Elon Musk full name is Elon Reeve Musk FRS (born June 28, 1971). He is a business magnate and investor. He is one of the multi-billionaire entrepreneur in the world and having many accolades behind him. If you list down his companies and his role, definately its a magnificiant giant
- The founder, CEO and chief engineer of SpaceX
- Angel investor, CEO and product architect of Tesla, Inc.
- Owner and CEO of Twitter
- Founder of the Boring Company
- Co-founder of Neuralink and OpenAI
- President of the philanthropic Musk Foundation.
With an estimated net worth of around $192 billion as of March 27, 2023, primarily from his ownership stakes in Tesla and SpaceX, Musk is the second-wealthiest person in the world, according to both the Bloomberg Billionaires Index and Forbes’s real-time billionaires list.
Early life and education
Elon Reeve Musk was born on June 28, 1971, in Pretoria, one of South Africa’s capital cities. Musk has British and Pennsylvania Dutch ancestry. His mother is Maye Musk (née Haldeman), a model and dietitian born in Saskatchewan, Canada, and raised in South Africa.[12][13][14] His father, Errol Musk, is a South African electromechanical engineer, pilot, sailor, consultant, and property developer, who was a half-owner of a Zambian emerald mine near Lake Tanganyika. Musk has a younger brother, Kimbal, and a younger sister, Tosca.[14][19]
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, with his children cited as sharing their father’s dislike of apartheid. His maternal grandfather, Joshua Haldeman, was an adventurous American-born Canadian who took his family on record-breaking journeys to Africa and Australia in a single-engine Bellanca airplane. After his parents divorced in 1980, Musk chose to mostly live with his father. Musk regretted his decision and has become estranged from his father. He has a paternal half-sister and a half-brother.
Musk attended Waterkloof House Preparatory School, Bryanston High School, and Pretoria Boys High School, from which he graduated. 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. Although Musk claims he earned the degrees in 1995, UPenn maintains it awarded them in 1997. He reportedly hosted large, ticketed house parties to help pay for tuition, and wrote a business plan for an electronic book-scanning service similar to Google Books.
In 1994, Musk held two internships in Silicon Valley: one at the energy 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 and Career
Zip2
In 1995, Musk, his brother Kimbal, and Greg Kouri founded Zip2. Musk’s attempts to become CEO were thwarted. Later 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
In 1999, Musk co-founded X.com and later Paypal, an online financial services and e-mail payment company. X.com was one of the first federally insured online banks, and over 200,000 customers joined in its initial months of operation. Even though Musk founded the company, investors regarded him as inexperienced and replaced him with Intuit CEO Bill Harris by the end of the year. 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. In 2017, more than 15 years later, Musk purchased the X.com domain from PayPal for its sentimental value. In 2022, Musk discussed a goal of creating “X, the everything app”.
SpaceX
Early 2001, Musk became involved with the nonprofit Mars Society and discussed funding plans to place a growth-chamber for plants on Mars. In October of the same year, he traveled to Moscow with Jim Cantrell and Adeo Ressi to buy refurbished intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs) that could send the greenhouse payloads into space. NPO Lavochkin and Kosmotras return him and he came with empty-handed.
In February 2002, the group returned to Russia with Mike Griffin (president of In-Q-Tel) to look for three ICBMs. They had another meeting with Kosmotras and were offered one rocket for $8 million, which Musk rejected. He instead decided to start a company that could build affordable rockets. With $100 million of his own money, Musk founded SpaceX in May 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 (and former SpaceX consultant) Mike Griffin 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 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, the Dragon vehicle docked with the ISS, a first for a commercial spacecraft.
Musk examining F9R Dev1 debris in 2014, Working towards its goal of reusable rockets, in 2015 SpaceX successfully landed the first stage of a Falcon 9 on an inland platform
SpaceX launched the Falcon Heavy; the inaugural mission carried Musk’s personal Tesla Roadster as a dummy payload. Since 2019, SpaceX has been developing Starship, a fully-reusable, super-heavy-lift launch vehicle intended to replace the Falcon 9 and the Falcon Heavy. In 2020, SpaceX launched its first crewed flight, the Demo-2, becoming the first private company to place astronauts into orbit and dock a crewed spacecraft with the ISS
Tesla
Tesla, Inc.—originally Tesla Motors—was incorporated in 2003 by Martin Eberhard and Marc Tarpenning, who financed the company until the Series A round of funding. Both men played active roles in the company’s early development prior to Musk’s involvement. Musk led the Series A round of investment in February 2004; he invested $6.5 million, became the majority shareholder, and joined Tesla’s board of directors as chairman. Musk took an active role within the company and oversaw Roadster product design but was not deeply involved in day-to-day business operations.
Following a series of escalating conflicts in 2007, and the financial crisis of 2007–2008, Eberhard was ousted from the firm. Musk assumed leadership of the company as CEO and product architect in 2008. A 2009 lawsuit settlement with Eberhard designated Musk as a Tesla co-founder, along with Tarpenning and two others. As of 2019, Musk was the longest-tenured CEO of any automotive manufacturer globally.[116] In 2021, Musk nominally changed his title to “Technoking” while retaining his position as CEO
SolarCity and Tesla Energy
Musk provided the initial concept and financial capital for SolarCity, which his cousins Lyndon and Peter Rive founded in 2006. By 2013, SolarCity was the second largest provider of solar power systems in the United States. In 2014, Musk promoted the idea of SolarCity building an advanced production facility in Buffalo, New York, triple the size of the largest solar plant in the United States. Construction of the factory started in 2014 and was completed in 2017. It operated as a joint venture with Panasonic until early 2020.
Tesla acquired SolarCity for over $2 billion in 2016 and merged it with its battery unit to create Tesla Energy.
Neuralink
In 2016, Musk co-founded Neuralink, a neurotechnology startup company, with an investment of $100 million.[165][166] Neuralink aims to integrate the human brain with artificial intelligence (AI) by creating devices that are embedded in the brain to facilitate its merging with machines. Such technology could enhance memory or allow the devices to communicate with software.[166][167] The company also hopes to develop devices with which to treat neurological conditions such as Alzheimer’s disease, dementia, and spinal cord injuries.
The Boring Company
In 2017, Musk founded the Boring Company to construct tunnels and revealed plans for specialized, underground, high-occupancy vehicles that could travel up to 150 miles per hour (240 km/h) and thus circumvent above-ground traffic in major cities.[177][178] Early in 2017, the company began discussions with regulatory bodies and initiated construction of a 30-foot (9.1 m) wide, 50-foot (15 m) long, and 15-foot (4.6 m) deep “test trench” on the premises of SpaceX’s offices, as that required no permits. The Los Angeles tunnel, less than two miles (3.2 km) in length, debuted to journalists in 2018. It used Tesla Model X’s and was reported to be a rough ride while traveling at suboptimal speeds.[180]
Two tunnel projects announced in 2018, in Chicago and West Los Angeles, have been canceled. However, a tunnel beneath the Las Vegas Convention Center was completed in early 2021. Local officials have approved further expansions of the tunnel system. In 2021, tunnel construction was approved for Fort Lauderdale, Florida.
Musk expressed interest in buying Twitter as early as 2017, and had previously questioned the platform’s commitment to freedom of speech. Musk started purchasing Twitter shares, reaching a 9.2% stake by April, making him the largest shareholder. When this was publicly disclosed, Twitter shares experienced the largest intraday price surge since the company’s 2013 IPO. On April 13, Musk made a $43 billion offer to buy Twitter, launching a takeover bid to buy 100% of Twitter’s stock at $54.20 per share.
In response, Twitter’s board adopted a “poison pill” shareholder rights plan to make it more expensive for any single investor to own more than 15% of the company without board approval. Nevertheless, by the end of the month Musk had successfully concluded his bid for approximately $44 billion.[198] This included about $12.5 billion in loans against his Tesla stock and $21 billion in equity financing
In October 2022, Musk reversed again, offering to purchase Twitter at $54.20 per share. The acquisition was officially completed on October 27.
Immediately after the acquisition, Musk fired top Twitter executives like CEO Parag Agrawal, whom he replaced. He instituted a $7.99 monthly subscription for a “blue check”, and laid off a significant portion of the company’s staff. Musk lessened content moderation, and in December, Musk released internal documents relating to Twitter’s moderation of Hunter Biden’s laptop in the leadup to the 2020 presidential election. The Southern Poverty Law Center noted that Twitter has verified numerous extremists. A study of millions of tweets following the acquisition indicated that hate speech on the platform has become “more visible” under Musk’s leadership
On December 18, Musk posted a poll to his Twitter account asking users to decide whether he should step down as the head of Twitter, with 57.5% out of the more than 17.5 million votes supporting that decision.[229] Musk then announced that he would resign as CEO “as soon as I find someone foolish enough to take the job”
Other Activities
Elon Musk also involved in other activities in terms of foundation, investor, advisor etc.
- Musk Foundation
- Hyperloop
- OpenAI
- Tham Luang cave rescue and defamation case
- 2018 Joe Rogan podcast appearance
- Music
- Private jet
- ElonJet account