Elon Musk Biography

Biography

Elon Reeve Musk (born June 28, 1971), known popularly as Elon Musk, is a business magnate and investor hailing from Pretoria, Transvaal, South Africa. He is the founder, CEO, and chief engineer of SpaceX; angel investor, CEO, and product architect of Tesla, Inc.; owner, CTO, and chairman of Twitter; founder of the Boring Company and X Corp.; co-founder of Neuralink and OpenAI; and president of the philanthropic Musk Foundation. Musk is the wealthiest person in the world according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index and Forbes’s Real Time Billionaires list as of July 2023, primarily from his ownership stakes in Tesla and SpaceX, with an estimated net worth of around $231 billion according to Bloomberg and $237.7 billion according to Forbes.

Elon Musk
Full Name	Elon Reeve Musk
Born	June 28, 1971 (age 54)
Nationality	South African
Occupation	Entrepreneur
Relationship Status	Single
Education	University of Pennsylvania (UPenn)
Awards	Guinness World Records
Booking Contact	https://twitter.com/elonmusk
Organization	Tesla

Early Life

• Elon Reeve Musk was born on June 28, 1971, in Pretoria, one of South Africa’s capital cities.
• His mother is Maye Musk, a model and dietitian born in Saskatchewan, Canada, and raised in South Africa.
• His father, Errol Musk, is a South African electromechanical engineer, pilot, sailor, consultant, and property developer.
• Musk has a younger brother, Kimbal, and a younger sister, Tosca.
• Musk’s family was wealthy during his youth. His father was elected to the Pretoria City Council as a representative of the anti-apartheid Progressive Party.
• Musk attended Waterkloof House Preparatory School, Bryanston High School, and Pretoria Boys High School, from which he graduated.

Education

• Musk applied for a Canadian passport through his Canadian-born mother, knowing that it would be easier to immigrate to the United States this way.
• While waiting for his application to be processed, he attended the University of Pretoria for five months.
• Musk arrived in Canada in June 1989 and lived with a second cousin in Saskatchewan for a year, working odd jobs at a farm and lumber mill.
• In 1990, he entered Queen’s University in Kingston, Ontario.
• Two years later, he transferred to the University of Pennsylvania (UPenn), where he completed studies for a Bachelor of Arts degree in physics and a Bachelor of Science degree in economics from the Wharton School.
• In 1994, Musk held two internships in Silicon Valley: one at the ene rgy storage startup Pinnacle Research Institute, which investigated electrolytic ultracapacitors for energy storage, and another at the Palo Alto–based startup Rocket Science Games.
• In 1995, he was accepted to a PhD program in materials science at Stanford University. However, Musk decided to join the Internet boom, instead dropping out two days after being accepted and applied for a job at Netscape, to which he reportedly never received a response.

Business Career

Zip2

• In 1995, Musk, his brother Kimbal, and Greg Kouri founded Zip2. Errol Musk provided them with $28,000 in funding.
• The company developed an Internet city guide with maps, directions, and yellow pages, and marketed it to newspapers.
• Eventually, Zip2 obtained contracts with The New York Times and the Chicago Tribune.
• Compaq acquired Zip2 for $307 million in cash in February 1999, and Musk received $22 million for his 7-percent share.

X.com and PayPal

• Later in 1999, Musk co-founded X.com, an online financial services and e-mail payment company.
• In 2000, X.com merged with online bank Confinity to avoid competition, as Confinity’s money-transfer service PayPal was more popular than X.com’s service.
• Musk then returned as CEO of the merged company.
• In 2002, PayPal was acquired by eBay for $1.5 billion in stock, of which Musk—the largest shareholder with 11.72% of shares—received $175.8 million.

SpaceX

• With $100 million of his own money, Musk founded SpaceX in 2002 and became the company’s CEO and Chief Engineer.
• SpaceX attempted its first launch of the Falcon 1 rocket in 2006. Though the rocket failed to reach Earth orbit, it was awarded a Commercial Orbital Transportation Services program contract from NASA Administrator later that year.
• After two more failed attempts that nearly caused Musk and his companies to go bankrupt, SpaceX succeeded in launching the Falcon 1 into orbit in 2008.
• Later that year, SpaceX received a $1.6 billion Commercial Resupply Services program contract from NASA for 12 flights of its Falcon 9 rocket and Dragon spacecraft to the International Space Station, replacing the Space Shuttle after its 2011 retirement.
• In 2012, SpaceX launched a Dragon spacecraft to the ISS, becoming the first commercial company to do so.
• In 2015, SpaceX successfully landed the first stage of a Falcon 9, becoming the first to accomplish a propulsive vertical landing of an orbital rocket.
• In 2018, SpaceX launched the Falcon Heavy, the world’s most powerful operational rocket by a factor of two, and landed two of its three boosters.
• In 2020, SpaceX launched its first crewed mission, the Demo-2, becoming the first private company to place a person into orbit and dock a crewed spacecraft with the ISS.
• In 2021, SpaceX launched the Inspiration4, the first all-civilian space mission.

Tesla, Inc.

• Musk joined electric vehicle manufacturer Tesla Motors, Inc. (now Tesla, Inc.) in 2004, a year after its founding, becoming its product architect.
• He became CEO in 2008 after the financial crisis.
• Under Musk, Tesla first built an electric sports car, the Roadster, in 2008, which was followed by the Model S sedan, which was released in 2012, and the Model X SUV, which launched in 2015.
• Musk was integral to the development of the Model 3, which is less expensive and was released in 2017.
• As of 2021, Musk’s Tesla Roadster is orbiting the sun.

SolarCity and Tesla Energy

• In 2006, Musk co-founded SolarCity, a photovoltaics products and services company with his cousins Lyndon and Peter Rive.
• SolarCity was the second largest provider of solar power systems in the United States by 2013.
• Tesla acquired SolarCity for over $2 billion in 2016 and merged it with its battery energy storage products division to create Tesla Energy.

Other ventures

• Musk has proposed the Hyperloop, a high-speed vactrain transportation concept.
• Musk co-founded Neuralink, a neurotechnology startup company, to integrate the human brain with artificial intelligence.
• Musk founded The Boring Company in 2016. In June 2018, the company was selected to construct a 3.6-mile-long (5.8 km) high-speed tunnel system in Chicago, Illinois.
• Musk also co-founded OpenAI, a nonprofit research company that aims to promote and develop friendly AI for the benefit of all of humanity.

Personal Life

• Musk has been married three times and has seven children.
• He was first married to Canadian author Justine Wilson, with whom he had five sons.
• After their divorce, Musk married English actress Talulah Riley in 2010. They divorced in 2012, remarried in 2013, and divorced again in 2016.
• Musk has been in a relationship with Canadian musician Claire Boucher, known professionally as Grimes, since 2018. They have two sons together## Personal Life
• Musk has been married three times and has seven children.
• He was first married to Canadian author Justine Wilson, with whom he had five sons.
• After their divorce, Musk married English actress Talulah Riley in 2010. They divorced in 2012, remarried in 2013, and divorced again in 2016.
• Musk has been in a relationship with Canadian musician Claire Boucher, known professionally as Grimes, since 2018. They have two sons together.

Awards and Honors

• Musk has received numerous awards and recognitions over the years.
• In 2006, he was recognized as one of the 75 most influential people of the 21st century by Esquire magazine.
• In 2013, he was named Fortune’s Businessperson of the Year for SpaceX, SolarCity, and Tesla.
• In 2018, he was listed in the Forbes list of The World’s Most Powerful People.
• In 2021, he was included in Time’s 100 Most Influential People and was also named Time’s Person of the Year.

Source: Wikipedia

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