Tesla, SpaceX, Neuralink, and The Boring Company were all co-founded by and are run by Elon Musk.
As the company’s co-founder and CEO, Elon oversees all product design, engineering, and global manufacturing for the electric vehicles, battery products, and solar energy items the business produces.
Elon previously co-founded and sold two of the first online mapping and directions services, Zip2 and PayPal. PayPal is the most popular Internet payment system in the world.
Elon Musk
Giant Boss
He watered his garden full of innovation with Tesla, SpaceX, Paypal, Starlink, Neuralink, Twitter, and much more.
Most Asked Questions
Elon Reeve Musk was born on June 28, 1971, in Pretoria, a capital city of South Africa.
On Forbes's Billionaires Index, Musk is solidly in second place with a net worth of 219 billion USD (2022) Forbes Billionaires Index, Live Trending.
What school did Elon Musk attend?
Elon Musk Early Life
Elon Musk was born to a Canadian mother and a South African father. Early on, he showed an aptitude for computers and entrepreneurship. He made a video game at the age of 12 and sold it to a computer magazine.
Elon 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 better economic opportunities in the United States.
Elon Musk Educational Background
Musk went to Waterkloof House Preparatory School, Bryanston High School, and Pretoria Boys High School, from which he graduated. University of Pennsylvania, 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 1995.
Musk, who was aware that it would be simpler to immigrate to the US in this way, applied for a Canadian passport through his Canadian-born mother.
He enrolled at the University of Pretoria for five months while he waited for his application to be reviewed.
Following his arrival in Canada in June 1989, Musk spent a year living with a second cousin in Saskatchewan while working odd jobs at a farm and a timber plant.
He started college in 1990 at Kingston, Ontario’s Queen’s University.
After switching schools two years later, he enrolled at the University of Pennsylvania, where in 1995 he earned a Bachelor of Science in economics from the Wharton School as well as a Bachelor of Arts in physics.
According to reports, he drafted a business plan for an electronic book-scanning service comparable to Google Books and had sizable, ticketed home parties to help pay for school.
Two internships in Silicon Valley were held by Musk in 1994: one at the energy storage startup Pinnacle Research Institute, which looked into electrolytic ultracapacitors for energy storage, and another at the Palo Alto-based startup Rocket Science Games.
He was granted admission to Stanford University‘s doctor of philosophy (Ph.D.) program in materials science in 1995. Musk, however, made the decision to take advantage of the Internet explosion, quitting two days after being accepted and seeking a position at Netscape, where it is said that he never heard back.
Elon Musk Family/Relationships/Spouse/Girlfriend
The size of Elon Musk’s family is expanding.
The founder of Tesla has fathered 10 children with three women in less than two decades. His most recent child was born in 2021, while his first was born in 2002.
Elon Musk and Wilson
He had his first six children with Justine Wilson, a Canadian author. The SpaceX CEO married Wilson in 2000, after the two had first met as Queen’s University students in Ontario, Canada. However, after seven years of marriage and five children, the couple formally divorced in 2008.
“Custody of our five children is split evenly,” Musk stated in a 2010 Business Insider op-ed. “My boys are the love of my life, and I spend almost all of my waking hours with them when I’m not working.”
Popular Books by Justine Musk are below.
Elon Musk and Talulah Riley
Two years later, the Giant Boss married and separated twice from actress Talulah Riley. Before divorcing in 2012, Musk and Riley were married for the first time in 2010. They married once more in July 2013 which lasted from 2010 to 2012. The couple never had kids together.
Elon Musk and Amber Heard
After her divorce from actor Johnny Depp, Amber Heard dated Elon Musk from 2016 until 2018. She lost a slander lawsuit against the Pirates of the Caribbean actor earlier this year, and the judge ordered her to pay him $10.35 million.
Elon Musk and Griems
Musk and Canadian singer-songwriter Grimes, whose real name is Claire Boucher, were originally linked in 2018; the couple welcomed their first baby in 2020.
Grimes said in a March 2022 Vanity Fair interview that the pair had reconciled and had welcomed a second child via surrogate in December 2021, despite ending their three-year relationship in September 2021.
At the time, she also informed that the couple wants more babies, telling the outlet, “We’ve always wanted at least three or four,” but the day the article was published, she tweeted that they had broken up again.
Elon Musk and Shivon Zilis
According to court records obtained by Insider, tech mogul Elon Musk and Shivon Zilis, one of his top executives, secretly had twins in November of last year. Musk, who has frequently argued in favor of having more children, currently has nine known children.
Through her work with OpenAI, a nonprofit organization Musk cofounded in 2015 for artificial intelligence research and development, Zilis got to know Musk.
She is now the youngest director on the board of OpenAI. Zilis relocated to Tesla in 2017 and worked as a project director there, using her experience in AI on the Autopilot and chip-design teams.
She currently serves as Neuralink’s director of operations and special initiatives, where Musk serves as co-CEO. In the CEO’s office, she had previously held the position of project director. She was recently mentioned as one of the candidates Musk might choose to lead Twitter after his takeover.
Elon Musk Children
Nevada Alexander
With his first wife, Justine Wilson, Musk welcomed their first son, Nevada Alexander, into the world in 2002. Sadly, he suffered from sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS) and died at the age of 10 weeks .
In a 2010 essay for Marie Claire, Wilson penned the following statement: “Nevada went down for a nap, placed on his back as always, and stopped breathing.” He had been without oxygen for so long when the paramedics revived him that he was brain dead.
Then she said, “Before we decided to remove him from life support, he was kept alive for three days at an Orange County hospital.” “When he passed away, I had him in my arms.”
Vivian Jenna Wilson and Griffin
In her Marie Claire essay, Wilson details their journey toward expanding their family further.
“I buried my feelings, still grieving over Nevada’s death, by making my first visit to an IVF clinic less than two months later. Elon and I planned to get pregnant again as quickly as possible. Within the next five years, I gave birth to twins, then triplets,” she wrote.
According to court documents, one of Musk’s now-18-year-old twins has filed to legally change her name, and gender and has stated that she no longer wishes to be related to her father.
The April 18 petition seeks the legal change of her name to Vivian Jenna Wilson (the maiden name of her mother, Justine Wilson); recognition of her gender as female; and the issuance of a new birth certificate to reflect the changes.
“Gender Identity and the fact that I no longer live with or wish to be related to my biological father in any way, shape, or form,” Vivian explained in her petition.
According to Musk, Vivian doesn’t want to be linked with him because of the alleged neo-Marxist takeover of elite schools and universities, as he claimed in an interview with the Financial Times from October 2022.
The Tesla CEO described it as “full-on communism” and “a widespread sense that if you’re rich, you’re wicked.” “I get along well with all the other kids, even if it (the relationship) could change.” “It’s impossible to win them all.”
Kai, Saxon, and Damian
Kai, Saxon, and Damian were the names of the triplets that Wilson gave birth to in 2006, two years after having twins. They were also conceived through IVF, she said in a 2017 TedTalk, although she and Musk haven’t talked about the kids in public.
Musk does not frequently talk about his own family, but he has strong feelings about birth control. In December 2021, Musk told the Wall Street Journal’s annual CEO Council that there are “not enough people” in the world.
The low birthrate and rapidly declining birthrate, he asserted, pose one of civilization’s greatest threats. Please take a look at the statistics; civilization will end, I promise, if people don’t have more kids.
Elon Musk Company / Business Career / Engineering Career
1. Zip2; Founded in 1995
Elon Musk, his brother Kimbal, and Greg Kouri founded Zip2 in 1995. Elon Musk contributed $28,000 to their fundraising. The company developed an Internet city guide with maps, directions, and yellow pages. After four years later he accepted $22 million on a 7 percent share of Zip2, which he sold to Compaq for $307 million in cash in February 1999.
2. X.com and PayPal; Founded in 1999
Later in 1999, Musk co-founded X.com, an online financial services, and email payment company. X.com was one of the first federally insured online banks, and over 200,000 customers joined after its few months of operation.
In 2000, X.com incorporated with online bank Confinity to avoid competition, as Confinity’s money-transfer service PayPal was more popular than X.com.
The board ejected two times Musk as CEO and replaced him with Thiel in September 2000 and 1st was with Intuit CEO Bill Harris by the end of the year in 1999. Under Thiel, the company concentrated on the money-transfer service and was renamed PayPal in 2001.
In 2002, eBay paid $1.5 billion in stock to purchase PayPal, and the largest shareholder, Elon Musk, who owned 11.72% of the stock, received $175.8 million of that sum.
Also Musk purchased the X.com domain from PayPal for its sentimental value and has big plan with “X” he shared in 2022.
3. SpaceX; Founded in 2002
In February 2002, Elon Musk with a group visited Russia to meet Mike Griffin (president of In-Q-Tel) to look for three ICBMs. In a subsequent meeting with Kosmotras, they were presented with an $8 million bid for one rocket, which Musk rejected.
Instead, he decided to found a company that would produce affordable rockets. Musk launched SpaceX in May 2002 with $100 million of his own money and moved to the positions of CEO and Chief Engineer.
SpaceX three times failed attempts to launch Falcon series rocket that nearly caused Musk and his companies to go bankrupt, then SpaceX succeeded in launching the Falcon 1 into orbit in 2008.
In an effort to get closer to its objective of reusable rockets, SpaceX successfully landed the Falcon 9’s first stage on an onshore platform in 2015.
By launching the Demo-2 in 2020, SpaceX became the first private firm to fly astronauts into orbit and dock a crewed spaceship with the International Space Station.
4. Starlink; Founded in 2002
The Starlink constellation of low-Earth-orbit satellites to provide satellite Internet access was first developed by SpaceX in 2015, and the first two prototype satellites were launched in February 2018.
When the first 60 operational satellites were launched in May 2019, they served as the second batch of test satellites and the constellation’s first significant large-scale deployment.
Musk’s decision to provide Starlink terminals to Ukraine during the Russian invasion of 2022 was commended by Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy. These terminals provided Internet access and communication.
Musk, who called himself “a free speech absolutist,” did not agree to prohibit Russian official media on Starlink.
Regarding 20,000 satellite terminals and free data transfer subscriptions, which cost SpaceX $80 million, Musk claimed in October 2022 that they had been donated to Ukraine.
Musk publicly announced that SpaceX would continue to provide Starlink products and services to the Ukrainian government for free, at a cost he estimated at $400 million for the upcoming 12 months, after initially asking the US Department of Defense to pay for additional units and future subscriptions on behalf of Ukraine.
5. Tesla; Founded in 2003
Martin Eberhard and Marc Tarpenning founded Tesla, Inc.—originally Tesla Motors—in 2003 and financed the company until the Series A round of funding.
Musk led the Series A round of investment in February 2004, investing $6.5 million, becoming the majority stakeholder, and becoming chairman of Tesla’s board of directors.
Musk, Tarpenning, and two other Tesla co-founders were named in a 2009 litigation settlement with Eberhard. Musk was the longest-serving CEO of any car manufacturer in the world as of 2019.
Musk nominally altered his title to “Technoking” in 2021 while remaining CEO.
In 2008, Tesla announced the Roadster, their first electric sports car. It was the first all-electric automobile produced in serial quantities using lithium-ion battery cells, with sales of around 2,500 vehicles.
Model S sedans with four doors started to arrive from Tesla in 2012. The 2015 debut of the crossover Model X. In 2017, the Model 3, a mass-market sedan, was unveiled.
The Model 3 has consistently ranked as the world’s best-selling plug-in electric vehicle, and in June 2021 it became the first electric vehicle to sell 1 million units worldwide. 2020 saw the introduction of a fifth car, the Model Y crossover. An all-electric pickup truck called the Cybertruck was presented in the following year.
Multiple lithium-ion battery and electric car factories, known as Gigafactories, have also been built by Tesla under Musk.
6. Tesla Energy/SolarCity; Founded in 2006
Lyndon and Peter Rive, Musk’s cousins, founded SolarCity in 2006 with Musk’s original concept and financial backing. The second-largest supplier of solar power systems in the US by 2013 was SolarCity.
In 2016, Tesla paid over $2 billion to acquire SolarCity, which it combined with its battery business to form Tesla Energy.
7. Neuralink (Elon Musk Brain Chip); Founded in 2006
Musk invested $100 million in the co-founding of the neurotechnology startup company Neuralink in 2016. Neuralink attempts to combine the human brain with artificial intelligence (AI) by developing brain-implanted gadgets that make this possible.
Such technologies might improve memory or let the gadgets communicate to software. The company also aspires to create medical equipment that can be used to treat neurological disorders like Alzheimer’s disease, dementia, and spinal cord injuries. Musk revealed in 2019 that he was working on a sewing machine-like gadget that could insert threads into a person’s brain.
Musk described one of their early devices to “a Fitbit in your skull” at a 2020 live presentation, saying they may soon treat paralysis, deafness, blindness, and other afflictions. The MIT Technology Review called these statements “highly speculative” and “neuroscience theater,” and numerous neuroscientists and journals rejected them.
Musk showed a pig with a Neuralink implant during the show, which monitored brain activity related to smell. Neuralink declared in 2022 that clinical trials would start by the end of the year.
Employees have expressed dissatisfaction that pressure from Musk to speed up development has resulted in failed studies and needless animal deaths. Federal investigators began looking into suspected Neuralink violations of animal welfare in 2022.
8. The Boring Company; Founded in 2017
In order to build tunnels, Musk established The Boring Company in 2017. He also unveiled ideas for specialized, underground, high-occupancy vehicles that could go up to 150 mph (240 km/h) in order to avoid above-ground traffic in major cities.
9. Twitter; Acquired by 2022
As early as 2017, Musk stated that he wanted to purchase Twitter. Musk began purchasing Twitter shares in January 2022, and by March he had amassed a 5% position in the business. By April, he had increased that stake to 9.2%, making him the company’s largest shareholder.
On April 4, Musk consented to an arrangement that would add him to Twitter’s board of directors and forbid him from owning more than 14.9% of the company. Musk made a takeover proposal to acquire 100% of Twitter’s stock at $54.20 per share on April 13 in exchange for a $43 billion offer to buy the social media platform.
In response, Twitter’s board enacted a “poison pill” shareholder rights plan to make it more difficult for any one person to possess more than 15% of the company without the board’s consent. Musk secured $46.5 billion in financing on April 21. This sum consisted of $21 billion in equity financing and loans against his Tesla stock totaling $12.5 billion. Musk’s proposal for around $44 billion was successful on April 25.
On October 27, the acquisition was formally concluded. Top Twitter executives were immediately let go by Musk, including CEO Parag Agrawal, whom he later replaced. He promptly implemented a $8 monthly fee for a “blue check” and let a significant portion of the workforce go.
According to the Brookings Institution and the Southern Poverty Law Center, Musk has turned Twitter into “a key platform for proponents of hate speech.” Following the acquisition, a review of millions of tweets revealed that hate speech on the site has grown “more apparent” under Musk’s leadership.
Elon Musk Mastermind
Some have applauded Musk’s management, attributing it to the success of Tesla and his other initiatives, while others have condemned it, labeling him heartless and his managerial choices as “showing a lack of human empathy.”
Musk has referred to himself as a “nano-manager” and is frequently characterized as a micromanager. His strategy has been termed as absolutist by The New York Times. Musk does not create formal business plans; instead, he favors using an iterative design methodology and being willing to accept failure when solving engineering difficulties.
He has initiated ambitious, hazardous, and expensive projects against the advice of his advisors, such as the removal of the front-facing radar from Tesla Autopilot, and compelled staff to use the company’s own lingo. His enterprises move the majority of production in-house as a result of his concentration on vertical integration. Although this reduced the cost of SpaceX’s rocket, vertical integration has made Tesla’s software less usable.
Musk’s handling of employees—whom he communicates with directly through mass emails—has been characterized as “carrot and stick”, rewarding those who offer constructive criticism while also being known to impulsively threaten, swear at, and fire his employees. Musk said he expects his employees to work for long hours, sometimes for 80 hours per week. He has his new employee’s sign tough non-disclosure agreements] and often fires in sprees, such as during the Model 3 “production hell” in 2018.
In 2022, Musk revealed plans to fire 10 percent of Tesla’s workforce, due to his concerns about the economy. That same month, he suspended remote work at SpaceX and Tesla and threatened to fire employees who do not work 40 hours per week in the office.
FAQ
Most frequent questions and answers
The tech mogul and investor Elon Reeve Musk. He is the owner and CEO of Twitter, Inc., the founder of The Boring Company, the CEO and chief engineer of SpaceX, the co-founder of Neuralink and OpenAI, and the president of the Musk Foundation. He also founded SpaceX and served as its CEO and top engineer.
Born: June 28, 1971 (age 51 years as of 2022), Pretoria, South Africa.
Musk was born in Pretoria, South Africa, and spent a brief period of time attending the University of Pretoria before relocating to Canada at the age of 18 and obtaining Canadian citizenship through his mother.
X Æ A-12, Exa Dark Sideræl Musk and Vivian.
Nevada Alexander Musk, Griffin Musk, Saxon Musk, Damian Musk, and Kai Musk
Maye Musk is a Canadian model and dietitian. She has been a model for 50 years, appearing on the covers of magazines, including a Time magazine health edition, Women’s Day, international editions of Vogue, and Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Issue.
Height (approximately): 180 cm in centimeters, 1.80 m in meters, or 5′ 11″ in feet.
Errol Musk is a South African electromechanical engineer, pilot, sailor, consultant, and real estate entrepreneur who formerly shared ownership of an emerald mine in Zambia close to Lake Tanganyika. He is the father of business mogul and billionaire Elon Musk, chef Kimbal Musk, and actress Tosca Musk.
Musk’s first wife was Justine Wilson. The couple wed in 2000 after meeting while both were students at Queen’s University.
Elon Musk has British and Pennsylvania Dutch ancestry.
"I love the thought of a car drifting apparently endlessly through space and perhaps being discovered by an alien race millions of years in the future."
"One word: Doge."
