockets’ chief designer. NASA’s Artemis space program has hired SpaceX to build the lander for the astronauts who will visit the Moon again by 2025.
Tesla
Musk had 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 its 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 about $226 million in revenue.
Tesla unveiled the Model S sedan two years later, and automotive critics praised both its performance and appearance.
The business received additional praise for its 2015 launch of the Model X luxury SUV. The less expensive 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 devote enough time to the development of the Hyperloop due to his responsibilities as CEO of SpaceX and Tesla.
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 company being publicly traded and claiming to have “secured funding.” (The $420 value was taken as a playful allusion to April 20, a day commemorated by cannabis enthusiasts.)
The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) filed a lawsuit against Musk for securities fraud the following month, claiming that 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 resign.
A harsher deal was ultimately accepted, but the news caused Tesla stock 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 policies, Musk questioned the company’s dedication to free speech principles. 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 would join the board of directors. However, Musk changed his mind and instead offered $44 billion for the entire company, valued at $54.20 per share.
The deal, which would make him the sole owner of the business, was approved by the board of Twitter. According to Musk, his plans for the business included “enhancing the product with new features, making the algorithms open source to increase trust, defeating the spam bots, and authenticating all humans.”
The company was in “material breach of multiple provisions” of the purchase agreement, according to Musk, who stated that Twitter had not provided enough information about 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 legal challenge, and it was finished in October.
Elon Musk’s Net Worth
According to both the Bloomberg Billionaires Index and Forbes’ real-time billionaires list, Musk is the second wealthiest person in the world as of December 23, 2022, with an estimated net worth of about $139 billion, largely derived from his ownership stakes in Tesla and SpaceX.
