elon musk general biography

Tesla CEO Elon Musk: His career, life, and companies he started

• Elon Musk is the CEO of Tesla. He's also cofounder other major companies, including SpaceX.
• He was born in South Africa and founded his first startup in the '90s.
• Musk is a polarizing figure who has incited lawsuits and SEC investigations. 

Elon Musk was born on June 28, 1971, in Pretoria, South Africa.

His mother, Maye Musk , is a professional dietitian and model, appearing on boxes of Special K cereal and the cover of TIME magazine. Last year, at the age of 74, she was on the cover of Sport Illustrated's swimsuit edition.

Maye and Musk's father, Errol, were married for nearly a decade before they divorced. Maye said in her book that she'd wanted to end the marriage earlier, but the Divorce Act, which legalized the termination of a marriage in South Africa, was not enacted until 1979. Musk's parents divorced the same year the law was passed.

After their parents divorced, 9-year-old Musk and his younger brother Kimbal  decided to live with their father. It wasn't until after the move was made that his notoriously troubled relationship with his dad began to emerge. "It was not a good idea," Musk said of the move in an interview with Rolling Stone.

Musk's school days weren't easy — he was once hospitalized after being beaten by bullies. The bullies threw Musk down a set of stairs and beat him until he blacked out, as detailed in Ashlee Vance's book "Elon Musk: Tesla, SpaceX, and the Quest for a Fantastic Future." Musk's father told Business Insider the incident took place after Musk made some insensitive comments to a classmate.

The Tesla CEO has said he didn't always feel he was on the same wavelength as his classmates.

"Social clues were not intuitive," Musk said during a TED conference last year. In 2021, the billionaire said during his performance on " Saturday Night Live " that he has Asperger's syndrome.

Musk has said he spent a lot of his childhood reading and coding late into the night — and it paid off. At 17, he took a university-level aptitude test on his computer programming skills. Examiners made him retake the test because they had never seen such a high score, his mother said in a tweet. 

After graduating from high school, Musk moved to Canada with his mother, Maye; his sister, Tosca, and his brother, Kimbal, and spent two years studying at Queen's University in Kingston, Ontario, according to the school.

He later finished his studies at the University of Pennsylvania, earning degrees in physics and economics.

While studying at the  University of Pennsylvania , Musk and a classmate rented out a 10-bedroom frat house and turned it into a nightclub. The move, which Musk undertook with Adeo Ressi, was one of his first entrepreneurial experiments, Vogue reported.

After graduation, Musk traveled to Stanford University to study for his Ph.D. — but he barely started the program before leaving it. He deferred his admission after only two days in California, deciding to test his luck in the dot-com boom that was just getting underway. He never returned to finish his studies at Stanford.

Musk's college girlfriend Jennifer Gwynne would later auction a set of photos of Musk from his time studying at the University of Pennsylvania.

Late 1990s - 2000: Early career

With brother Kimbal, Musk launched Zip2. A cluster of Silicon Valley investors helped to fund the company, which provided city travel guides to newspapers like The New York Times and Chicago Tribune, per the Rolling Stone interview with Musk.

While Zip2 got off the ground, Musk lived in the office and showered at a local YMCA, he said in a Stanford University video. The hard work paid off when Compaq bought Zip2 in a deal worth $341 million in cash and stock, earning Musk $22 million.

Musk next started  X.com , an online banking company. He launched the company in 1999 using $10 million of the money he got from the Zip2 sale, Investopedia reported. About a year later, X.com merged with Confinity, a financial startup cofounded by Peter Thiel, to form PayPal.

Musk was named the CEO of the newly minted PayPal — but it wouldn't last long. While Musk was en route to Australia for a much-needed vacation, PayPal's board fired him and made Thiel the new CEO. "That's the problem with vacations," Musk told Fortune years later about his ill-fated trip in late 2000.

2002-2004: Elon Musk starts SpaceX and invests in Tesla

But things worked out for Musk — he made another windfall when eBay bought PayPal in late 2002. As PayPal's single biggest shareholder, he netted $165 million of the $1.5 billion price eBay paid, Money.com reported.

Even before the PayPal sale, Musk was dreaming up his next move, including a wild plan to send mice or plants to Mars. In early 2002, Musk founded the company that would be known as Space Exploration Technologies , or SpaceX, with $100 million of the money received from the PayPal sale. Musk's goal was to make spaceflight cheaper by a factor of 10.

One early SpaceX vehicle was named after the song "Puff the Magic Dragon." The name of the spacecraft, the Dragon, was Musk's jab at skeptics who told him SpaceX launches would never be able to put vehicles into space, Musk later shared on Twitter.

SpaceX's long-term goal is to make colonizing Mars affordable. Musk has said that SpaceX stock won't be available an initial public offering until what Musk calls the "Mars Colonial Transporter" is flying regularly.

Musk had also been keeping plenty busy here on Earth, particularly with Tesla Motors. In 2004, Musk made the first of what would be $70 million of total Tesla investments, an electric car company. Tesla's founders were veteran startup executives Martin Eberhard and Marc Tarpenning.

Musk has said he took an active product role at the carmaker, helping develop its first car, the Tesla Roadster , the Roadster.

The Roadster was built on the chassis of a Lotus Elise — a tiny British sports car that Tesla remade into an electric car with a lithium-ion battery. The all-electric Roadster debuted in 2006 when Musk was serving as Tesla's chairman. 

2008: Elon Musk becomes Tesla CEO

In 2007, Musk staged a boardroom coup at Tesla, first ousting Eberhard from his CEO seat and then from the company's board and executive suites entirely.

In 2008, with the financial crisis seriously limiting his options, a Tesla bankruptcy was personally halted by Musk. He invested $40 million in Tesla and loaned the company $40 million more. Not coincidentally, he was named CEO the same year.

But between SpaceX, Tesla, and SolarCity, Musk nearly went broke. He described 2008 as "the worst year of my life" in an interview with 60 Minutes. Tesla kept losing money, and SpaceX was having trouble launching its Falcon 1 rocket. By 2009, Musk was living off personal loans just to survive.

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Right around Christmas 2008, Musk got two pieces of good news: SpaceX had landed a $1.5 billion contract with NASA to deliver supplies into space, and Tesla finally found more outside investors.

Musk's career was starting to get noticed in other circles, too, most notably in Hollywood. Robert Downey Jr.'s portrayal of Tony Stark in the "Iron Man" movies is at least partially based on Musk, director Jon Favreau said on the "Recode Decode" podcast. Musk even had a cameo in " Iron Man 2 ."

2015: OpenAI

In late 2015, Musk also cofounded OpenAI , a nonprofit dedicated to researching artificial intelligence and ensuring it doesn't destroy humanity.

He later announced that he would step down from the board to avoid any potential conflicts of interest with Tesla , which has made strides into artificial intelligence for its self-driving car technology.

The billionaire has since spoken out against the company on multiple occasions and is even attempting to launch his own competitor, which he jokingly dubbed " Truth GPT " after the success of OpenAI's ChatGPT.

By the end of 2015, 24 SpaceX launches had been made on assignments like resupplying the International Space Station, setting some records along the way. 

That year, Tesla also released its first version of Autopilot , a driver-assist feature for its EVs. Musk later went on to release an enhanced version of Autopilot called Full Self-Driving beta several years later.

He has since said that Tesla FSD is the difference between being "worth a lot of money or worth basically zero." However, Autopilot has generated its fair share of lawsuits, as well as investigations from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration over the years.

2016: SolarCity and The Boring Company

In late 2016, Tesla bought SolarCity in a $2.6 billion deal. That same year some Tesla shareholders filed a lawsuit accusing Musk of putting pressure on Tesla's board members to buy SolarCity and bail it out. Musk later won the lawsuit in 2022.

In 2016, he also started The Boring Company , which has a mission to dig a network of tunnels under and around cities for high-speed, no-traffic driving.

Boring's first tunnel network for commercial use, located in Las Vegas, opened in April 2021.

2017: Neuralink

Musk founded another company: Neuralink , in 2017, which is trying to build devices that can be implanted inside the human brain. The billionaire has described the device as a "Fitbit in your skull" and has said it will allow people to perform tasks using only their minds. The company has experimented with putting the device in pigs and monkeys and won approval from the US Food and Drug Administration to begin human trials in 2023.

In 2017, Musk also joined President Trump's business advisory council — a move that caused a huge public backlash. He initially defended the move but then quit after Trump pulled the US out of the Paris Agreement on climate change. Musk said he tried to convince Trump not to withdraw.

2018: Tesla Roadster in space

The Falcon Heavy, the successor to the Falcon 9 and the most powerful rocket SpaceX has built to date, completed a successful maiden launch in February 2018. The Falcon Heavy carried a unique payload: a dummy dubbed "Starman," and Musk's personal cherry red Tesla Roadster, which were launched toward Martian orbit.

"We really wanted to get the public here to wonder, to get excited about the possibility of something new happening in space — of the space frontier getting pushed forward," Musk told an audience at the 2018 South by Southwest conference. "The goal of this was to inspire you and make you believe again, just as people believed in the Apollo era, that anything is possible."

SEC subpoenas Tesla

Musk ran into some trouble in 2018 when he sent a tweet declaring he was considering taking  Tesla private at $420 per share and had already secured funding. Just a few days later, the SEC sent Tesla subpoenas about the company's plans to go private and Musk's comments.

By September, the SEC had formally filed a lawsuit against Musk, accusing him of making "false and misleading statements." Musk settled with the SEC, which resulted in both him and Tesla paying a $20 million fine and Musk stepping down as chairman of Tesla's board. Additionally, Tesla was required to appoint a committee to oversee Musk's communications.

One month later, Musk won a victory in court when a jury ruled he was not guilty of defaming the British diver Vernon Unsworth . Unsworth had filed a defamation lawsuit in 2018 after Musk called him a "pedo guy" on Twitter.

2021: Musk becomes richest person in the world

Musk's net worth has soared in recent years. The Tesla CEO became the richest man in the world in 2021 when his fortune surpassed $200 billion, passing Amazon founder Jeff Bezos' net worth.

Musk said he commemorated the occasion by sending Bezos, his longtime rival, a silver medal. Musk's status as the richest man in the world was eclipsed by LVMH owner Bernard Arnault in 2023. Since, he has remained near the top of the list of wealthiest people in the world.

He also won Time's Person of the Year award in 2021.

2022: The 'Technoking' sets his sights on Twitter 

In 2022, Musk started buying up shares of Twitter and later turned down an offer to join the board in favor of buying Twitter outright for $44 billion.

Musk, who has become one of the most-followed accounts on the social media site, attempted to backtrack on his offer to buy Twitter in July.  Twitter sued Musk promptly, in order to force him to go through with the purchase. 

After months of back and forth leading up to a trial in the Delaware Court of Chancery, Musk agreed to buy the company in October. The same day he took over Twitter, he ousted several key executives including then-Twitter CEO Parag Agrawal. Musk took over as "Chief Twit" and proceeded to cut the Twitter workforce in half in the chaotic months following the Musk acquisition .

He later brought in a new CEO for Twitter in May 2023 after the billionaire said Twitter was no longer "in the fast lane to bankruptcy."

The platform was also rebranded "X" in July 2023.

The billionaire has also expressed interest in launching his own AI venture. In April 2023, Musk confirmed reports that he's planning to create an AI startup to build a ChatGPT rival .

Katie Canales, Matt Weinberger, and Mary Meisenzahl contributed to an earlier version of this story. 

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Elon Musk: The Complete Biography of an Extraordinary Innovator

• by history tools
• March 26, 2024

Elon Musk is one of the most famous entrepreneurs and business leaders of the 21st century. As the co-founder of PayPal, CEO of Tesla Motors and SpaceX, and driving force behind many other companies, Musk has had an outsized influence on technology, space exploration, and solving some of humanity‘s biggest challenges.

Let‘s take a closer look at Musk’s remarkable life story, complex persona, monumental successes and occasional setbacks, and what makes him such a polarizing character.

Childhood and Early Life in South Africa

Musk was born on June 28, 1971 in Pretoria, one of South Africa’s wealthiest and most segregated cities during apartheid. His mother Maye was a famous dietitian and model who grew up in Canada, while his father Errol was a wealthy white South African electromechanical engineer.

As a child, Musk was an avid reader and self-taught computer programmer. At age 12 he created and sold a video game called Blastar to a computer magazine for $500. But his relationship with his father was difficult – his parents divorced when he was 9 years old. Musk chose to live mostly with his father, which he would later regret considering they became estranged.

Discovering His Calling

After spending two years in the South African military, Musk moved to Canada at age 19. He studied at Queen‘s University in Ontario for two years, avoiding mandatory service in the South African military, before transferring to the University of Pennsylvania.

At Penn, Musk pursued a Bachelor’s degree in Physics as well as a Bachelor’s degree in Economics. Most notably, he rekindled an early passion by taking extra classes at the Stanford School of Engineering. It was a harbinger of innovations to come.

Founding Zip2 and PayPal

In 1995 Musk dropped out of Stanford’s PhD program to found his first startup Zip2 Corporation with his brother Kimbal. Zip2 provided online city guides to newspapers like the New York Times and Chicago Tribune.

Compaq bought Zip2 in 1999 for $307 million, earning Musk $22 million. He soon co-founded X.com, one of the first online banks providing services like checking accounts and money transfers.

X.com merged with its rival Confinity in 2000 to become PayPal, with Musk serving as the new CEO. Despite internal struggles at the new company, PayPal went on to revolutionize online payments. In 2002 eBay acquired PayPal for $1.5 billion in stock, of which Musk received $175 million.

“If something‘s important enough you should try, even if the probable outcome is failure.”

Making History with SpaceX

Flush with cash from the PayPal sale, Musk founded Space Exploration Technologies (SpaceX) in 2002 with an audacious long-term goal: make humanity multi-planetary by establishing a human colony on Mars.

SpaceX develops rockets, spacecraft and satellites aimed at revolutionizing space transportation to eventually make it affordable for private citizens to travel into orbit and to other planets. It almost went bankrupt in 2008, but Musk kept it afloat with personal funds.

In 2012 SpaceX’s Dragon spacecraft became the first commercial spaceship to deliver cargo to the International Space Station. And in 2020 SpaceX sent astronauts to the ISS for the first time, effectively resurrecting American manned spaceflight.

Tesla Accelerates Ahead with Musk at the Helm

Also in 2004 Musk made the series A investment round in Tesla Motors and joined Tesla’s board of directors as chairman. Founded by Martin Eberhard and Marc Tarpenning in 2003, Tesla aimed to prove electric cars could be better than gasoline-powered cars.

The original Roadster sports car impressed critics, but by 2007 Tesla was also on the verge of bankruptcy. Musk invested heavily in Tesla and took over leadership of the company, serving as CEO and product architect.

Under his guidance, Tesla went public in 2010 to raise funds and the Model S sedan was named Motor Trend‘s 2013 Car of the Year. By 2023 Tesla had become the world‘s most valuable automaker, dominating the rapidly growing EV market.

Expanding His Entrepreneurial Portfolio

In addition to SpaceX and Tesla, Musk has founded or co-founded a number of new companies over the last two decades. These include:

• The Boring Company (2016) – Develops tunnels aimed at eliminating street traffic to reduce transportation time
• Neuralink (2016) – Develops implantable brain-machine interfaces to connect human brains with computers
• OpenAI (2015) – Non-profit AI research company working to ensure artificial general intelligence benefits humanity
• Starlink (2019) – SpaceX project to provide global satellite Internet access coverage

Not all of these companies have proven successful so far. But Musk continues to think big while attracting top talent to bring innovative new technologies to reality.

Taking Over Twitter for $44 Billion

In January 2022, Musk started acquiring shares of social media company Twitter. By March he had accumulated a 9.2% stake to become Twitter‘s largest shareholder. This set in motion a tumultuous year that eventually led to his purchase of Twitter for $44 billion on October 27, 2022.

Shortly after acquiring Twitter, Musk laid off roughly half the company‘s 7,500 employees and radically changed the platform‘s operations. Many users have quit the platform over concerns about misinformation as Musk grants "amnesty" to suspended accounts. The long-term implications of his takeover remain uncertain.

“Failure is an option here. If things are not failing, you are not innovating enough.”

Marriages, Relationships and Family

In 2000, Musk married Canadian author Justine Wilson. Their first son died unexpectedly from SIDS at 10 weeks old. They share custody of 5 sons – a set of twins and a set of triplets – born through IVF. Musk and Wilson separated in 2008.

From 2010 to 2012, Musk was married to English actress Talulah Riley. After divorcing, they remarried in 2013 before finalizing their divorce again in 2016. Musk also had an on-and-off relationship with musician Grimes which began in 2018. They had 2 children – a son born in 2020 and daughter born in 2021 via surrogate.

In 2022 it was revealed that Musk secretly had twins in 2021 with Shivon Zilis, a top executive at his company Neuralink. He now has 10 children from 3 relationships. But his 18-year-old transgender daughter has disowned him, changing her name in opposition to Musk‘s "public transphobia."

Losing and Regaining Title of World‘s Richest Person

Thanks mostly to his shares in Tesla Motors, Musk experienced an astronomical rise in his personal net worth. He became the richest person in the world for the first time in January 2021 when he surpassed Jeff Bezos.

But his net worth dropped in 2022 and early 2023 as Tesla‘s share price declined. On January 6, 2023 Musk lost the title of world‘s richest person to Bernard Arnault, CEO of LVMH.

What‘s more, with an estimated $183 billion loss between November 2021 and January 2023, Musk holds the record for the largest loss of personal fortune in history according to Guinness World Records. Despite these setbacks, Musk’s supporters are betting he’ll reclaim the top spot someday.

What Makes Musk Such a Polarizing Figure

Musk has earned both ardent fans and vocal critics. So what makes him such a polarizing public figure?

Reasons supporters are drawn to Musk include:

• Daring vision for future innovations
• Willingness to take risks
• Commitment to tackling climate change with sustainable energy
• Power to make things happen that others consider impossible
• Relatable sense of humor on social media

However some people are strongly critical of Musk for:

• Poor treatment of employees by demanding unrealistic hours and goals
• Controversial public stances on issues like pandemic lockdowns
• Spreading misinformation and making questionable promises on Twitter
• Brash communication style and vindictiveness towards naysayers
• Concerns about concentration of power held by billionaires

But there‘s no questioning the outsized impact Musk already made on multiple industries. Even his detractors admit they‘re curious to see what he’ll achieve next.

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Early Life and Education

Notable accomplishments, personal eccentricities, the bottom line.

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Who Is Elon Musk?

Nathan Laine / Bloomberg / Getty Images

Elon Musk, born in Pretoria, South Africa, is one of the most successful entrepreneurs of all time. Musk has achieved global fame as the chief executive officer (CEO) of electric automobile maker Tesla ( TSLA ) and the private space company SpaceX. Musk was an early investor in several tech companies, and in October 2022, he completed a deal to take X (formerly Twitter) private.

His success and personal style have given rise to comparisons to other colorful tycoons from U.S. history, including Steve Jobs , Howard Hughes, and Henry Ford . He was named the richest person in the world in 2021, surpassing Amazon ( AMZN ) founder Jeff Bezos. However, as of June 22, 2024, Bezos has regained the title of richest man on Earth, making Musk the second richest man.

Let’s look briefly at the life of the man who has scaled the pinnacle of the business world.

Key Takeaways

• Elon Musk is the charismatic CEO of electric car maker Tesla and rocket manufacturer SpaceX.
• Following a contested process, Musk completed a deal to buy the company behind X in October 2022, becoming the owner of the social media company.
• Born and raised in South Africa, Musk spent time in Canada before moving to the United States.
• Educated at the University of Pennsylvania in physics and business, Musk started getting his feet wet as a serial tech entrepreneur with early successes like Zip2 and X.com, which merged with a company that became PayPal.
• Musk has behaved eccentrically from time to time.

Bailey Mariner / Investopedia

Elon Reeve Musk was born in 1971 in Pretoria, South Africa, the oldest of three children. His father was a South African engineer, and his mother was a Canadian model and nutritionist. After his parents divorced in 1980, Musk lived primarily with his father. He would later dub his father “a terrible human being...almost every evil thing you could possibly think of, he has done."

“I had a terrible upbringing. I had a lot of adversity growing up. One thing I worry about with my kids is they don’t face enough adversity,” Musk would later say.

Bullied as a Child

Musk attended the private, English-speaking Waterkloof House Preparatory School—he started a year early—and later graduated from Pretoria Boys High School. A self-described bookworm, he made few friends in those places.

“They got my best (expletive) friend to lure me out of hiding so they could beat me up. And that (expletive) hurt,” Musk said. “For some reason, they decided that I was it, and they were going to go after me nonstop. That’s what made growing up difficult. For a number of years, there was no respite. You get chased around by gangs at school who tried to beat the (expletive) out of me, and then I’d come home, and it would just be awful there as well.”

Early Accomplishments

Technology became an escape for Musk. At 10, he became acquainted with programming using a Commodore VIC-20, an early and relatively inexpensive home computer. Before long, Musk had become proficient enough to create Blastar—a video game in the style of Space Invaders. He sold the BASIC code for the game to a PC magazine for $500.

In one telling incident from his childhood, Musk and his brother planned to open a video game arcade near their school. Their parents nixed the plan.

Musk’s College Years

At 17, Musk moved to Canada. He would later obtain Canadian citizenship through his mother.

After emigrating to Canada, Musk enrolled at Queen’s University in Kingston, Ontario. It was there that he met Justine Wilson, an aspiring writer. They would marry and have six sons together, a first son which died shortly after birth, twins, and then triplets, before divorcing in 2008.

Entering the U.S.

After two years at Queen’s University, Musk transferred to the University of Pennsylvania. He took on two majors, but his time there wasn’t all work and no play. With a fellow student, he bought a 10-bedroom fraternity house, which they used as an ad hoc nightclub.

Musk graduated with a bachelor's degree in physics and a second bachelor's degree in economics from the  Wharton School . The two majors foreshadowed Musk’s career, but it was physics that left the deepest impression.

“(Physics is) a good framework for thinking,” he would say later. “Boil things down to their fundamental truths and reason up from there.”

Musk was 24 years old when he moved to California to pursue a Ph.D. in applied physics at Stanford University. But, with the Internet exploding and Silicon Valley booming, Musk had entrepreneurial visions dancing in his head. He left the Ph.D. program after just two days.

In 1995, with $15,000 and his younger brother Kimbal at his side, Musk started Zip2, a web software company that would help newspapers develop online city guides.

In 1999, Zip2 was acquired by Compaq Computer Corporation for $307 million in cash and $34 million worth of stock options. Musk used his Zip2 buyout money to create X.com, a fintech venture before that term was in wide circulation.

X.com merged with a money transfer firm called Confinity, and the resulting company came to be known as PayPal. Peter Thiel ousted Musk as PayPal CEO before eBay ( EBAY ) bought the payments company for $1.5 billion, but Musk still profited from the buyout via his 11.7% PayPal stake.

“My proceeds from PayPal after tax were about $180 million,” Musk said in a 2018 interview. “$100 (million) of that went into SpaceX, $70 (million) into Tesla, and $10 (million) into SolarCity. And I literally had to borrow money for rent.”

In 2017, Musk purchased the X.com domain name back from PayPal, citing its sentimental value.

Musk became involved with the electric cars venture as an early investor in 2004, ultimately contributing about $6.3 million, to begin with, and joined the team, including engineer Martin Eberhard, to help run a company then known as Tesla Motors. Following a series of disagreements, Eberhard was ousted in 2007, and an interim CEO was hired until Musk assumed control as CEO and product architect. Under his watch, Tesla has become the world’s most valuable automaker.

In addition to producing electric vehicles, Tesla maintains a robust presence in the solar energy space, thanks to its acquisition of SolarCity. The company currently produces rechargeable solar batteries and other solar power equipment. The Powerwall is a battery developed for home backup power. Tesla also produces commercial energy infrastructure including grid management programs.

Musk used most of the proceeds from his PayPal stake to found Space Exploration Technologies Corp., the rocket's developer commonly known as SpaceX. By his own account, Musk spent $100 million to found SpaceX in 2002 .

Under Musk’s leadership, SpaceX landed several high-profile contracts with the U.S. National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) and the U.S. Air Force to design space launch rockets. Musk has publicized plans to send an astronaut to Mars by 2025 in a collaborative effort with NASA.

The company was founded in March 2006 as Twitter by Jack Dorsey, Noah Glass, Biz Stone, and Evan Williams. Originally a private company, it went public in November 2013. It raised $1.8 billion through its initial public offering (IPO) .

Musk joined the site in June 2009. A frequent poster on the messaging network, Musk disclosed a 9.2% stake in Twitter in March 2022. The company responded by offering Musk a seat on the board, which he accepted before declining days later. Musk then sent a bear hug letter to the board proposing to buy the company at $54.20 per share.

The company’s board adopted a poison pill provision to discourage Musk from accumulating an even larger stake, but they ultimately accepted Musk’s offer after he disclosed $46.5 billion in committed financing for the deal in a securities filing.

In July 2022, Musk attempted to cancel the deal , arguing that X had failed to provide certain information regarding fake accounts. The company sued Musk to require him to complete the deal.

After months of legal wrangling, the billionaire’s plan to buy the social media platform came to fruition, and Musk took control of the company on October 28, 2022. The company was renamed X the following year.

During his May 8, 2021, appearance on the TV show Saturday Night Live , Musk revealed that he has Asperger’s syndrome, an autism spectrum disorder. “I’m actually making history tonight as the first person with Asperger’s to host SNL . Or at least the first to admit it,” he said. How does the neurodevelopment condition manifest itself? “I don’t always have a lot of intonation or variation in how I speak, which I’m told makes for great comedy,” Musk explained.

On September 7, 2018, Musk smoked cannabis during a filmed interview for The Joe Rogan Experience podcast.

Just a month earlier, Musk posted an infamous tweet claiming he was considering taking Tesla private and had secured the needed funding. Musk subsequently settled a Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) complaint alleging he knowingly misled investors with the tweet by paying a $20 million fine along with the same penalty for Tesla and agreeing to let Tesla’s lawyers approve tweets with material corporate information before posting.

In March 2022, Musk filed a court motion to overturn the consent decree stemming from that case. In April 2022 during a live TED Talk, Musk called the SEC regulators on the case “bastards.”

Is Elon Musk Married?

Elon Musk has been divorced three times—twice from his second wife, Talulah Riley. From 2018 to 2022, he was in a relationship with Canadian singer/songwriter Claire Elise Boucher, professionally known as Grimes, with whom he had a son in 2020, a daughter in 2022, and a third child revealed in 2023. They remain best friends. He also has six boys (five living, one died after birth) from his first marriage to Justine Musk. He also shares twins with Shivon Zilis. Musk has a total of 11 children.

How Rich Is Elon Musk?

Elon Musk’s net worth was estimated at $207 billion as of June 24, 2024, making him the second wealthiest person on the planet.

Was Elon Musk Born Rich?

No, Elon Musk was born into a middle-class family. In 1995, when he founded Zip2, he reportedly had more than $100,000 in student debt and struggled to pay rent.

What Does Elon Musk Do at Tesla?

Elon Musk is officially listed as the co-founder and chief executive officer of Tesla on the company’s website. In a 2021 securities filing, the company disclosed an additional Musk title as “Technoking of Tesla.”

What Companies Does Elon Musk Own?

Elon Musk is a large stakeholder in several companies, including Tesla, SpaceX, The Boring Co., Neuralink, and X Corp .

Musk’s early interests in philosophy, science fiction, and fantasy novels are reflected in his idealism and concern with human progress—and in his business career. He works in fields he has identified as crucial to humanity’s future, notably the transition to renewable energy sources, space exploration, and the Internet.

Musk has defied critics, disrupted industries, and made the most money anyone ever has from PayPal, Tesla Motors, SolarCity, and SpaceX—game changers all, despite the inevitable missteps.

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X. “ Elon Musk, Dec. 28, 2019, 6:22 PM .”

CNBC. “ Elon Musk Tried to Pitch the Head of the Yellow Pages Before the Internet Boom: ‘He Threw the Book at Me’ .”

TheStreet. " Elon Musk Disagrees With Billionaire Peter Thiel on the Key to Success ."

Simple. " How Elon Musk Uniquely Manages His Wealth Through His Family Office, Excession ."

U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. “ eBay to Acquire PayPal .”

YouTube. “ Elon Musk Interview [I Made 180 Million Dollars but Still Had To Borrow Money for Rent] .” 1:58–2:14 (Video).

X. “ Elon Musk, July 10, 2017, 9:10 PM .”

Wired. “ How Elon Musk Turned Tesla Into the Car Company of the Future .”

SpaceX. “ Updates .”

YouTube. “ People Should Arrive on Mars in 2025 .” (Video)

Britannica Money. " X ."

X. " Elon Musk ."

U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. “ Twitter, Inc., Schedule 13G, March 14, 2022 .” Page 3.

X. “ Parag Agrawal, April 5, 2022, 8:32 AM .”

X. “ Parag Agrawal, April 10, 2022, 11:13 PM .”

U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. “ Amendment No. 2 to Schedule 13D/A, April 13, 2022 .”

CNBC. " Twitter Board Adopts ‘Poison Pill’ After Musk’s $43 Billion Bid To Buy Company ."

Reuters. " Explainer: How Elon Musk Funded the $44 Billion Twitter Deal ."

U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. “ Form 8-K, April 15, 2022 .”

U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. “ Amendment No. 3 to Schedule 13D, April 20, 2022 .”

ABC News. " A Timeline of Elon Musk’s Tumultuous Twitter Acquisition ."

CNBC. “ Elon Musk Now in Charge of Twitter, CEO and CFO Have Left, Sources Say .”

The New York Times. " From Twitter to X: Elon Musk Begins Erasing an Iconic Internet Brand ."

American Autism Association. " Elon Musk Shared Aspergers Diagnosis on SNL ."

YouTube. “ Elon Musk Monologue—SNL .”

CNBC. " Elon Musk Smokes Weed, Sips Whiskey on Joe Rogan’s Podcast ."

X. “ Elon Musk, Aug. 7, 2018, 12:48 PM .”

U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. “ Elon Musk Settles SEC Fraud Charges; Tesla Charged With and Resolves Securities Law Charge .”

U.S. District Court, Southern District of New York. “ Defendant Elon Musk’s Notice of Motion To Quash & To Terminate Consent Decree .”

Reuters. " Musk Says U.S. SEC ‘Bastards’ Forced Settlement Over Tesla Tweets ."

Vanity Fair. “ Elon Musk Splits with Actress Talulah Riley for the Second (or Third?) Time .”

TODAY. " Who Are Elon Musk's Children? "

X. “ Grimes, March 10, 2022, 11:32 AM .”

Vanity Fair. “‘ Infamy Is Kind of Fun’: Grimes on Music, Mars, and Her Secret New Baby with Elon Musk .”

The Economic Times. “ Elon Musk Had Over $100K of Student Debt When He Started 1st Company, Turned His Room into Nightclub To Pay Rent .”

Tesla. “ Elon Musk .”

U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. “ Form 8-K, March 15, 2021 .”

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Elon Musk Biography

Birthday: June 28 , 1971 ( Cancer )

Born In: Pretoria, South Africa

Elon Musk is one of the greatest and most prolific modern inventors and is responsible for monumental advancements in futuristic technology like renewable energy and space travel. Many of his innovations seem to be right out of a science-fiction movie, but throughout his career he has brought about huge scientific breakthroughs. After making his first fortune from the internet payment service ‘PayPal’, he invested $100 million in his space travel company, ‘SpaceX’ and began building satellites, launch vehicles and other spacecraft both for NASA and for his own company, creating new milestones with his privately funded spacecraft. Many of his revolutionary ideas and inventions focus on space travel, renewable energy, commercial electric cars and other technologies, that look to a future where fossil fuels and other resources may be in shorter supply. His futuristic and visionary ideas have won him both scientific and philanthropic recognition and awards. The pop culture sometimes portrays him as a sort of real life super hero, dedicated to providing worldwide solutions to international problems. Musk looks to the future, hopes for intelligent life elsewhere in the universe and continues to plan far-reaching futuristic goals such a human colony on Mars. Scroll down to learn all about this illustrious personality.

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Girlfriend: Grimes (2018)

Also Known As: Elon Reeve Musk

Age: 53 Years , 53 Year Old Males

Spouse/Ex-: Justine Musk (m. 2000–2008), Talulah Riley (m. 2010–2012; m. 2013–2016)

father: Errol Musk

mother: Maye Haldeman

siblings: Kimbal Musk , Tosca Musk

children: Damian Musk, Griffin Musk, Kai Musk, Nevada Alexander Musk (died), Saxon Musk, Xavier Musk

Born Country: South Africa

Quotes By Elon Musk CEOs

Ancestry: German American, South African American, South African Canadian

Personality: INTJ

City: Pretoria, South Africa

Founder/Co-Founder: PayPal, SpaceX, Zip2, X.com, Musk Foundation, Tesla Motors

education: University Of Pennsylvania

You wanted to know

What companies does elon musk own, what is elon musk's role at tesla, what is neuralink and what is elon musk's involvement with it, what is the hyperloop and how is elon musk associated with it, what are some notable achievements of spacex, founded by elon musk.

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Elon Musk was briefly in a relationship with American actress Amber Heard in 2016, but the couple split owing to their conflicting schedules.

Elon Musk started dating Canadian musician Grimes in 2018. In May 2020, Grimes gave birth to their son. In March 2021, Musk stated that he was single. In March 2022, Grimes revealed that they have broken up and she further stated that they welcomed a daughter through surrogacy in December 2021. 

In 2022, Insider, an American financial and business news website published court documents stating that Musk fathered twins with Shivon Zilis, the company's top executive, in November 2021. As of June 2022, Elon Musk has nine children with three different women.

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Elon Musk is best known for being the co-founder of PayPal, a money-transfer service for Web consumers, for founding Space Exploration Technologies or SpaceX, the first private company to launch a rocket into space and for founding Tesla Motors, which builds electric cars.

Famous Quotes from Musk

• "Failure is an option here. If things are not failing, you are not innovating enough."
• "It is where great things are possible" [Musk on moving to the USA]

Background and Education

Elon Musk was born in South Africa, in 1971. His father was an engineer and his mother is a nutritionist. An avid fan of computers, by the age of twelve, Musk had written the code for his own video game, a space game called Blastar, which the preteen sold for a profit.

Elon Musk attended Queen's University in Kingston, Ontario, Canada, and transferred to the University of Pennsylvania, where he earned two bachelor's degrees in economics and physics. He was admitted to Stanford University in California with the intention of earning a PhD in energy physics. However, Musk's life was about to change dramatically.

Zip2 Corporation

In 1995, at the age of twenty-four, Elon Musk dropped out of Stanford University after just two days of classes to start his first company called Zip2 Corporation. Zip2 Corporation was an online city guide that provided content for the new online versions of the New York Times and the Chicago Tribune newspapers. Musk struggled to keep his new business afloat, eventually selling majority control of Zip2 to venture capitalists in exchange for a $3.6 million investment.

In 1999, the Compaq Computer Corporation bought Zip2 for $307 million. Out of that amount, Elon Musk's share was $22 million. Musk had become a millionaire at the age of twenty-eight. That same year Musk started his next company.

Online Banking

In 1999, Elon Musk started X.com with $10 million dollars from the sale of Zip2. X.com was an online bank, and Elon Musk is credited with inventing a method of securely transferring money using a recipient's e-mail address.

In 2000, X.com bought a company called Confinity, which had started an Internet money-transfer process called PayPal. Elon Musk renamed X.com/Confinity Paypal and dropped the company's online banking focus to concentrate on becoming a global payment transfer provider.

In 2002, eBay bought Paypal for $1.5 billion and Elon Musk made $165 million in eBay stock from the deal.

Space Exploration Technologies

In 2002, Elon Musk started SpaceX aka the Space Exploration Technologies. Elon Musk is a long-standing member of the Mars Society , a nonprofit organization that supports the exploration of Mars, and Musk is interested in establishing a greenhouse on Mars. SpaceX has been developing rocket technology to enable Musk's project.

Tesla Motors

In 2004, Elon Musk cofounded Tesla Motors, of which he is the sole product architect. Tesla Motors builds electric vehicles . The company has built an electric sports car, the Tesla Roadster, the Model S, an economy model four door electric sedan and plans to build more affordable compact cars in the future.

In 2006, Elon Musk co-founded SolarCity, a photovoltaics products and services company with his cousin Lyndon Rive.

In December 2015, Elon Musk announced the creation of OpenAI, a research company to develop artificial intelligence for the benefit of humanity.

In 2016, Musk created Neuralink, a neurotechnology startup company with a mission to integrate the human brain with artificial intelligence. The aim is to create devices that can be implanted in the human brain and merge human beings with software.

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Elon Musk biography

Elon Reeve Musk was born on the 28th of June of 1972 in Pretoria, South Africa. He is known for being one of the founders of Paypal, SpaceX, Tesla Motors, OpenAl, and Hyperloop, among other companies. The entrepreneur and inventor appears in the list of the richest in the world, occupying the position number 56, in 2017, with 17.4 billion dollars. Forbes magazine, for the December 2016 publication, named him the 21st person with the most power in the world. His greatest goal, according to Musk, is to change humanity drastically; for this purpose, he works in SolarCity, SpaceX, and Tesla. One of his interests is the abandonment of petroleum fuels in order to reduce global warming. Perhaps Elon’s most ambitious project, so far, is the establishment of a human colony on Mars, with nearly a million people.

He spent his childhood in South Africa with his parents, an engineer from South Africa and a nutritionist from Canada. At age 10, with his first computer, a Commodore VIC-20, he began to learn to programme on his own. Two years later he sold his first videogame called Blastar for about $ 200. At that time he went through difficult times; his schoolmates subjected him to bullying because of his uncommon interests for them. Elon spent his money on science fiction books, comics, and video games.

In the period between 12 and 15 years of age, he entered into an existential crisis influenced by the readings of Nietzsche and Schopenhauer. The situation went to the extreme of taking him to the hospital because of beatings by his companions. In his home things were not better, the relationship with his father was quite complicated. He suffered the emotional violence of a father unable to understand him. Compulsory military service bothered him. For these reasons, at age 17, after graduating from high school in Pretoria, he decided to leave South Africa and take refuge with his mother in Canada.

What Musk wanted most was to reach the United States. He found in that country a way to make possible everything he imagined. Elon’s father conditioned his support: he would not pay for a university outside of South Africa. In 1989, while in Canada, he found a chance to study thanks to his maternal relatives, who came from North America. By 1992, Elon counted on a scholarship in the University of Pennsylvania. The young entrepreneur began his studies in Business Administration, in parallel he began his career in Physics. He was fortunate to have the support of one of his teachers, who turned out to be the executive director of Los Gatos, a company located in the southern part of San Francisco Bay, California. The experience gained on ultracapacitors in that company, and then in Pinnacle Research, along with the inspiration it had for inventors such as Nikola Tesla, made him define the fields in which he would focus on the future: renewable energy, the Internet and outer space.

The beginning on the Internet began with Zip2, in 1995, along with his brother Kimbal Musk and a friend named Greg Curry. The company was dedicated to the development and maintenance of web pages dedicated to the media. The idea was a success, managing around 200 sites on the Internet in the year of 1999. For that year the company was sold to Compaq for 300 million dollars; money that would help him found X.com. The next plan was to systematize payments and money management through the Internet, offering security and speed. The ease offered by X.com and security made the project a very profitable idea, as well as merging, in 2000, with Confinity; company that provided a similar service, but only between Palm Pilot devices. In 2001 X.com decided to change its name to Paypal.inc a well-known company that provides the service to make online payments internationally.

With the growing success, problems soon appeared. Different companies tried to close Paypal, including eBay, which ended up buying it in October 2002, for 1.5 billion dollars. The sale of Paypal gave way to the creation, by its former members, of companies such as LinkedIn and YouTube. The next Musk project was called Tesla Motors, the company that created the first functional electric car. The main investment in Tesla was solar energy. The idea was born in 2003 in the company AC Propulsion, which had a prototype electric car. Musk wanted to help design a sports car with the same base of AC Propulsion.

In 2004, along with Matt Tappenhig and Martin Eberhard, Tesla Motors was created, with the intention of mass producing the model T-Zero of AC Propulsion. Musk invested nearly 98% of the capital. The start of the company was hard; the budget for the first models exceeded what was expected, but they managed to sell enough to continue developing models. For 2012, 2100 Tesla Roadster was sold in different countries. In 2015 the Tesla Model X was launched, designed to cover all types of terrain.

Another of Musk’s three projects involves SpaceX. Thinking of establishing a colony on Mars, he began, in 2002, to investigate how to send a rocket to Mars. His initial idea was to obtain reusable rockets to carry out the two trips for reconnaissance missions. For that year, Space Exploration Technologies was founded, focused on launching rockets and reducing fuel costs and materials for launch with increases in viability. In 2008, an agreement was made between NASA for twelve rocket flights. Currently, SpaceX is responsible for the development of Falcon rockets, which use liquid fuel.

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Nipsey Hussle

Nipsey Hussle Biography

Ermias Asghedom (August 15, 1985 – March 31, 2019), better known as Nipsey Hussle, was an American rapper, businessman, and community activist, who rose to fame in 2018 with his debut album Victory Lab . Nipsey began his career towards the mid-2000s releasing several successful mixtapes such as Slauson Boy Volume 1, Bullets Ain’t Got No Name series and The Marathon. His fame came to him, along with his first Grammy nomination, with his debut album in 2018. He had previously created his label All Money In No Money Out (2010).

Following his death, he received two posthumous Grammys for the songs Racks in the Middle and Higher. He was known for his social work on behalf of the Crenshaw community.

Early years

He was born in Los Angeles, United States, on August 15, 1985 . Son of Angelique Smith and Eritrean immigrant Dawit Asghedom, he grew up in Crenshaw, a neighborhood located south of Los Angeles, with his siblings Samiel and Samantha. He attended Hamilton High School but dropped out before graduating. Since he was little he looked for a way to help around the home, so over time, he began to work selling different products on the street.

After leaving school he became involved in the world of gangs, however, he turned away from it when he realized that it was not what he expected for his future. Decided then to dedicate himself to music, he sold everything that linked him to the gangs and worked for a time to buy his own production tools. After finishing his studies, he began to write and produce his own mixtapes, which he sold from a car. After finding inspiration from a trip he took to Eritrea with his father and spending time in prison, Nipsey turned fully to his career and business. He always looked for ways to start and help the community in which he grew up: giving jobs, helping students, renovating public spaces, etc …

Community activist

Nipsey was admired for his work at Crenshaw because instead of moving or investing in hedge funds, he preferred to help the community by boosting the local economy.

In late 2005, Nipsey Hussle released his first mixtape, Slauson Boy Volume 1, independently, to great local success. By then he already had a fan base at the regional level, so it took him a while to sign a contract with the Epic Records and Cinematic Music Group labels. Later, the first volumes of the Bullets Ain’t Got No Name series appeared, with which he expanded his popularity. Burner on My Lap, Ridin Slow, Aint No Black Superman, Hussle in the House and It’s Hard out Here , were some of the songs included in the series.

By 2009, Nipsey would make a name for himself collaborating with Drake on Killer and with Snoop Dog on Upside Down. He also released Bullets Ain’t Got No Name vol.3 and in 2010, he left Epic and opened his own label All Money In No Money Out. Under this label, he would soon release The Marathon, a mixtape in which hits such as Love ?, Mr. Untouchable, Young Rich and Famous and Late Nights and Early Mornings appeared. He also created The Marathon Clothing at that time, a sports and casual clothing brand that was based in his neighborhood. He then released the mixtape The Marathon Continues (2011), participated in the We Are the World 25 for Haiti campaign, and was featured in the popular XXL Magazine Annual Freshman Top Ten.

In 2013 came Crenshaw , a mixtape that would become famous because Jay-Z himself bought 100 copies for $ 100 each.

Victory Lap

After many delays, Nipsey would release his long-awaited debut album Victory Lap , on February 16, 2018, to great success. It was praised by critics and received a Grammy nomination for best rap album of the year. It was such a success that many singles entered the Billboard and Itunes charts. However, Nipsey did not enjoy much fame.

Hussle was assassinated on March 31, 2019, outside his store in South Los Angeles. He was shot multiple times by a man he had previously clashed with, he was arrested and charged with murder on April 2 of the same year. After his death, many personalities expressed the pain caused by the news. It is worth mentioning that the Mayor of Los Angeles himself gave his condolences to the family, recognizing Hussle’s social work in Crenshaw.

He was the partner of actress Lauren London and was the father of two children.

Sales strategies and greatest hits

Hussle was known for his sales strategies, since, he used to upload his singles in free download and then sell some limited editions for a cost of 100 to 1000 dollars . It promoted the sale of his work with campaigns such as Proud2Pay and Mailbox Money, in which he gave special incentives (autographed photos, dedication calls, tickets to his studio, and special events) to buyers. His revolutionary ideas promised him a fruitful career.

Some of his greatest hits

• Rose Clique
• Forever On My Fly Shit
• Thas Wat Hoes Do Proud of That (with Rick Ross)
• Face the world
• Bless, 1 of 1
• Where Yo Money At
• Fuck Donald Trump
• Young Rich and Famous

Jimmy Hoffa

Jimmy Hoffa Biography

James Riddle Hoffa (February 14, 1913 – July 30, 1975), better known as Jimmy Hoffa, was an American union activist. A reference to the working class of the 20th century, Hoffa began his union activity at the age of 18 within the trucker union. With time, he was gaining importance and enemies. He mixed with the mob and was the leader of the most important union organization in the U.S.A ., the International Brotherhood of Truckers. His actions took a toll on him and in 1967 he was arrested for bribery. In 1975, he disappeared after having dinner at a Detroit restaurant. To date, it is unknown what happened or where his body is. His disappearance was portrayed in Scorsese’s The Irishman .

He was born in Brazil, Indiana, on February 14, 1913. James was the son of John Hoffa and Viola Riddle. His father passed away when he was 7 years old, of Irish descent and working as a miner. When the dad died, the family moved to Detroit, where Hoffa lived the rest of his life. He studied until he was 14 years old and began working as a teenager, to help the family. At the age of 18, he began to participate in the union demonstrations of the truck driver’s union, and over time he gained recognition. However, Hoffa had never driven a truck.

Jimmy Hoffa, the truckers, and the mob

Despite his clear inexperience, Hoffa managed to earn the respect of all road workers thanks to his charisma and effective acting. He was thus elected president of the famous International Brotherhood of Truckers or “Teamsters” in 1957. From then on he would be known for his aggressive methods and connections with the Cosa Nostra (Italian mafia). It is known that Jimmy used the mob to gain notoriety and destroy his competitors, while the union served as a front to clean up dirty money from the mob.

As time went by, his relationship with Cosa Nostra became increasingly evident, becoming the target of various investigations (fraud, conspiracy, evasion, extortion, laundering…). Behind them was the prosecutor Robert Kennedy, who later became a solicitor, his sole objective being the capture of Hoffa. Although he managed to leave the courts unscathed on several occasions – thanks to his intimidation and bribery strategies – he was finally locked up in 1967.

Hoffa had faced justice several times, so the confinement did not scare him, he planned to continue running the union and all its businesses from jail, leaving someone manageable in command. But this did not turn out as he expected, his puppet rebelled and the mafia took advantage of his confinement to expand their business with more facilities. It was clear that everyone was better off without Hoffa at the helm.

The disappearance of Jimmy Hoffa

In 1971 his sentence was commuted and Hoffa returned to work, he tried to regain his place and strength, but had little luck, because the mafia was clear that the business was better without him. The day he arrived, on July 30, 1975, he was summoned by Anthony Provenzano and Anthony Giacalone, two gangster bosses who were tired of his instance. They summoned him to a restaurant in Detroit, but never showed up, Hoffa waited for more than an hour and then got into a car, disappearing ever since. Nobody saw him again.

Jimmy was powerful, but he had made many enemies and was in the crosshairs of the mob, making his disappearance one of the most famous of the 20th century. His body was never found and in 1982 he was presumed dead. Although over time many took credit for his disappearance (and his death) from him, little is known for sure.

One of the possible culprits is perhaps Frank Sheeran, the Irishman , Hoffa’s henchman, who, pressured by the gangsters, would have killed the union leader. According to Sheeran’s version, that day he would have taken Hoffa to a house, where he shot him three times, and then moved his body to a still uncertain place.

His body and his disappearance became one of the best-known mysteries of the time . To date, the fate of his body is unknown. Many say it is buried, others that it was dismembered and thrown into a river, and others that it was compacted. There were many complaints about the discovery of his body, but all false.

His legacy was continued by his son, the current head of the International Brotherhood of Truckers, James P. Hoffa.

He was married to Josephine Poszywak and was the father of James P. Hoffa and Barbara Ann Crancer.

On July 30, 1982, he was declared legally dead.

Scorsese’s The Irishman

Scorsese’s The Irishman premiered on Netflix in 2019. The film follows Hoffa’s hitman and right-hand man, Frank Sheeran, as he thus narrates his story and participation in the disappearance of Hoffa. In the film, Hoffa is played by Al Pacino , while Sheeran and the prosecutor Kennedy are played by Robert De Niro and Jack Huston.

Peter Drucker

Peter Drucker biography

Peter Drucker (November 19, 1909 – November 11, 2005) writer, consultant, entrepreneur, and journalist. He was born in Vienna, Austria. He is considered the father of the Management to which he devoted more than 60 years of his professional life. His parents of Jewish origin and then converted to Christianity moved to a small town called Kaasgrabeen. Drucker grew up in an environment in which new ideas and social positions created by intellectuals, senior government officials and scientists were emerging. He studied at the Döbling Gymnasium and in 1927, Drucker moved to the German city of Hamburg, where he worked as an apprentice in a cotton company.

Then he began to train in the world of journalism, writing for the Der Österreichische Volkswirt. Then he got a job in Frankfurt, his job was to write for the Daily Frankfurter General-Anzeiger. Meanwhile, he completed a doctorate in International Law. Drucker began to integrate his two facets and for that, he was a recognized journalist. Drucker worked in this place until the fall of the Weimar Republic. After this period he decided to move to London, where he worked in a bank and was also a student of John Maynard Keynes .

Although he was a disciple of Keynes, he assured, decades later, that Keynesianism failed as an economic thesis where it was applied. Because of the ravages of Nazism and persecution of Jews, he emigrated to the United States, where he served as a professor at Sarah Lawrence College in New York, from 1939 to 1949 and simultaneously was a writer. His first job as a consultant was in 1940. He then returned to teaching at Bennington College in Vermont. Thanks to his popularity he received a position to teach in the faculty of Business Administration of the University of New York.

He was an active contributor for a long period of time to magazines such as The Atlantic Monthly and was a columnist for The Wall Street Journal. The quality and recognition of his writings assured him important contracts both as a writer and as a consultant with large companies, government agencies, and non-profit organizations in the United States, Europe, Latin America, and Asia. Quickly and surprisingly his fortune grew. Drucker served as honorary president of the Peter F. Drucker Foundation for Nonprofit Management.

In 1971, he obtained the Clarke Chair of Social Sciences and Administration at the Graduate School of Management at the University of Claremont. Now, at present Drucker is considered the most successful of the exponents in matters of administration, his ideas and terminologies have influenced the corporate world since the 40s. Drucker was the first social scientist to use the expression “post-modernity” something that caught the attention of this man is that he does not like receiving compliments. He was simple, visionary, satirical and vital.

Within his studies, he says that his greatest interest is people. His work as a consultant began in the General Motors Multinational Companies, from that moment begins to raise the theory of Management, Management trends, the knowledge society. Thanks to this theory he has published several books, these are consulted often and are fundamental for the career of business administrator. In his works, he deals with the scientific, human, economic, historical, artistic and philosophical stage.

He was founder and director of a business school that bears his name. For Drucker, it was beneficial that many of his ideas have been reformed because of the innovative way of thinking and analyzing business issues. Although approaches such as the knowledge society are the basis of the current company and the future is still maintained. He has published more than thirty books, which include studies of Management, studies of socio-economic policies and essays. Some are Best Sellers. The first book was The end of economic man (1939), The future of industrial man (1942), The concept of Corporation (1946). Later he published The Effective Executive (1985). He focused on personal effectiveness and changes in the direction of the 21st century. In 2002 the society of the future was published.

His first book caused much controversy because he talked about the reasons why fascism initiated and analyzed the failures of established institutions. He urged the need for a new social and economic order. Although he had finished the book in 1933, he had to wait because no editor wanted to accept such horrible visions. Now, Drucker has dealt with such controversial issues as individual freedom, industrial society, big business, the power of managers, automation, monopoly, and totalitarianism.

We must indicate that his analysis of the Administration, is a valuable guide for the leaders of companies that need to study their own performance, diagnose its failures and improve its productivity, as well as that of your company. Several companies have taken their approaches and put them into practice, such as Sears Roebuck & Co., General Motors, Ford, IBM, Chrysler, and American Telephone & Telegraph.

The consultant assured that there are some differences between the figure of the manager and that of the leader. For him, true leaders recognize their shortcomings as mortal beings, but they systematically concentrate on the essentials and work tirelessly to acquire the decisive competences of management. Actually, the contributions of this character in the world of administration and in the economic and social world have been significant. Drucker died on November 11, 2005, leaving a great legacy.

Jeff Bezos biography

Jeff Bezos (January 12, 1964). His birth name is Jeffrey Preston Bezos. Businessman and founder and CEO of Amazon. He was born in Albuquerque, New Mexico, United States. His mother, Jacklyn Gise, had him as a teenager and his biological father, Ted Jorgensen, left them as soon as he heard the news. Years later his mother married Miguel Bezos a Cuban. Now, Miguel adopted Jeffrey and he received his last name. The family moved to Houston, Texas. Jeffrey Bezos studied at River Oaks Elementary, he was always a very smart and witty little boy.

They moved to Miami, where he studied at Miami Palmetto Senior High School. And upon graduating he entered Princeton University to study Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, his thesis was cum laude. In 1996, he started working in a fiber optic company, FITEL, where he was responsible for the development of computer systems, his performance was so good that he became vice president. After moving to New York with the idea of ​​entering the world of finance, in Bankers Trust, he also held the position of vice president in 1990. In the following four years, Bezos worked with another Wall Street company: D.E. Shaw and Co.

Bezos realized that the purchase/sale of products and services on the internet or other electronic means would be a great field to explore and exploit. For this reason, he founded the electronic commerce company Amazon in 1995. Its service was something new for the netizens, which produced an increase in the visits quickly. Only in the first month of operation had books been sold in all corners of the United States. Months later it reached 2,000 daily visitors, a figure that would multiply abysmally in the next year. In 1997, the success made Amazon become one of the most important companies online.

Bezos had managed to conquer the internet business. Encouraged by the reception of consumers, he undertook the diversification of products, including CD and DVD media and electronic devices. As demand increased, this ingenious man included new products to his virtual store. The growth and its popularity were such that today it distributes from food to home, clothes and shoes, video games and music, to toilet paper and diapers. Amazon has experimented with the lucrative benefit of advertising since it gives the possibility to companies to advertise their products and mark them as featured products.

Bezos established independent Amazon websites for United States, Canada, United Kingdom, Australia, Germany, Austria, France, China, Italy, Spain, Japan, the Netherlands, Brazil, India and Mexico, the variety of products can be several in each country. Currently, the services are enjoyed by companies such as Target Corporation, Marks & Spencer, the NBA, Sears Canada, Timex or Bombay Company. The AOL online sales service also supports. In 2007, Bezos shook the world with the creation and launch of Amazon’s alter ego: Amazon Kindle, a device specially designed for the visualization of electronic books. Amazon Kindle was launched for the first time in North America and is currently available in 45 countries.

In 2011, The Economist awarded Bezos and Gregg Zehr an Innovation Award for the Amazon Kindle. The following year, Bezos was named Entrepreneur of the Year by Fortune. It is part of the Bilderberg Group. Bezos has given several conferences in St. Moritz, Switzerland, and participated in the conference in Watford, Hertfordshire, England. He was a member of the Executive Committee of the Business Council in 2011 and 2012. In 2018, he appeared on the Forbes list, where a net wealth of 106 billion dollars was estimated. He has also received other awards as the best CEO in the world by Harvard Business Review. Jeff Bezos has also been on Fortune’s list of the 50 best leaders in the world. In September 2016, he was awarded the Heinlein Prize for advances in Space Marketing. He donated the prize money to the international student organization Students for the Exploration and Development of Space by Bezos.

Since 2017, he has seen an increase in Amazon shares. They went up more than 130%, which made him have a profit of more than 100 billion dollars, after this, he returned to be the richest person in the world. He was named Person of the Year in Time magazine and was awarded an honorary Doctor of Science and Technology degree at Carnegie Mellon University in 2008. Really, the awards and awards have been impressive. Much of this is because Bezos, started in the field of journalism, looking beyond its commercial horizons; beyond the web. Bezos entered the world of media, acquiring the traditional newspaper The Washington Post for the sum of 250 thousand dollars.

Henry Gantt

Henry Gantt Biography

Henry Laurence Gantt (May 20, 1861 – November 23, 1919) industrial engineer . He was born in Calvert County, Maryland, United States. During his childhood and youth, he and his family lived devastating moments, especially in the economic part. His parents owned crops in Calvert but remained in ruins after the devastation caused during the Civil War. After that political and social event, they did not overlap economically so they had to live various hardships.

In spite of this, his parents did everything possible so that the young Gantt finished his school training at McDonogh School in 1878 and went to Johns Hopkins University to study industrial engineering. His performance was very good, when he graduated he started working as a teacher and draftsman, Gantt had a great skill for drawing since he was a kid. Then he studied mechanical engineering at the same university. In 1887, he was hired in Frederick W. Taylor to carry out an application of the principles of the Scientific Administration with his work in Midvale Steel and Bethlehem Steel, he carried out this work until 1893. In his career as a consultant, he invented the Gantt diagram.

Later, he designed some systems to measure the efficiency and productivity of workers, such as task bonds and the payment system and other methods that facilitate this process. This diagram became very popular for its simplicity, performance, and quality at that time, as well as at this time, pointed out the various tasks to be performed in a horizontal timeline, it has been used as a tool in operations that require strict temporal planning. However, Henry Gantt’s studies focused on the analysis of the performance of work methods, which depends on his judgment of the willingness to use the correct methods and skills.

Gantt was very concerned about leaving his knowledge embodied in paper, therefore, in 1908 presented before the American Society of Mechanical Engineers the text: Training of workers in habits of diligence and collaboration, in which he exposed the need to change the employer’s tactics; it is not a way of acting in the place, in the techniques, in the work, in the information, in the habits, in the possibilities, in the efficiency and in the efficiency of his work. As a complement to this, it is a bonus system that has been added to work and work done in a standardized time standard.

With these measures we tried to raise, not only the quantity, but above all the quality of work, following Taylor’s theory, the so-called common prosperity theory: what he says is that the worker has a kind of personal satisfaction to do the job well, this generates a feeling of pride that will make you try harder. For his part, the employer will notice an increase in productivity and the sum of a reduction in labor disputes. This is exposed with mastery in work, wages, and benefits (1913).

In the field of administration, his most known contribution is the graph of the bars such as the chart or the Gantt chart, which is composed in a diagram in which the horizontal axis represents the units of time, and in the vertical is recorded the different functions, which are represented by horizontal bars. With the help of this engineer, companies and the discipline of business administration is very broad, some of them are: the Gantt diagram, the development of the concept of industrial efficiency, the implementation of the system of Bonds of Tasks, with this adopted the premium to the workers. And he also implemented the Daily Balance Chart.

It was also very emphatic to ensure that companies have a social responsibility, in their opinion, companies have obligations for the welfare of society. His support for the scientific organization of work is also highlighted. When he worked for Frederick W. Taylor, with whom he collaborated in the application of his own doctrine to improve productivity, and in the second stage of the Industrial Revolution .

After 14 years of being at Taylor’s side, he made the decision to separate from this because his interest was the humanization of industrial practices and the dehumanized theories of Frederick Taylor . Unfortunately, in his last years of life, Gantt did not have the opportunity to finish several of his projects because his health was undermined. Finally, Henry Gantt died on November 23, 1919, in the town of Pine Island in New York .

His importance lies in the fact that it is the founder of scientific administration , an activity developed in the United States that later spread throughout the world with the idea of ​​achieving humanization, rationalization, and performance.

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‘Elon Musk,’ a Biography by Ashlee Vance, Paints a Driven Portrait

By Dwight Garner

• May 12, 2015

“We’ve become a nation of indoor cats,” Dave Eggers wrote in “A Hologram for the King” (2012), his existential novel about an American doing IT work in the Saudi Arabian desert. “A nation of doubters, worriers, overthinkers.”

Ashlee Vance, in his new biography of the celebrity industrialist Elon Musk, delivers a similar notion of the deflating American soul. An early Facebook engineer tells Mr. Vance, “The best minds of my generation are thinking about how to make people click ads.” The author quotes the venture capitalist Peter Thiel: “We wanted flying cars, instead we got 140 characters.”

If Silicon Valley was holding out for a hero after Steve Jobs’s death, a disrupter in chief, it has found a brawny one in Mr. Musk. This South African-born entrepreneur, inventor and engineer is the animating force behind companies (Tesla, SpaceX, SolarCity) that have made startling advances in non-indoor-cat arenas: electric cars, space exploration and solar energy. He is all of 43.

Mr. Musk is about as close as we have, circa 2015, to early industrial titans like Henry Ford, Andrew Carnegie and John D. Rockefeller. Along with his swagger, he totes surprise, style and wit. Tesla’s Model S sedan was not only Motor Trend’s car of the year in 2013 — the first non-internal-combustion engine vehicle to win that award — but it also has a sound system that, in a homage to the film “Spinal Tap,” you can turn up to 11.

“Elon Musk: Tesla, SpaceX, and the Quest for a Fantastic Future” isn’t the first biography we’ve had of Mr. Musk, nor will it be the last. But it is easily the richest to date. It’s also the first one Mr. Musk has cooperated with, though he had no control, the author says, over its contents. Mr. Vance is a technology writer for Bloomberg Businessweek . He won over Mr. Musk, who initially declined to be interviewed, impressing him with his diligence after he had interviewed some 200 people.

The result is a book that is smart, light on its feet and possesses a crunchy thoroughness. Mr. Vance can occasionally veer toward hagiography and the diction of news releases. After noting that Mr. Musk’s grand vision is to colonize Mars, for example, Mr. Vance writes:

“He’s the possessed genius on the grandest quest anyone has ever concocted. He’s less a C.E.O. chasing riches than a general marshaling troops to secure victory. Where Mark Zuckerberg wants to help you share baby photos, Musk wants to ... well ... save the human race from self-imposed or accidental annihilation.” As the Beast from “X-Men” likes to remark, Oh my stars and garters.

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Inside the Mind of Elon Musk: What We Learned From His Biography

Walter isaacson’s 688-page book reveals the (strange) man behind the tech mogul.

Tim Appelo,

Billionaire Elon Musk, 52, let Walter Isaacson, 71, bestselling biographer of Steve Jobs, follow him for two years and interview his family and colleagues. The resulting book, Elon Musk (September 12), provides fascinating insights into the mogul’s weird mind, titanic achievements and astounding failures.

Yes, he grew Tesla into a company worth more than its five biggest rivals put together; built a spacecraft company, SpaceX, that sent astronauts into orbit; and bought Twitter — which he famously renamed X and is a huge force in American politics and culture.

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But there’s so much more to those stories, and Musk’s life, which Isaacson details in this weighty, 688-page portrait.

Here are some of the more interesting points from the buzzy biography.

Musk was bullied as a child

While Musk was growing up in his native South Africa, a schoolyard bully stomped on his head, leading to injuries that required decades of corrective surgery. The worst part? His father, Errol Musk, sided with his assailant, berating Elon for an hour. “He yelled at me and called me an idiot and told me that I was just worthless,” Musk reports.

But at age 12, Musk learned an important lesson at a wilderness survival camp: "If someone bullied me, I could punch them very hard in the nose, and then they wouldn’t bully me again.”

Musk’s dad was probably the scariest person in his life

Musk compares his father — whom he refuses to speak with — to Jekyll and Hyde: bright and jolly one moment, darkly frightening the next. He says that Errol spins fantasies he seems to believe, embraces bizarre conspiracy theories, has made and lost fortunes, is addicted to high drama and has a peculiar love life. Musk’s mother, the model Maye Musk , 75, fears that her son will become like his father.

He may be on the autism spectrum

“He was never actually diagnosed as a kid,” Maye Musk told Isaacson, “but he says he has Asperger’s, and I’m sure he’s right.” (The term Asperger’s, which once was used to describe someone with autism spectrum disorder who has strong intellectual abilities, is no longer used by the autism community .) He does seem to display some characteristics associated with autism spectrum disorders; the book suggests that he is bad at picking up social cues, for instance. And he said, “It was only by reading books that I began to learn that people did not always say what they really meant.”

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He's got a very dark side

“He’s attracted to chaotic evil,” said the singer Grimes, Musk’s former partner. She told Isaacson, “He associates love with being mean or abusive.” Musk demanded, for example, that she shame him for being fat. Grimes says that when he goes into “demon mode,” he “goes dark and retreats inside the storm in his brain. Demon mode causes a lot of chaos. But it also gets shit done.”

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He chose unique names for many of his 10 children

​​With his first wife, Justine Wilson Musk, he has five children: Vivian Jenna, Griffin, Kai, Saxon and Damian.

​With Grimes’ friend Shivon Zilis, an executive at his company Neurolink, he has two more kids, Strider and Azure.

He had no children with the actress Talulah Riley, who married and divorced him twice.

Estrangement from his child Jenna helped downsize his lifestyle

Jenna, who has criticized her father’s wealth, has stopped talking to him. Stung by her rejection and criticism, Musk sold his six extravagant homes and moved to a small tract house rented from SpaceX in Boca Chica, Texas. "Possessions kind of weigh you down and they’re an attack vector,” he explains.

He wasn’t exactly happy in 2021 when he became the richest person on earth

When Tesla stock went from $25 a share in late 2019 to $260 on Jan. 7, 2021, Musk's wealth hit $190 billion, surpassing the fortune of the previous richest human, Jeff Bezos, 59. “He just couldn’t let himself enjoy the moment,” Musk's sister-in-law Christiana Musk told Isaacson. “He was throwing up and stricken with excruciating stomach pain.”

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He falls to the floor when he's depressed — or extremely amused

When Musk is too depressed to stand up, his executives have to conduct meetings lying down next to him. And when he discovered that Twitter banned the word “turdburger,” he laughed so hard he fell to the floor, wheezing.

Musk likes to play with fire

When forbidden to play with fire as a child, Musk lit a boxful of matches. He once floored his $1 million McLaren sports car, flipping it and flying into the air, risking death for himself and passenger Peter Thiel, 55, another billionaire entrepreneur, who refused to wear a seatbelt. Both survived unscathed. Amber Heard, the actress whose marriage with Johnny Depp sparked lawsuits and whose affair with Musk was also fiery, told Isaacson, “Elon loves fire, and sometimes it burns him.” 

His impulsive actions are sometimes bad for business

After Musk loaned Ukraine communications satellites to help resist Russia’s invasion, the Pentagon offered $145 million to support his effort, but there was backlash on Twitter. So he angrily tweeted, "The hell with it ... we'll just keep funding Ukraine govt for free." When he abruptly unplugged Twitter’s computer servers and sent them from California to Oregon, it destabilized Twitter for two months and caused a meltdown while he was hosting a Twitter Spaces event with Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis.

He has regrets. Or does he ?

“My main regret,” Musk told sister-in-law Christiana Musk, “is how often I stab myself in the thigh with a fork, how often I shoot my own feet and stab myself in the eye.” But when Isaacson asked him about regrets, Musk quoted a line from his favorite movie, Gladiator : “Are you not entertained?”

Tim Appelo covers entertainment and is the film and TV critic for AARP. Previously, he was the entertainment editor at Amazon, video critic at  Entertainment Weekly , and a critic and writer for  The Hollywood Reporter, People , MTV,  The Village Voice  and  LA Weekly .

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Elon Musk: The Story of The Maverick

A successful career, striking personality, and unconventional way of doing things are just a few reasons why elon musk is an inspirational leader of the 21st century..

Susan Fourtané

Shutterstock  

At times, Elon Musk may appear controversial. He may spike long-lasting discussions on social media right after one of his multiple Tweets. The truth is Elon Musk is one-of-a-kind. You can like him or not, agree with him or not. Elon Musk is a maverick. 

Elon Reeve Musk founded his first company in 1995 when he was only 23 years old. Then he sold it for $307 million dollars when he was 28. He received $22 million dollars from the sale and became a millionaire. 

Rather than sitting back, relaxing, and enjoying life, Elon Musk savored his accomplishment and used the experience as the first brick that would build the Musk empire.

“If something is important enough, even if the odds are against you, you should still do it.”- Elon Musk 

Quickly, a series of multiple companies emerged. From electric cars to solar energy, from underground tunnels on Earth to reusable space rockets and space tourism, from Artificial Intelligence and neural networks to a school for Generation Alpha .

Elon Musk is not only changing this world as we know it with his vision for the future but is about to create no less than a new world on Mars . Elon Musk will establish the first colony on the Red Planet, thus, making Earthlings a multi-planetary species. 

Elon Musk: A maverick 

Musk was born in South Africa in 1971 to an engineer father and a nutritionist mother. Growing up, he spent much of his time reading and working on projects under the watchful eye of his nanny. His fascination with the future and his passion for engineering, nurtured by his father, led him to Isaac Asimov’s books and set him up for future achievements.

Since a young age, Elon Musk’s personality has been shaped by curiosity, determination, strong will, perseverance, a vision of the future, critical thinking, and a strong desire to disrupt as many industries as possible. 

“An engineer is the closest thing to a magician that exists in the real world.” -Elon Musk

At the age of 10, Elon Musk developed an interest in computing. He learned computer programming using a manual and a Commodore VIC-20. At the age of 12, the young Musk sold the code of a BASIC-based video game he created for approximately $500. He called the video game Blastar to PC and Office Technology magazine. 

An avid reader since his childhood, Musk’s reading included Isaac Asimov’s Foundation series. He was severely bullied during his childhood to the point of being hospitalized after a group of boys threw him down a flight of stairs. 

Raised in Pretoria, South Africa, Musk briefly attended the University of Pretoria before moving to Canada at 17. He attended Queen’s University in Canada and transferred to the University of Pennsylvania two years later. He received a bachelor’s degree in economics from the Wharton School and a bachelor’s in physics from the College of Arts and Sciences. 

Elon Musk was accepted to a Ph.D. program in Energy Physics/Materials Science at Stanford University in California in 1995. However, he decided to launch his first company instead: Zip2 Corporation.

Zip2 was a web software company that provided online business directories and city guides for newspapers. Major media companies used the company’s software. And In 1999, Zip2 was acquired for nearly $300 million, providing Elon Musk with a substantial payout that allowed him to launch his next ventures, including PayPal, SpaceX, and Tesla.

Musk had already held two internships in Silicon Valley in 1994, one at Pinnacle Research Institute, an energy storage start-up researching electrolytic capacitors for energy storage. The second internship was at the Palo Alto-based start-up Rocket Science Games.

Elon Musk believes the world needs something different, and he has what it takes to provide the answers and materialize his ideas. Without a doubt, his hard work and strong will take him to a place no human has gone before, his ultimate goal: Mars colonization. 

Elon Musk has transformed several industries. As a serial entrepreneur, he has founded and co-founded several companies that are changing the world. Musk is the founder, CEO, CTO, and chief designer of SpaceX, early investor CEO, and product architect of Tesla Inc., founder of the Boring Company, co-founder of Neuralink, and co-founder and initial co-chairman of OpenAI. Elon Musk has the longest-tenured CEO of any automotive manufacturer globally. 

His vision and the way he thinks about education are already changing the future of the younger Generation Alpha , the generation that one day will populate Mars. Each of Elon Musk’s companies and initiatives has the same goal: To change the world. He is a successful technology entrepreneur, inventor, innovator, explorer, industrial designer, philanthropist, and engineer. 

Reasons for Elon Musk’s success include his strong personality, unbreakable perseverance, curiosity, critical thinking, analysis, and risk-taking. He mixes everything with a high dose of hard work, without which everything else would be futile. 

Elon Musk is an engineer with a fascination for physics. His insatiable appetite for constantly and consistently reading and learning new things has helped him start and develop some of the world’s most ingenious and exciting enterprises. 

With no formal training in aeronautical engineering, Elon Musk has been able to create and lead his rocket science team at SpaceX. He took his aerospace company to the level of NASA and international space associations. His SpaceX company has even partnered with NASA. Elon Musk has accomplished what no space association or government has accomplished before.

Here we look at what Elon Musk has accomplished in each and every one of his companies. 

Elon Musk’s first company: Zip2

After briefly attending graduate school in physics at Stanford University in California, Elon Musk quickly realized that the internet had far more potential to revolutionize society than the field of physics. With this insight in mind, Musk founded Zip2 in 1995, a company that offered online newspapers with maps and business directories alongside his brother.

Four years later, the computer manufacturer Compaq saw the value in Zip2. At the time, this was an innovative idea that happened almost a decade before Google Maps was created.  They acquired the company for a staggering $307 million, giving Musk the financial resources to explore new ventures and continue to push the boundaries of innovation.

Zip2’s clients included The New York Times and the Chicago Tribune. In 1999, Compaq acquired Zip2 for $307 million dollars. From this, Elon Musk received $22 million dollars for his seven percent share from the sale.

PayPal  and X.com

Andrei Stanescu, iStock

In 1999, Elon Musk co-founded X.com and invested $10 million from the sale of Zip2. X.com was a financial services company that allowed businesses and consumers to transfer money online or via email. In 2000, X.com merged with Confinity, a company with a similar money transfer service called PayPal. As a result, the company was renamed PayPal in 2001.

As the largest shareholder with 11.7 percent of PayPal’s shares, Musk played a key role in revolutionizing e-commerce and transforming financial transactions. PayPal’s innovative approach to online payments changed how people shop, conduct business, and send money to one another. Musk’s investment and leadership were critical to the success of PayPal and cemented his reputation as a trailblazer in the tech industry.

When eBay acquired PayPal in 2002 for $1.5 billion , Musk gained $165 million from the deal. Instead of doing what normal people do and buying an island, retiring, and spending the rest of his life enjoying life, he invested all his capital in Tesla to save the company. His intuition paid off. 

Elon Musk’s involvement with X.com and PayPal marked a significant turning point in e-commerce and online payments history. With X.com, Musk aimed to create a secure, efficient, and user-friendly financial services platform allowing people to transfer money over the Internet easily.

After the merger with Confinity, the new company, PayPal, grew rapidly and gained widespread popularity among online shoppers and businesses. Musk’s vision and leadership were instrumental in the company’s success, as he spearheaded the development of innovative technologies that made PayPal a leading online payment platform.

One of the key features that set PayPal apart from other online payment systems was its focus on security. Musk recognized the importance of building a secure platform that would protect users’ sensitive financial information and prevent fraud. Under his leadership, PayPal developed advanced encryption technologies and fraud detection systems that helped ensure the safety of transactions.

Elon Musk purchased the domain X.com from PayPal in July 2017. He said it had sentimental value for him, and the amount was not disclosed. The first name of his son with Grimes is X. Coincidence? Or perfect synchronization? 

Tesla Inc.:  Fighting climate change

Only an extraordinary risk-taker can envision and achieve as much as Elon Musk in the course of his life. Elon Musk co-founded Tesla in 2003 and was an early investor in Tesla.

“Some people don’t like change, but you need to embrace change as the alternative is disaster.” -Elon Musk

Tesla Inc. is dedicated to producing affordable, mass-market electric cars, battery products, and solar roofs.

Elon Musk is widely known for co-founding Tesla, one of the world’s most innovative and successful electric vehicle (EV) companies. Musk’s interest in sustainable energy and electric vehicles began in the early 2000s when he was searching for ways to reduce the world’s dependence on fossil fuels.

Elon Musk oversees all product development, engineering, and design of all the company’s products.

In February 2004, Musk led the Series A investment round and joined Tesla’s board of directors as its chairman. He assumed the company’s leadership as CEO and product architect at Tesla Inc. in 2008. 

His active role within the company let him oversee Roadster product design at a detailed level. He planned to build sports cars, use the money from sales to build an affordable car, use the money to build an even more affordable car, and at the same time also provide zero-carbon emission electric power generation options. 

Following the plan, in 2008, Tesla built the Tesla Roadster. The company sold about 2.500 vehicles to 31 countries. This was the first serial production of all-electric cars to use lithium-ion battery cells. The sports car was capable of accelerating from 0 to 60 mph in 3.7 seconds , traveling nearly 250 miles between charges. 

With a stake in the company taken by Daimler and a strategic partnership with Toyota –Elon Musk was able to bring in both companies as long-term investors in Tesla– Tesla Inc. launched its initial public offering in June 2010, raising $226 million .

Tesla sold electric powertrain systems to Daimler for the Smart EV, Mercedes B-Class Electric Drive, Mercedes A-Class, and Toyota for the RAV4 EV. 

The four-door Model S, the company’s first electric sedan capable of covering 265 miles between charges, was delivered on June 22, 2012. The Model S was honored as the 2013 Car of the Year by Motor Trend magazine .  

On February 9, 2012, Tesla unveiled its Model X, aimed at the SUV/minivan market. But the launch of the Model X  was delayed until September 2015.  Tesla’s Model X was highly anticipated and marketed as the world’s first luxury electric SUV. The company had announced the vehicle in 2012 and had initially planned to launch it in 2013. However, the production was delayed several times due to various technical issues and design changes.

In 2014, Elon Musk announced that Tesla would make its technology patents available to be used by anyone in good faith. He intended to entice automobile manufacturers to speed up the development of electric cars. “The unfortunate reality,” he said, “is electric cars programs–or programs for any vehicle that doesn’t burn hydrocarbons– at the major manufacturers are small to non-existent, constituting  an average of far less than one percent of their total vehicle sales.”

2016 was a busy year for Musk and Tesla. As of January 29, 2016, Elon Musk owned around 28.9 million Tesla shares, meaning he owned about 22 percent of the company by then. 

In early 2016, Elon Musk made a strategic move for Tesla by acquiring the highly coveted domain name Tesla.com. The domain had been previously owned by Stu Grossman since 1992, and its acquisition provided Tesla with a shorter and more memorable website address, which helped to increase brand recognition and credibility.

The same year, Tesla unveiled its highly anticipated Model 3 to make electric vehicles accessible to a broader audience with its lower base price of $35,000. The Model 3 quickly became a success, with over half a million units delivered by March 2020, making it the world’s best-selling electric car in automotive history.

In July 2016, Elon Musk announced his vision of creating solar roofs with seamlessly integrated battery storage, allowing homes to generate and store renewable energy. He also revealed plans to expand Tesla’s product line to include small SUVs and pickup trucks, as well as developing a self-driving capability that would be ten times safer than manual driving through massive fleet learning.

At the same time, Tesla ended its partnership with Mobileye, a manufacturer of autonomous vehicle technology, and began developing its autopilot hardware and software in-house. This move allowed Tesla to have greater control over the development of its autonomous driving capabilities and enabled them to push the boundaries of autonomous driving technology further.

In April 2017, Tesla Inc. became the most valuable American car manufacturer after announcing that it had surpassed General Motors in sales. The news ramped up production.

A great accomplishment for Tesla Energy was when in September 2017, Elon Musk signed a contract with the government of South Australia to install what at the time became the world’s largest lithium-ion battery pack to help alleviate the state’s energy blackouts.

The battery exceeded expectations in terms of performance and return on investment (ROI). The installation was successfully completed in 100 days within the set schedule; otherwise, according to the arrangement, the installation would have been free. 

In the beginning, Tesla aimed to produce 5,000 new Model 3 cars per week by December 2017. However, Elon Musk pushed that goal back to March 2018. Finally, a new date was set for June 2019.

Tesla’s delay was due to some production problems that the company was experiencing. Some industry experts questioned how long investors would remain patient with the process.

Those who know Elon Musk’s modus operandi and infinite capacity to come up with last-minute solutions trusted that this was just a small stone on the road. 

“You want to be extra rigorous about making the best possible thing you can. Find everything that’s wrong with it and fix it.”- Elon Musk

The news announced that Tesla was expected to fall short of first-quarter production forecasts.

It was also known that Elon Musk had pushed aside the head of engineering and decided to oversee efforts in that division personally. Just as he had done many times before when his companies experienced trouble. He was back to sleeping at the factory. 

In June, Elon Musk announced that Tesla was laying-off nine percent of its workforce. However, the production department would remain intact.

In an email to employees, Elon Musk explained his decision to eliminate some duplication of roles as an understandable way to cut costs. He admitted it was time to take serious steps toward turning a profit.

After the restructuring, Tesla announced that the company had met its goal of producing 5,000 Model 3 cars per week by the end of June and another 2,000 Model S sedans and Model X SUVs.

Elon Musk made another announcement with the unveiling of the new Tesla Semi  and Roadster at the company’s design studio. The launch of two new groundbreaking vehicles – the Tesla Semi and the Tesla Roadster made headlines yet again. The unveiling took place at the company’s design studio, where Musk showcased the sleek and futuristic designs of both vehicles. The Semi, set to begin production in 2019, is a space grey electric truck that boasts an impressive 500-mile range. It is equipped with a battery and motors designed to last a staggering 1 million miles, setting new standards in the commercial trucking industry.

But that’s not all. Tesla’s new Roadster, expected to be released in 2020, is set to redefine the sports car industry. The Roadster boasts a record-breaking 0 to 60 time of just 1.9 seconds, making it the fastest production car ever made. With its sleek and aerodynamic design, the Roadster is set to become one of the most coveted sports cars on the market.

Tesla’s Nevada Gigafactory, or Gigafactory 1

In 2014, Tesla announced that Nevada had been officially selected to build the first Tesla battery Gigafactory. The first phase of the diamond-shaped solar-powered Gigafactory 1, a lithium-ion battery and electric vehicle sub-assembly factory, officially opened near Reno, Nevada, on July 29, 2016. This was a Tesla-Panasonic partnership. 

The Gigafactory 1 houses approximately 5.3 million square feet of operational space across several floors. Elon Musk envisioned the Gigafactory to be the biggest building in the world. It is entirely powered by renewable energy sources and designed as a net zero energy factory. The facility is primarily powered by solar energy.

Tesla’s Buffalo, New York Gigafactory, or Gigafactory 2

In 2017, Tesla began production of solar cells and modules at Gigafactory 2 in Buffalo, New York – a 1.2 million-square-foot facility. In 2019, Tesla added new production lines to support electrical components for Superchargers and energy storage products. Tesla created nearly 800 jobs at Gigafactory 2. The company continues to ramp up operations and production at the facility.

The 88-acre property along the Buffalo River was originally a steel manufacturing site. It was transformed to produce solar panels and solar cells. Tesla secured Gigafactory 2 through its acquisition of SolarCity in 2016. 

In line with agreements with the State of New York, Tesla will create 5,000 clean energy jobs in the state over 10 years, many of those in Buffalo, making the city a hub for sustainable innovation and advanced manufacturing. 

Tesla’s Shanghai Gigafactory, or Gigafactory 3

The Shanghai Gigafactory is Tesla’s first large-scale factory outside The United States. In January 2019, Tesla CEO attended the incredible ceremony of the Shanghai Gigafactory. During the ceremony, Musk revealed new possibilities and strategies for the future of Tesla’s first Chinese manufacturing plant.

The factory construction took place in the Lingang Industrial Zone of Shanghai. According to the Chinese government, this has been the most massive foreign investment Shanghai has seen in the field of manufacturing.

Elon Musk aimed to build affordable cars for the city. However, Tesla planned to continue manufacturing pricier versions for global markets. “Shanghai Giga output is just for greater China, not North America. Affordable cars must be made on the same continent as customers,” he said . 

The production of the first cars at the Shanghai Gigafactory was achieved in under one year since the initial ground-breaking. 

During his visit to China in January 2019, Elon Musk met the Chinese Premier Li Keqiang. As Musk expressed his profound admiration for China and his wishes to visit China regularly, the Chinese premier said, “We can issue you a Chinese green card if that helps.”

Tesla’s Berlin-Brandenburg Gigafactory, or Gigafactory 4

Berlin was the city chosen for the first European Gigafactory. Tesla has an assembly facility for the Model S and Model X in The Netherlands. The construction of the Gigafactory 4 began in 2020. Tesla Model Y production was set to begin in Berlin, Germany, by 2021. Brexit prevented Tesla from building this Gigafactory in The United Kingdom. The main reason for the company’s decision not to build the factory in the UK was that Brexit created too much uncertainty and risk, making it difficult for Tesla to justify the investment required to build the factory.

Tesla’s Texas Gigafactory, or Gigafactory 5 

Austin, Texas, and Tulsa were the two main contenders for the new Gigafactory in The United States. Tesla’s upcoming Cybertruck will be built in this factory, and a second site to build the Model Y small SUV and Model 3, with the first vehicles coming out by the end of 2020.

The factory will create approximately 5,000 jobs and bring an investment of $1.1 billion. In July 2020, 75 happy Austin Tesla owners, members of the Tesla Owners Club (TOC), paraded to celebrate Texas’ new Gigafactory. The Texas Gigafactory will be the largest factory yet built on a 2,000-acre site (809 hectares).

Tesla plans to open the Texas Gigafactory for business in 2021. The opening is being touted as a victory for the Austin region, as it will bring thousands of jobs to the area. At $97 million, Tesla’s 2,100-acre Texas Gigafactory constitutes Tesla’s best deal yet at around $46,190 per acre.

Immediately after the opening, the manufacturing of the  Cybertruck  begins production. 

  Cybertruck

The Tesla Cybertruck is an all-electric, battery-powered, light commercial vehicle launched by Tesla, Inc. 

In November 2019, Elon Musk claimed that 200,000 people had placed a deposit for the Tesla Cybertruck, which was less than a week after the futuristic vehicle was revealed.

After revealing the Cybertruck, Musk said that the Cybertruck, which comes in three powertrain versions: with one, two, or three electric motors, would be the “last product unveiled for a while, but there will be some unexpected technology announcements next year.” 

The Tesla Cybertruck, manufactured at Tesla’s Texas Gigafactory, will be released in late 2021 with a starting price of $39,900. 

In 2021, Tesla introduced the single-motor RWD version of its Model S Plaid, which has quickly become one of the most popular electric vehicles on the market.d.

Despite the success of the single-motor RWD version, Tesla has continued to innovate and push the boundaries of electric vehicle technology. In late 2022, the company plans to release two additional versions of the Model S Plaid – the dual-motor AWD version and the tri-motor version.

Elon Musk, renewable energy, and SolarCity

kynny/iStock

In 2006, Lyndon and Peter Rive –Elon Musk’s cousins– co-founded SolarCity after Musk provided the initial concept for the company and the financial capital. SolarCity quickly became the second-largest provider of solar power systems in The United States, accomplished in just about six years. 

In 2012, Elon Musk announced that SolarCity and Tesla Inc. would collaborate. The goal was to use electric vehicle batteries to smooth the impact of rooftop solar panels on the power grid. The program went live in 2013. By then, SolarCity was a top company in The United States. 

Elon Musk’s desire to promote and advance sustainable energy –in particular, solar energy– and products for a wider consumer base took a step forward when Tesla Inc. announced an all-stock deal purchase of SolarCity Corp.

In 2014, SolarCity’s advanced production facility began to be built in Buffalo, New York, in coordination with the SUNY Polytechnic Institute after acquiring Silevo, a maker of high-efficiency solar modules. Elon Musk said that this facility would triple the size of the largest solar plant in The United States. He said it would be “one of the single largest solar panel production plants in the world.” 

In August 2016, Elon Musk closed a $2.6 billion deal that solidified the combination of his Tesla electric car and solar energy companies. By November 2016, Tesla Inc. acquired SolarCity; in December, SolarCity started hiring for the facility.

The factory was completed in 2017 . The Tesla Gigafactory 2 is a photovoltaic (PV) cell factory leased by Tesla subsidiary SolarCity in Buffalo, New York. 

According to a statement on Tesla’s Website, solar and storage are at their best when combined. By merging Tesla (storage) and SolarCity (solar) the company created fully integrated residential, commercial, and grid-scale products that improve the way that energy is generated, stored, and consumed. The motivation behind creating both Tesla and SolarCity has been Elon Musk’s desire to help fight global warming through renewable energy .

The Buffalo facility employed about 800 workers by the end of 2018. However, the state of New York required SolarCity to employ a minimum of 1,450 workers at the facility by the end of April 2020 or face a $41.2 million penalty. In February 2020, SolarCity reported having over 1,500 workers in the facility.

SolarCity is one of the founding members of The Alliance for Solar Choice (TASC), a rooftop photovoltaic power station solar trade organization.

Elon Musk and SpaceX: There is no limit in the sky 

Andrei Stanescu/iStock

Elon Musk is the founder, lead designer, CTO, and CEO of SpaceX. Repeatedly, Musk has said the goals of SpaceX, Tesla, and SolarCity are based on his vision to change the world and help humanity.

“I care about the truth of things and try to understand the truth of things. If you’re going to come with some solutions, then the truth is really important.” – Elon Musk

Those goals include fighting global warming by generating and using sustainable energy and lessening the risk of human extinction by establishing a human colony on Mars, thus, making humanity multi-planetary. 

Elon Musk’s founding of SpaceX in May 2002 marked a major milestone in the history of space exploration. His vision was to make space travel more affordable and accessible by developing innovative rocket technology, with the ultimate goal of establishing a human colony on Mars. From its headquarters in Hawthorne, California, SpaceX has revolutionized the aerospace industry, earning a reputation as a leading provider of commercial and government launch services.

At the outset, Musk invested $100 million of his personal fortune into SpaceX, a bold move demonstrating his unwavering commitment to the company’s mission. Through his perseverance and strategic leadership, Musk guided SpaceX through a series of early successes and setbacks, paving the way for the company’s eventual dominance in the industry.

By 2016, Musk’s private trust held a 54 percent stake in SpaceX, giving him unparalleled control over the company’s operations and direction. This position allowed Musk to pursue his ambitious plans for space travel and exploration, including developing reusable rockets and spacecraft, launching satellites, and collaborating with NASA on space missions.

In 2012, the Dragon spacecraft became the world’s first commercial spacecraft with a mission to shuttle cargo between the International Space Station (ISS) and planet Earth. 

One of Elon Musk’s greatest ambitions was to use the Dragon capsule to send humans to space. After succeeding in this, his goal is to send humans to Mars to colonize the Red Planet.

In April 2016, Musk historically launched and re-landed a Falcon 9 rocket. 

In 2017, SpaceX unveiled the design of the company’s next-generation launch vehicle and spacecraft system: The Big Falcon Rocket (BFR). The BFR would support all SpaceX launch service provider capabilities with a single set of huge vehicles, including Earth-orbit, Lunar-orbit, interplanetary missions, and intercontinental passenger transport on Earth , with most long-distance journeys anywhere on Earth in under one hour . 

At a press conference in September 2018, Elon Musk explained the updated design  of the Big Falcon Rocket (BFR). The Big Falcon Rocket will replace the Falcon 9, Falcon Heavy , and Dragon vehicles in the 2020s.

In March 2018, at the annual South by Southwest festival in Austin, Texas, Elon Musk announced that he hoped to have the BFR ready for short flights in early 2019. In April 2018, the company announced that SpaceX would construct a facility at the Port of Los Angeles.

The facility is going to be used to build and house the BFR. The port property presented an ideal location for SpaceX due to the size of the rocket. When completed, the spacecraft will only be movable by a large barge or ship. 

In 2020, SpaceX was talking to government officials about building a major manufacturing facility in the Port of Los Angeles. The new rocket factory would build SpaceX’s massive, next-generation rocket called Starship.

SpaceX plans on  flying a Japanese billionaire around the Moon in 2023.

Elon Musk and The Boring Company: Underground tunnels to reduce traffic congestion born from being stuck in traffic 

Magu Directors/iStock

Whatever Elon Musk tweets, it becomes a piece of writing, which perhaps he finds amusing. But also, it may become a company. So, once when he was stuck in traffic in December 2016, he used the time to tweet: “I’m going to build a tunnel boring machine and just start digging.” His thought, born out of frustration, became his venture, named The Boring Company . 

The Boring Company had a test dig in February 2017 on the SpaceX property in Los Angeles since such construction requires no permits.  

By the end of 2018, The Boring Company (TBC) had approved plans for the conto constructstruction of operational tunnels in Los Angeles, Baltimore, and Chicago.

Musk initially tweeted that his digging and tunnel company, The Boring Company, would not just transport cars from one end of town to another. The cars would also travel into residential areas, “all the way into your garage,” Musk said. 

In February 2020, The Boring Company released images of a working Prufrock, a tunnel-boring machine (TBM).

Neuralink and Artificial Intelligence (AI): Downloading directly to your brain  

ktsimage/iStock

Neuralink Corporation is a neurotechnology company founded in 2016 by Elon Musk and others. The firm was first publicly reported in 2017. Neuralink, headquartered in San Francisco, develops implantable brain-machine interfaces (BMIs).

“We are, all of us, already cyborgs,” – Elon Musk

After receiving $158 million in funding –including $100 million from Elon Musk– and with a staff of 90 employees, Neuralink was officially launched on July 16, 2019. Neuralink already hired several high-profile neuroscientists; the company continues hiring engineers .

Neuralink has been working on a sewing-machine-like device capable of implanting fragile threads of 4 to 6 μm in width into the brain. 

In the short term, Neuralink aims to make devices that initially treat serious brain disease and brain damage caused by a stroke. In the long term, the company’s ambitious goal is to develop and use the technology for human enhancement , also known as transhumanism.  

Part of Elon Musk’s inspiration for the creation of Neuralink was a science-fiction concept called N eural Lace , which is part of the fictional universe in Scottish author Iain M. Banks ‘ series of novels The Culture .

At the time of the launch in July 2019, Neuralink announced that the company would start experiments with humans in 2020. 

Elon Musk’s experimental schools for his children and other children: Ad Astra School and Astra Nova School

Flickr/British Library 

Ad Astra School  

In Latin, Ad Astra means to the stars . In 2014, Elon Musk’s non-profit, private, experimental Ad Astra School opened quietly on the SpaceX campus in California. Musk opened the private Ad Astra School shortly after he pulled his five sons from Los Angeles’ Mirman School, a K-8 school for gifted children. Musk thought the school was not teaching the skills he believed children would need in the future.

“It’s important to teach problem solving.” -Elon Musk 

Elon Musk hired former Mirman’s teacher, Joshua Dahn,  (video), to run Ad Astra. Dahn was one of his son’s teachers. Dahn’s thinking on how education today should be was in line with that of Musk. 

According to an unreported document filed with The United States Internal Revenue Service (IRS), Musk founded Ad Astra to “exceed traditional school metrics on all relevant subject matter through unique project-based learning experiences.”

In the school’s first year, the five Musk children (twins born in 2004 and triplets born in 2006) made up the student body together with a few children of SpaceX employees.

By 2018, the Ad Astra School was made up of over 30 children aged 7 to 14. The curriculum focused on science, technology, engineering, mathematics (STEM), robotics, Artificial Intelligence (AI), ethics and robotics, problem solving , and critical thinking. 

At Ad Astra, students discussed the ethical and political implications of Artificial Intelligence. They also worked with and built technologies such as robots and weather balloons.

Spots were limited to the children of SpaceX employees, and they were by invitation only. The admission process was kept secret. The unconventional, future-oriented school differed from traditional schools in many ways; one was that there were no grades. Students discuss the ethical and political implications of artificial intelligence. They also work with and build technologies such as robots and weather balloons. 

Ad Astra School was free for all the selected children, with Elon Musk picking up the whole tab, which included whiteboard walls, a MacBook laptop for every student, food trucks for after-school sessions, and tuition.

According to the IRS document above, Elon Musk gave Ad Astra $475,000 in both 2014 and 2015.

Astra Nova School  

In Latin, Astra Nova means new star. Astra Nova is an experimental school  in Los Angeles, California, for imaginative, kind, and academically motivated students between the ages of 8 and 14. Astra Nova School quietly started in 2016, following its predecessor, Ad Astra School . 

While Ad Astra School started as an in-person private school on SpaceX’s premises for Elon Musk’s children and children from SpaceX’s employees, Astra Nova School is based on online learning, classes on Thursdays only, and the virtual school is open to global students. 

The virtual institution’s principal is Joshua Dahn. The application for admission to the 2020-2021 online classes includes a short video response to a critical-thinking problem titled The Lake Conundrum (video). The situation deals with manufacturing, pollution, and corruption. 

Astra Nova School was incorporated as a traditional for-profit business filed with the California Secretary of State’s office. Principal Joshua Dahn, also co-founder of Astra Nova School, has said that Elon Musk, who helped with the initial funding, is no longer involved. 

Students who are admitted pay $7,500 for the full year. 

Elon Musk and Mars Colonization: Making humanity multi planetary by 2040

Wikimedia Commons/image donated by SpaceX

Elon Musk’s ultimate goal is to colonize Mars. In 2011, Elon Musk said he hoped to send humans to Mars within 10 to 20 years. According to Ashlee Vance’s biography, Elon Musk: Tesla, SpaceX, and the Quest for a Fantastic Future , Musk wanted to establish a Mars colony by 2040 with a population of 80,000 humans. 

Due to the lack of oxygen in Mars’ atmosphere, all transportation would have to be electric, including electric aircraft, cars, trains, and Hyperloop. 

In June 2016, Elon Musk said that the first uncrewed flight of the larger Interplanetary Starship was planned for departure to Mars in 2022. The first crewed ITS Mars flight would follow in 2024. 

Elon Musk started the SpaceX Mars Program to develop and facilitate the colonization of Mars. The central piece of the program is the SpaceX Starship, a fully reusable space vehicle under development since 2018. 

The tentative timeline from November 2016 onwards included three missions to Mars before the first possible flight to Mars in 2022 was as follows: 

2018: Initial SpaceX Mars mission 

2020: Second preparatory mission

2022: Third uncrewed preparatory mission 

2024: First crewed flight to Mars with about a dozen humans, according to Elon Musk’s optimistic planning 

In June 2020, Elon Musk shared a photo of SpaceX’s Starship rocket tanks , which are the tanks that will assist in sending the Starship rocket to the Moon.

As of August 2020, none of the planned Mars missions have started. One of the rockets that could be used for a Mars mission will be first used and tested for a Moon mission. According to Musk, this might happen in 2021 when NASA’s SpaceX Crew-2 is scheduled to launch 2021 with  four astronauts for the mission. 

Elon Musk: Family, relationships, and Children  

Elon Reeve Musk was born to a Canadian mother and a South African father on June 28, 1971, in Pretoria, South Africa. Elon holds citizenship from South Africa, Canada (1989), and The United States (2002). 

His mother, Maye Musk, is a Canadian actress, model, and dietician. His father, Errol Musk, is a South African engineer. His parents divorced when he was 10 years old. 

Elon has a younger brother, Kimbal Musk, who was born in 1972. Kimbal is an entrepreneur, restaurateur, chef, venture capitalist, and environmentalist. He owns The Kitchen Restaurant Group, a family of community restaurant concepts.

A younger sister born in 1974, Tosca Musk, is a filmmaker and founder of Musk Entertainment. She has produced and directed several movies and is CEO and co-founder of the OTT streaming platform Passionflix, focusing on bringing best-selling romance novels to the screen. 

Elon Musk first married Canadian author Justine Wilson in 2000. They were both students at Ontario’s Queen’s University. They separated in 2008. 

With ex-wife Justine Wilson, Elon Musk has five sons: Twins Griffin and Xavier, born in 2004, and triplets Damian, Kai, and Saxon, born in 2006. Their five sons were conceived through in-vitro fertilization. Musk and Wilson share custody of all their five sons. Elon Musk and Justine Wilson’s first son, Nevada Alexander Musk, died of Sudden Infant Death Syndrome (SIDS) in 2002 when he was only 10 weeks old.

In 2008, Elon Musk began dating English actress Talulah Riley. They married in 2010, split in 2012, and married each other again in 2013. They finally got divorced in late 2016. 

In 2017, Elon Musk got involved with American actress Amber Heard in an on-off relationship. They split up after one year.

Elon Musk began dating Canadian musician, singer, composer, and visual artist Claire Elise Boucher (born on March 17, 1988), known professionally as Grimes. The couple revealed they were dating in May 2018 at the annual Costume Institute Gala at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. 

On January 8, 2020, Grimes announced she was pregnant and gave birth to their son on May 4, 2020. Musk and Grimes initially named their son X Æ A-12 (pronounced /ˈɛks.æʃˌeɪ.twɛlv/ EKS-ash-AY-twelv or /ˈɛks.æʃˌaɪ/ EKS-ash-EYE ). Since then, a series of changes followed to comply with some imposed societal rules about how they should name their child.  

The name was deemed illegal under California law because it contained characters not in the modern English alphabet. The couple then changed it to X Æ A-XII. 

Æ (æ) is not a letter in the modern English alphabet (minuscule: æ). It is a character formed from the letters A and E. It was originally a ligature representing the Latin diphthong ae before being promoted to the full status of a letter in languages including Danish, Norwegian, Icelandic, and Faroese. It was also used in Old Swedish before being changed to ä.

So, the child was eventually named X AE A-XII Musk, with X as a first name and AE A-XII as a middle name. Perhaps, Musk also envisions a future where children are all given names that they can later decide if they want to keep or change it to something else they choose, following a right to individual and personal choice.

Æ (minuscule: æ) is a character formed from the letters a and e, originally a ligature representing the Latin diphthong ae. It has been promoted to the full status of a letter in some languages, including Danish, Norwegian, Icelandic, and Faroese. It was also used in Old Swedish before being changed to ä. 

Elon Musk’s Non-profit: The Elon Musk Foundation

Elon Musk founded and is chairman of the Musk Foundation . The Musk Foundation is dedicated to providing solar-power energy systems in disaster areas. In addition, the Foundation provides support to many other initiatives. 

In 2010, The Musk Foundation, in collaboration with SolarCity, donated a 25 kW solar power system to the South Bay Community Alliance’s hurricane response center in Coden, Alabama.

In 2011, Musk donated $250,000 toward a solar power project in Sōma, Japan, a city devastated by a tsunami. 

In 2014, Musk donated $1 million toward the construction of the Tesla Science Center at Wardenclyffe and pledged to build a Tesla Supercharger in the museum car park.  

The Foundation donated $10 million to the Future of Life Institute in 2015 to run a global research program focusing on keeping Artificial Intelligence beneficial to humanity. 

In 2018, Musk donated over $480,000 to install new water fountains with filtration systems to access clean water at all Flint, Michigan schools, providing free, safe drinking water to approximately 30,000 children since 2019. 

In 2019, Musk donated $1 million to a tree planting initiative to plant 20 million trees in collaboration with Arbor Day Foundation. 

In 2020, Elon Musk donated ventilators built by Tesla to third-world countries in need to help those suffering during the Covid-19 pandemic.

Related Articles:  

`Neuralink: How the Human Brain Will Download Directly from a Computer

Elon Musk: From SpaceX to Ad Astra School

Jim Chanos Once Said Elon Musk Would Step down from Tesla by 2020, Seems Unlikely Now

$500,000 Will Get You Ticket To Mars, Hopes Elon Musk

Elon Musk Claims One Million Humans Could Live on Mars in 50 Years

Elon Musk Deletes His Twitter Account in Unexpected Move

Elon Musk Tweets Prototype of the Assembled Starship

Elon Musk Spotted with His Wild Cybertruck in Malibu

Boring Company to Launch in China This Month, Tweets Elon Musk

SpaceX Signs Deal with Space Tourism Company to Send Tourists to Space by 2021

• Tesla All Set to Expand Its Horizons with Its Manufacturing Plant in Shanghai 

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Elon Musk Biography

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Elon Musk, the name that has become synonymous with innovation, ambition, and audacity, stands as one of the most prominent figures in the 21st century. Born on June 28, 1971, in Pretoria, South Africa, Musk’s journey from a young boy fascinated by technology to a billionaire entrepreneur leading multiple groundbreaking companies is nothing short of remarkable. In this biography, we will delve into the life and achievements of Elon Musk, a man who has revolutionized the world of technology, space exploration, and electric vehicles.

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Early Life and Education of Elon Musk

Elon Musk’s early life was marked by curiosity and a passion for technology. His parents, Maye Musk and Errol Musk, recognized his brilliance from a young age. He had an insatiable appetite for reading, often spending hours immersed in science fiction novels, a habit that would later shape his futuristic vision.

At the age of 17, Musk left South Africa to pursue his dream of attending the University of Pennsylvania in the United States. He earned two bachelor’s degrees in physics and economics, laying the foundation for his future endeavors. Subsequently, he moved on to Stanford University for a Ph.D. in energy physics but decided to drop out after just two days to embark on his entrepreneurial journey.

Zip2 Corporation: The First Step of Elon Musk

Musk’s first venture into the business world began in 1996 when he co-founded Zip2, a software company that aimed to provide business directories and maps for newspapers. Despite facing numerous challenges, the company eventually became a valuable asset and was acquired by Compaq for $307 million in 1999. Musk received $22 million from the sale, marking the start of his meteoric rise in the tech industry.

PayPal: Revolutionizing Online Payments

After Zip2, Musk co-founded X.com, an online payment company that would later become PayPal. His vision was to create a seamless online payment platform, and under his leadership, the company transformed the way people conducted online transactions. PayPal was eventually sold to eBay in 2002 for $1.5 billion, further adding to Musk’s growing fortune.

SpaceX: Reaching for the Stars

One of Musk’s most ambitious projects was the founding of SpaceX (Space Exploration Technologies Corp.) in 2002. With a mission to reduce space transportation costs and make Mars colonization a reality, SpaceX embarked on a journey that would challenge the status quo of space exploration.

The path was fraught with failures, including multiple unsuccessful rocket launches that nearly bankrupted the company. However, Musk’s unwavering determination and willingness to risk everything paid off when SpaceX achieved its first successful launch of the Falcon 1 rocket in 2008. Since then, SpaceX has become a major player in the space industry, securing contracts with NASA and launching numerous missions, including the Falcon Heavy, the most powerful operational rocket in the world.

Tesla: Revolutionizing the Auto Industry

While SpaceX aimed for the stars, Musk also set his sights on transforming the automotive industry. In 2004, he joined Tesla Motors, an electric car company that was on the brink of bankruptcy. Musk invested his own money and became the company’s chairman, eventually taking on the role of CEO and product architect.

Under Musk’s leadership, Tesla not only survived but thrived. The company introduced groundbreaking electric vehicles like the Model S, Model 3, Model X, and Model Y, revolutionizing the way we think about electric cars. Tesla’s success paved the way for electric vehicles to become a mainstream choice, driving the shift towards sustainable transportation.

Elon Musk: SolarCity and Renewable Energy

Musk’s passion for sustainability extended beyond electric vehicles. In 2006, he co-founded SolarCity, a solar energy services company with the goal of accelerating the transition to renewable energy. SolarCity aimed to make solar panels accessible to homeowners and businesses, allowing them to generate clean and sustainable energy. Tesla eventually acquired SolarCity in 2016, integrating solar energy solutions into its product ecosystem.

The Boring Company: Tunneling Beneath the Surface

Never one to shy away from ambitious projects, Musk also founded The Boring Company in 2016. This company’s mission is to alleviate traffic congestion by creating underground transportation tunnels in major cities. The concept of underground transportation promises faster and more efficient travel, potentially revolutionizing urban commuting.

Hyperloop: The Future of High-Speed Transportation

In addition to The Boring Company, Musk conceptualized the Hyperloop, a high-speed transportation system that uses pressurized capsules in low-pressure tubes to achieve incredible speeds. While Musk has not directly pursued the development of the Hyperloop, his open-source approach has inspired several companies and teams to work on realizing this futuristic mode of transportation.

Elon Musk: Challenges and Controversies

There have been disputes and difficulties along Elon Musk’s journey, to be sure. His management style, penchant for making bold statements on social media, and clashes with regulatory authorities have often made headlines. However, his ability to bounce back from setbacks and maintain his commitment to his vision has been a hallmark of his career.

Musk’s Personal Life

Beyond his professional life, Musk’s personal life has also been the subject of public interest. He has been married three times and has five sons. Musk’s relationships and personal challenges have given insight into the complexities of his life outside the boardroom.

Elon Musk’s Legacy and Future Endeavors

Elon Musk’s legacy extends far beyond his individual achievements and the companies he has founded. His influence on multiple industries has created a ripple effect, inspiring countless entrepreneurs and innovators to think boldly and tackle some of the world’s most pressing challenges. Musk’s focus on sustainability, renewable energy, and space exploration has also helped raise awareness about the urgency of addressing climate change and the potential for humanity to become a multi-planetary species.

SpaceX’s Mars Colonization Vision

One of Elon Musk’s most audacious goals is the colonization of Mars. SpaceX’s ambitious plan to send humans to the Red Planet and establish a self-sustaining colony has captured the imagination of people around the world. Musk envisions a future where humans can live on Mars as a backup for Earth, ensuring the survival of our species in the face of potential catastrophes.

To achieve this goal, SpaceX has been developing the Starship, a fully reusable spacecraft designed for interplanetary travel. While the challenges are immense, Musk’s determination and SpaceX’s progress have made the dream of Mars colonization seem more achievable than ever before.

Neuralink: Merging Humans and Technology

In addition to his ventures in space and transportation, Elon Musk founded Neuralink in 2016. Neuralink is a neurotechnology company with the goal of developing brain-computer interfaces (BCIs) that can merge the human brain with artificial intelligence. Musk believes that BCIs can help treat neurological disorders and eventually enable direct communication between humans and computers.

The potential applications of Neuralink’s technology are wide-ranging, from restoring mobility to individuals with paralysis to enhancing cognitive abilities. While the development of BCIs is still in its early stages, Musk’s vision could revolutionize the way we interact with technology in the future.

Elon Musk: OpenAI and AI Ethics

Musk has also been a vocal advocate for responsible artificial intelligence (AI) development. He co-founded OpenAI, an organization dedicated to advancing AI research while ensuring its safe and ethical use. Musk has expressed concerns about the potential risks associated with advanced AI and believes that proactive measures are necessary to prevent harmful outcomes.

Through OpenAI, Musk and his colleagues work on creating AI systems that are beneficial to humanity while minimizing the risks of unintended consequences. Musk’s commitment to AI ethics underscores his dedication to ensuring that technology serves humanity’s best interests.

Elon Musk: Environmental Impact and Climate Change

Elon Musk’s focus on sustainability extends beyond his electric vehicle company, Tesla. He has consistently advocated for the transition to renewable energy sources and has set ambitious goals for reducing carbon emissions. Tesla’s electric cars and solar energy solutions play a crucial role in the fight against climate change by reducing greenhouse gas emissions and promoting clean energy production.

Musk’s decision to make Tesla’s electric vehicle patents open-source, allowing other manufacturers to use them, demonstrates his commitment to accelerating the adoption of electric vehicles for the greater good.

Elon Musk’s biography is a story of innovation, risk-taking, and unwavering determination. From his early days as an entrepreneur with Zip2 and PayPal to his ventures in space exploration with SpaceX and the electric vehicle revolution with Tesla, Musk has left an indelible mark on multiple industries.

His audacious goals, including Mars colonization and brain-computer interfaces, continue to captivate the world’s imagination, pushing the boundaries of what is possible. Musk’s advocacy for responsible AI development and his commitment to addressing climate change underscore his broader vision for a sustainable and technologically advanced future.

FAQs on Elon Musk Biography

What is elon musk net worth, and how did he accumulated his wealth.

Elon Musks net worth fluctuates, but he is consistently among the wealthiest individuals globally. His wealth primarily comes from his ownership stakes in companies like Tesla and SpaceX. Musk has also earned substantial income from stock options and compensation tied to the performance of these companies.

Has Elon Musk ever faced failure or setbacks in his career?

Yes, Elon Musk has faced numerous failures and setbacks throughout his career. SpaceX experienced multiple rocket failures in its early days, and Tesla faced financial challenges. Musk's ability to learn from these setbacks and persevere has been a key factor in his success.

What are some of Elon Musk most ambitious future projects?

Elon Musk is known for his ambitious projects, including the colonization of Mars with SpaceX and the development of brain-computer interfaces with Neuralink. He also continues to innovate in the electric vehicle space with Tesla and aims to revolutionize transportation with The Boring Company's tunneling technology.

What impact has Elon Musk had on the electric vehicle industry and clean energy?

Elon Musk and Tesla have played a significant role in popularizing electric vehicles (EVs) and accelerating the adoption of clean energy. Teslas EVs have set new industry standards, and Musks commitment to open-sourcing Teslas patents has encouraged other manufacturers to invest in EV technology.

How has Elon Musk personal life influenced his career and public image?

Elon Musks personal life, including his marriages and public controversies, has occasionally garnered media attention. While his personal life has faced scrutiny, Musks dedication to his vision and his accomplishments in technology and space exploration have remained central to his public image.

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5 Things You May Not Know About Elon Musk

He developed and sold a video game at age 12

The budding CEO got his start in the technology industry after seeing a computer in a store for the first time at age 10. He learned to program and developed the code for a shooting-spaceship game called Blastar, which he sold to a computer magazine for $500. Naturally, the boy with grand ambitions didn't stop there, and he devised plans with his younger brother, Kimbal, to open an arcade near their school. However, those plans were nixed when their parents refused to provide their legal consent for a permit, and the brothers wound up selling chocolates to classmates instead.

He spent just two days at Stanford University

Musk enrolled at Stanford in 1995 for graduate studies in applied physics, but by that point, he was consumed with the game-changing capabilities of the internet. When applying for academic deferment, Musk said he would return in six months if his endeavors didn't pan out; the department chairman replied that he didn't expect to see the young computer whiz again, a prediction that proved 100 percent accurate. Musk went on to found Zip2, which established an online presence for brick-and-mortar organizations, and by the time Compaq swooped in to buy the company four years later, there was little need to resume his formal education.

He inspired the creation of a solar power company

In 2004, Musk was driving with his cousin Lyndon Rive to Burning Man, the annual late-summer festival held in Nevada's Black Rock Desert. A successful software entrepreneur in his own right, Rive confessed a desire to embark on a more meaningful enterprise. Musk suggested he consider the possibilities of solar power, and over the course of the drive and subsequent hedonism in the desert, the idea blossomed. Rive and his brother Peter created SolarCity, which grew into the country’s largest solar provider with their cousin on board as chairman. Something about Burning Man clearly fires up Musk’s imagination; he claims to have conceived the idea of a vertical takeoff and landing electric plane at the festival, calling it a "very creative place."

He is the real-life model for 'Iron Man's' Tony Stark

When Iron Man writer and director Jon Favreau was exploring ways to humanize the character of Tony Stark, the charismatic, super-smart protagonist of the comic book and movie series, actor Robert Downey Jr. suggested he get in touch with Musk. Favreau wound up shooting parts of Iron Man 2 at the SpaceX factory, and Musk later found a way to replicate his fictional counterpart’s methods of designing rocket parts on a computer screen by waving his hands across a sensor.

He owns a James Bond car

Musk owns the Lotus Esprit from the 1977 James Bond flick The Spy Who Loved Me , which (spoiler alert!) turns into a submarine after Bond and his beautiful female companion zoom off a pier to escape the enemy. Known as "Wet Nellie," the stunt car languished for years in a storage unit before being sold to an anonymous buyer at a London auction in 2013. After the buyer was revealed to be Musk, he released a statement in which he expressed disappointment that the car did not actually turn into a real submarine, adding, "What I'm going to do is upgrade it with a Tesla electric powertrain and try to make it transform for real."

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Elon Reeve Musk Biography: Birth, Family, Education, Career, Music, Personal Life, Musk Effect, and more

Elon musk has acquired twitter for approximately $44 billion with shares valued at $54.20. the tech billionaire is an engineer, technology entrepreneur, industrial designer and philanthropist and is famous for the 'musk effect' on social media. through this article, let us look at his life. .

I hope that even my worst critics remain on Twitter, because that is what free speech means — Elon Musk (@elonmusk) April 25, 2022

🚀💫♥️ Yesss!!! ♥️💫🚀 pic.twitter.com/0T9HzUHuh6 — Elon Musk (@elonmusk) April 25, 2022

Elon Musk Biography

Elon Reeve Musk is an engineer, technology entrepreneur, industrial designer and philanthropist. Elon Musk holds the citizenship of three countries-- South Africa (1971–present), Canada (1989–present) and the United States (2002-present). Elon Musk is the founder, CEO and Chief Designer at SpaceX; co-founder, CEO and product architect of Tesla, Inc.; founder of The Boring Company; co-founder of Neuralink; and co-founder and initial co-chairman of OpenAI. 

Elon Reeve Musk: Birth, Early Life, Family and Education

Elon Reeve Musk was born on June 28, 1971, in Pretoria, South Africa to Maye Musk and Errol Musk. Elon Musk's mother Maye Musk is a Canadian-South African model and dietitian while his father Errol Musk is an African electromechanical engineer, pilot, and sailor. In 1980, Elon Musk's parents separated, and Elon Musk chooses to live with his father in the suburbs of Pretoria. However, Musk regrets his choice and calls his father a terrible human being. 

At the age of 10, Elon Musk developed an interest in computing and at the age of 12, he was a self-taught computer programmer and sold codes for the video game he created 'Blastar' for $500 to 'PC and Office Technology Magazine'. 

Elon Musk completed his schooling at Waterkloof House Preparatory School, Bryanston High School and Pretoria Boys High School. He then became determined to move to America against his father's wish as he believed that America is where great things are possible, more than any other country in the world.

In June 1989, before his 18th birthday, Elon Musk moved to Canada after obtaining a Canadian passport with the help of his Canadian-born mother. 

Before receiving the Canadian passport, Elon Musk attended the University of Pretoria (only for 5 months). In 1989, Elon Musk attended Queen's University and in 1992 he attended the University of Pennsylvania where he did his B.Sc. in Economics and B.A. in Physics. 

Elon Musk: Personal Life 

In 2000, Elon Musk married Canadian author Justine Wilson whom he met at Queen's University, Ontario. The couple had 6 sons. The first son died due to SIDS (Sudden Infant Death Syndrome) at the age of 10 weeks. The couple had twins sons via Vitro fertilization in 2004 and triplets via Vitro fertilization in 2006. The couple got separated in 2008 and both of them share the custody of their 5 sons. 

In 2008, Elon Musk started dating English actress Talulah Riley and the couple married in 2010. In 2012, Elon Musk parted from Talulah Riley and took to Twitter to announce this. In 2013, the couple re-married and in December 2014, Musk filed for a second divorce from Riley, but was withdrawn. In March 2016, Riley filed for divorce from Musk and the duo got separated in late 2016. 

In 2016, Elon Musk started dating American actress Amber Heard but the duo parted ways due to their busy schedules.

On May 7, 2018, Elon Musk started dating Canadian Musician Grimes. On May 4, 2020, Grimes gave birth to a son and Musk named him 'X Æ A-12'.

Elon Musk: Zip2 Corporation

Elon musk: x.com and paypal.

In March 1999, Elon Musk co-founded an online financial service and e-mail payment company 'X.com' from the money. In 2000, X.com merged with Cofinity (an American software company) having a money transfer service Paypal. In 2001, the company was renamed Paypal. In 2000, Elon Musk was removed as CEO of the merged company due to his ambition to add PayPal's Unix-based infrastructure to Microsoft Windows. In 2002, eBay acquired Paypal for 1.5 Billion USD and Musk received his share of 11.7% which is 165 Million USD. In July 2017, Musk purchased the X.com domain from Paypal citing sentimental reasons. 

Elon Musk: SpaceX

In 2001, Elon Musk started working on a project 'Mars Oasis' to carry out a greenhouse experiment on Mars having food crops growing on Martian regolith. In October 2001, Elon Musk along with Jim Cantrell and Adeo Ressi travelled to Moscow to buy refurbished ICBMs that could send payloads in space. In February 2002, the group of three went to Russia to look at ICBMs and returned with Mike Griffin--  American Physicist and Aerospace Engineer. The group had a meeting with Kosmotras and was offered one rocket for US$8 million which Musk considered highly priced. Musk after returning from Moscow, calculated the price for raw materials which were required for building a rocket. Musk ended up founding SpaceX which could build affordable rockets for him as per his needs. 

Elon Musk: Music

On March 30, 2019, Elon Musk released 'RIP Harambe' rap track under the name 'Emo G Records' on SoundCloud. The rap track was written by Yung Jake, co-written by Yung Jake and  Caroline Polachek and Produced by BloodPop. Next year, on January 30, 2020, Elon Musk released an EDM track 'Don't Doubt Ur Vibe' which was written and performed by him. 

Get here current GK and GK quiz questions in English and Hindi for India , World, Sports and Competitive exam preparation. Download the Jagran Josh Current Affairs App .

• How many companies Elon Musk founded to date? + Elon Musk founded a total of eight companies-- Zip2, PayPal, SpaceX, Tesla, Hyperloop, OpenAI, Neuralink, and The Boring Company.
• What is the annual salary of Elon Musk at Tesla? + The annual salary of Elon Musk at Tesla is $1 and most of his fortune comes from shares in stock.
• What is Musk Effect? + A single tweet by tech billionaire Elon Musk results in the soaring or crashing of crypto markets.
• When was Elon Musk born? + Elon Reeve Musk was born on June 28, 1971, in Pretoria, South Africa to Maye Musk and Errol Musk.
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A timeline of Elon Musk's political stances and donations before his latest embrace of the Republican Party

• Oops! Something went wrong. Please try again later. More content below

Elon Musk's politics may seem to be all over the place, but he's demonstrated a consistent pattern.

As far as political donations are concerned, he's been splitting his bets since the early 2000s.

While he's kept donating to both parties, Musk has also more openly embraced the GOP.

Though Elon Musk may appear these days like your typical right-wing billionaire, that hasn't always been the case.

The Tesla, SpaceX, and xAI CEO's rightward lean is actually the culmination of a political evolution that's been playing out over decades.

And as one of the richest and most powerful people in the world, Musk's political stances carry a great weight.

Musk's political donations dating back to 2002 fit neatly into just a single landing page on OpenSecrets , a nonprofit organization that tracks money in politics. And he's contributed to both sides of the political aisle.

Though Musk historically hasn't been big on political donations, he's publicly said that he weighs in on politics when it could affect his businesses. And 2024 may have the biggest effect on Musk yet .

Ever since Trump left the White House, the billionaire has increasingly inserted himself into debates over hot button topics, waged a largely one-way feud with President Joe Biden, and cozied up to Donald Trump.

Here's how Musk got here.

The early years: From apartheid-era South Africa to Tesla takeover

Musk, 52, has said very little publicly about apartheid, the system of racial segregation that became the defining issue of his childhood in the Republic of South Africa.

His father, Errol — who inherited wealth from half of an emerald mine he used to own — was elected to Pretoria City Council in 1972, running under the anti-apartheid Progressive Party. The apartheid system was a major motivation behind the younger Musk's decision to leave South Africa for Canada in 1989, according to Ashlee Vance's 2015 biography of the billionaire.

Growing up in the primarily white suburbs outside of Johannesburg, Musk was also surrounded by censorship and disinformation about the government's treatment of Black people, The New York Times reported in May. His mandatory government service was what first exposed him to the reality of the situation, according to the Times, who spoke with a high school classmate of Musk's about the insulated experience.

"People, at some point, realize that they've been fed a whole lot of crap," Andrew Panzera, who was in Musk's German class, told the Times. "At some point you go, 'Jeepers, we really were indoctrinated to a large extent.'"

Musk's political coming of age during the pre-social media era remains much of a mystery. But then his profile rose with the sale of his company X.com, a competitor to PayPal co-founded by Musk, and his subsequent takeover of Tesla as owner after joining founders Martin Eberhard and Marc Tarpenning with a $6.5 million investment in 2004.

Musk's politics pre-Trump

Musk has long argued for small government and advocated for laissez-faire economic policy, calling the US government the "ultimate corporation" at a CEO summit in December 2020. In terms of donations, he's been in a relative holding pattern from his early years in Silicon Valley up to the present, donating moderate sums of money to politicians from both parties.

"I get involved in politics as little as possible," Musk said at a 2015 Vanity Fair event, adding that, "There's some amount I have to get involved in," due to his business interests.

He donated $2,000 each to former President George W. Bush and his 2004 Democratic challenger, former Secretary of State John Kerry. Musk also donated to California Democrats up and down the ballot, but still gave the National Republican Congressional Committee (NRCC) $25,000 ahead of the 2006 midterms.

Another example of Musk hedging his donations came in the buildup to the 2008 presidential primaries, where he contributed to both Sens. Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton in their contentious race.

Musk didn't donate to either Clinton or Trump during the 2016 cycle.

The billionaire also started out as a heavy Trump skeptic, saying in October 2015 that it would be "embarrassing" if Trump won the GOP nomination, much less the presidency.

"I don't really have strong feelings except that hopefully Trump doesn't get the nomination of the Republican party, because I think that's, yeah … that wouldn't be good," Musk said at the Vanity Fair event. "I think at most he would get the Republican nomination, but I think that would still be a bit embarrassing."

But more recently, Musk has taken a different approach to the Trump-dominated GOP. His latest donations have all been to Republican candidates and causes, with Sen. Chris Coons of Delaware being the last Democrat to receive any Musk donations back in 2020.

Musk's politics during Trump's term

Starting in 2017, Musk's donations began to skew Republican, with the billionaire spending nearly seven times more on GOP campaigns than Democratic ones. He also accepted positions on two of Trump's White House councils and tweeted his support of Rex Tillerson's nomination as Secretary of State.

While Musk previously said he supported Hillary Clinton's campaign promises on the environment and climate change, he defended his decision to attend Trump's business council meetings so he could raise the issue along with the January 2017 travel ban affecting Muslim-majority countries. He then stepped down from the councils in June 2017, citing Trump's decision to leave the Paris Climate Accord.

"Climate change is real," Musk tweeted . "Leaving Paris is not good for America or the world."

Musk largely stopped mentioning Trump from that point until much later in his presidency, when Trump attended a SpaceX launch for NASA in May 2020.

Musk during Biden's presidency

In the last few years, Musk's flirtations with the Trump-led GOP have been ramping up.

In mid-2022, Musk said he voted for a Republican candidate for the first time in a Texas special election, adding that he expected to see a "massive red wave" in the year's midterms. Musk's Texas voter registration does not show party affiliation, but he's argued on X that the Democratic Party has drifted further from the center than the GOP.

In the closest thing Musk has offered to a 2024 endorsement, he tweeted in June 2022 that he was leaning toward supporting Republican Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis for president . DeSantis, who has since dropped out of the race, joked that he welcomed support from "African Americans," referencing Musk being South African.

Musk also said in July 2022 that Trump shouldn't run for president again and instead just "sail into the sunset."

But the billionaire has since changed his tune.

After taking control of Twitter, now X, at the end of 2022, Musk reinstated Trump's account on the platform. Musk called Trump's expulsion from the platform following the January 6 riots a "morally bad decision" and "foolish to the extreme."

Though Musk has not outright endorsed Trump for president, he appears to be getting close. Musk has repeatedly criticized Biden, calling the president a "damp sock puppet" last year and hosting an "anti-Biden brain trust" meeting with Republican billionaires this April.

Musk also recently had breakfast with Trump , along with Nelson Peltz, where the trio griped about voter fraud and Biden's performance.

And, after Trump's felony conviction last month, Musk went to bat for the MAGA leader .

"Indeed, great damage was done today to the public's faith in the American legal system," Musk wrote  in a post on X.

"If a former President can be criminally convicted over such a trivial matter — motivated by politics, rather than justice — then anyone is at risk of a similar fate," Musk added, echoing Trump's own narrative that the conviction was an act of political persecution.

Trump has even been reportedly chatting up Musk about an advisory role in his cabinet if he wins this November. And that's not the extent of the pair's burgeoning chumminess — Musk said earlier this month that the former president sometimes calls him on the phone out of the blue.

While Musk has been more bullish lately about support for the GOP, his history of donations and past comments show that he has tended to position himself wherever he thinks power and influence are heading.

Read the original article on Business Insider

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Where Does Elon Musk Live? Inside the Properties of the World’s Richest Man

The question begs to be asked: Where does Elon Musk live? One might think the billionaire, often the richest person in the world (depending on Tesla’s stock valuation on any given day), would have the real estate portfolio to end all real estate portfolios. At the time of publication, SpaceX and Tesla CEO has a net worth of $208.4 billion, according to Forbes , thanks to his advancement of electric cars and space exploration. But despite it all, Musk now resides in a tiny house with very few bells and whistles. Read on as we share the scoop on where Musk calls home, and why.

Selling his seven former mansions

Taking to Twitter (now known as X) in 2020 , Musk vowed, “I am selling almost all physical possessions. Will own no house” and promptly went on to list his seven California properties. When one of his followers asked why, he had a one word answer: freedom. Combined, the asking prices for the seven homes was over $100 million .

Six of Elon Musk’s houses were in the Los Angeles region. The first was a 16,251-square-foot home with six bedrooms and 11 bathrooms. The palatial estate was built in 1990 in an architectural style reminiscent of a French château, and featured a two-story library, wine cellar, tennis court, pool, and home theater. The home sold for a staggering $29 million, according to Zillow .

Property number two was a low-slung white-shingled house that was once the home of actor Gene Wilder . The 2,800-square-foot home had five bedrooms, four bathrooms, and decades of rich Hollywood history. Jordan Walker-Pearlman, the nephew of Wilder, had once thought the home had been demolished, until a drive through the neighborhood with his wife showed him otherwise. About a year later, a friend sent Walker-Pearlman a screenshot of Musk’s tweet stating he would sell his home. Musk sold the historic house back to the late actor’s family for $7 million with one stipulation—that the property be preserved. Per Musk’s tweet, “it cannot be torn down or lose any of its soul.”

The final four Los Angeles properties were all a stone’s throw away from each other in Bel-Air, with three being on the same road. According to The Wall Street Journal , the first was a six-bedroom, 7,000-square-foot house that was originally built in 1954; the second was a modest ranch house on an adjacent street; the third was a large, unfinished contemporary home three doors down; and the fourth was a white brick Colonial next to that. While the parcels were four separate homes, they were listed together on Zillow with a price of $62.5 million and sold to developer Ardie Tavangarian, owner of Arya Group. The group made a statement saying they plan to redevelop the properties into “a new single development project to make it truly one of a kind,” according to Mansion Global .

The final property Musk sold was a 16,000-square-foot mansion in Hillsborough, California—an affluent area in Silicon Valley. The Mediterranean-style residence, also known as Guignécourt, sat on more than 47 acres of land and boasts seven bedrooms, nine and a half bathrooms, a professional-grade kitchen, a library with leather walls, its own reservoir, and far-reaching views of the San Francisco Bay Area and skyline, according to Maison Global . Not to mention a ballroom with 20-foot ceilings featuring crown moldings, complete with gold leaf detail. The home sold for $40.8 million in 2021 .

Where does Elon Musk live now?

A spacecraft at the SpaceX facility in Boca Chica, Texas

The billionaire’s primary residence is a compact $50,000 tiny home in Boca Chica, Texas, where his SpaceX headquarters are located. A recent report by fan blog Teslarati and the New York Post reveals that the home is actually a foldable, 20-foot-by-20-foot prefabricated home made by Boxabl , a housing startup company. The Boxabl Casita home Musk reportedly lives in is set up like a studio apartment, with one large room partitioned into a living room and bedroom area, a fully equipped kitchen, and a bathroom with a tub shower, according to Chron.com . Though this has yet to be officially confirmed, the company hinted in a promotional video that one of the Casitas was installed “for a top-secret customer.”

Musk’s biographer Walter Isaacson, shared a post on social media giving a rare inside look at the home. The house appears minimal, uncluttered, and simple, especially in comparison to Musk’s former properties. The caption read “in 2020, Musk decided to sell his five grand houses and to have as his primary residence be this spartan two-bedroom house in Boca Chica, TX, where we would meet and he would sit at this wood table and make phone calls.” With plans to spend more time in space than Earth, it comes as no surprise that Musk downsized and shed most personal possessions.

Elon Musk and Grimes at the Met Gala in 2018

Where is Elon Musk from?

Musk is from Pretoria, South Africa. He moved to the United States in 1992 and graduated from the University of Pennsylvania with a dual degree in economics and physics.

Is Elon Musk a US citizen?

Musk became a US citizen in 2002.

What kind of car does Elon Musk drive?

In 2019, Musk took to X and said , “I mostly drive Model S Performance with dev version of FSD computer. Our new Raven powertain & adaptive damping suspension is great! Next is Model 3P & then X if driving with my kids. Acceleration is fun on tap!”

Where does Elon Musk live?

Boca Chica, Texas.

Why Does Elon Musk live in such a small house?

When one of his followers asked why he chose to tell his seven large-scale homes, he had a word word answer—freedom.

Does Elon Musk have children?

Elon Musk has 12 children . His first child with his ex-wife, Justine Wilson, died of sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS) in 2002. Musk and Wilson went on to welcome five more children, including one set of twins and one set of triplets. Musk shares three more kids with the musician Grimes, and three more with tech executive Shivon Zilis, including one set of twins and one baby born earlier this year.

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Gwynne Shotwell: The brilliant (non-Musk) mind behind SpaceX

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Gwynne Shotwell had the unenviable task of selling a rocket that kept crashing.

The year was 2007. Shotwell, then vice president of business development for a fledgling company called SpaceX, was pitching satellite communications firm Iridium on why the veteran player should sign a deal with a company that hadn’t successfully launched any rocket, much less the larger and more complex one it was offering up.

She was so confident her company would deliver that she was willing to negotiate a deal with terms very favorable to Iridium, and less favorable to SpaceX, should anything go wrong.

Discover the changemakers who are shaping every cultural corner of Los Angeles. This week we bring you The Disruptors. They include Mattel’s miracle maker, a modern Babe Ruth, a vendor avenger and more. All are agitators looking to rewrite the rules of influence and governance. Come back each Sunday for another installment.

“She was not trying to just sell us something,” said Suzi McBride, Iridium’s chief operations officer. “She believed in it, and she was gonna make it happen and ensure that it was there.”

Billionaire Elon Musk may be the visionary behind SpaceX’s multi-planetary ambitions, but Shotwell, 60, is the steady hand behind the company’s earthly success.

As president and chief operating officer, Shotwell runs the Hawthorne company’s day-to-day operations and manages finances, customer negotiations, human resources and relationships with government entities — in short, all of the people-focused parts of a business that help it thrive.

She’s a rarity at a Musk company — an executive, the second-in-command, no less, who has lasted for more than two decades. More than that, she has Musk’s ear and his trust.

The partnership between the mercurial technologist with the brash personality and penchant for making headlines and the engineer-turned-businessperson who cares little about the public spotlight has driven SpaceX to the highest echelons of the aerospace industry.

The company commands lucrative contracts with the U.S. military , NASA, commercial firms and the European Space Agency . At the same time, it is building a massive Mars rocket and venturing into the broadband internet market with its Starlink satellite network .

In all, the privately-held SpaceX is currently valued at about $210 billion.

“I see Gwynne sometimes like the orchestrator inside the circus ring, who’s spinning the plates and just keeping all of the various different elements in equilibrium,” said Martin Halliwell, former chief technology officer of satellite firm SES who negotiated six contracts personally with Shotwell and now considers her a friend. “Without her, it may have been successful, who knows? We’ll never know. But I think it would have been a lot more abrasive.”

Reared in a Chicago suburb, Shotwell, who declined to be interviewed for this article, was popular and well-rounded, excelling in academics while also playing varsity basketball and cheerleading.

‘I see Gwynne sometimes like the orchestrator inside the circus ring, who’s spinning the plates and just keeping all of the various different elements in equilibrium.’

— Martin Halliwell, former chief technology officer of satellite firm SES

Her mother jump-started her interest in engineering after taking Shotwell to a Society of Women Engineers conference. The panel discussion featured different types of engineers, but Shotwell was immediately drawn to the words of a mechanical engineer, as well as her “beautiful suit [and] fabulous shoes,” according to a 2014 Orange County Register article .

“I thought, ‘OK, engineers can be cool too. I’ll just be a mechanical engineer,’” Shotwell told the alumni magazine of Northwestern University , her alma mater, in 2012 about that fateful encounter. “I never wavered from that decision.”

After graduation, Shotwell went to work at Chrysler and was identified early on as management material. But she balked at being placed in a leadership training program, preferring instead to work on engineering problems. She made the jump to the aerospace industry, worked in thermal analysis for Aerospace Corp. in El Segundo and then transitioned into business development at a small South Bay company called Microcosm.

There, she formed a successful partnership with Hans Koenigsmann , the company’s chief scientist, and together, they set out to sell studies to government and commercial customers.

“We were kind of like a tag team — I was the German, slightly grumpy scientist, and she was the bubbly American businessperson,” said Koenigsmann. “I think we were complementary.”

It was Koenigsmann who would help get Shotwell to SpaceX, suggesting she meet Musk when she dropped him off at the startup’s office after one of their regular lunches. Musk had invested $100 million of his PayPal fortune into the company , a move that gave Koenigsmann confidence that the yet-unproven SpaceX had at least a bit of a runway.

“The job is certainly safe for three to five years,” Koenigsmann remembers telling Shotwell as his main argument for why he had joined SpaceX and why she should join the company as its vice president of business development. “We will have a hard time spending $100 million in three years.”

While Shotwell was impressed with Musk’s ideas for bringing rocket-part manufacturing in-house, the timing of the offer wasn’t ideal, according to Walter Isaacson’s biography, “Elon Musk.” At the time, she had two young children, was going through a divorce and wasn’t sure she wanted to take a chance on a startup. Eventually, she was sold on SpaceX’s potential to revolutionize the space industry.

“I’ve been a f— idiot,” she told Musk in 2002, according to Isaacson’s book. “I’ll take the job.”

Gwynne Shotwell ‘was the one that was keeping us all of the right mindset and moving forward together.’

— Tim Buzza, former SpaceX vice president

Her immediate tasks were selling customers on SpaceX’s first rocket, Falcon 1, and securing the appropriate permissions to launch at Vandenberg Air Force Base (now Vandenberg Space Force Base) near Lompoc and test rocket engines in McGregor, Texas.

“While we were all working hard on engineering … she was opening up all the doors that were viewed by commercial companies as being some of the most difficult doors to open,” said Tim Buzza , a former SpaceX vice president and the company’s fifth employee, who stayed at the company for almost 12 years.

“All these things, just having a commercial company get onto Vandenberg Air Force Base for our first go-round there ... was really important,” he said. “It gave us some credibility even though we hadn’t done anything yet.”

As Shotwell was piecing together the company’s business strategy, she was also already serving as the glue between Musk and the rest of the team. She helped structure the organization of the company, down to what individual leaders were doing.

“She was the one that was keeping us all of the right mindset and moving forward together,” Buzza said.

That would become important as Falcon 1 rocket development began to sputter. In March 2006, the small rocket lifted off for the first time and cleared the launch pad at the Kwajalein Atoll in the Marshall Islands before falling back to Earth and crashing into a reef . The rocket was carrying a satellite built by cadets from the U.S. Air Force Academy.

A second and then third launch attempt ended in similar fashion. All the while, Shotwell was trying to sell customers on SpaceX’s launch capabilities. In discussions with potential customers, Shotwell would highlight the positives: After all, the rocket had cleared the launch pad.

Speaking to reporters after the first launch attempt, Shotwell described the failure as a “setback,” but pledged “we’re in this for the long haul,” according to space news website space.com .

“When these failures were happening, we would just as quickly as we could just ... find the problem, fix the problem and get to another flight, but she was always having to deal with all the other stuff, which is the customers, the press, dealing with financial stuff,” Buzza said. “All of that — that’s probably equally or more difficult than fixing the rocket.”

In 2008, the Falcon 1 rocket finally launched and reached orbit. Armed with that success, Musk and Shotwell went to meet with NASA officials to make their case for a contract to resupply the space station, according to Isaacson’s book.

It was then that Musk asked Shotwell to become president of the company, saying that NASA was concerned he had too much on his plate between SpaceX and his electric car firm, Tesla, and that he needed a partner, according to the book.

SpaceX would go on to win a $1.6-billion contract from NASA to transport cargo to the space station — a deal that saved the company from ruin — followed by contracts to ferry astronauts . In March, the company took a step toward its goal of returning people to the moon — and someday carrying them to Mars — with a largely successful test flight of its massive Starship rocket.

The partnership between SpaceX and NASA wasn’t always easy. The space agency was used to engineering rockets and spacecraft itself, or at least being in charge of the process, and SpaceX often had its own way of doing things.

“This is where her leadership became really obvious — she stepped into some pretty difficult discussions to help the teams see each other’s point of view and then to move forward,” said Michael Suffredini, NASA program manager for the space station from 2005 to 2015, and now chief executive of spaceflight company Axiom Space. “So Gwynne not only led her team, but she really helped evolve NASA’s thinking in these kinds of engineering challenges associated with human spaceflight. And that’s no small feat.”

After an uncrewed SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket exploded on a Florida launchpad in 2016 , destroying a customer’s satellite, Shotwell allowed satellite customer SES to embed a U.S. employee in SpaceX’s failure review team to give the company a firsthand look at the problem and the solution. The savvy business strategy worked .

“I don’t know any other organization that would have allowed that,” said Halliwell, the former SES executive. “It was through that relationship, which I think was quite extraordinary, that we managed to get the confidence to continue to use SpaceX.”

Her time at SpaceX, however, hasn’t been without controversy.

The Wall Street Journal reported this month that Shotwell allegedly retaliated against one of her employees after wrongly accusing the employee of having an affair with her husband. Shotwell did not respond to the Journal’s request for comment on the allegation. In the article, which focused on Musk’s behavior toward some female SpaceX workers, employees also criticized Shotwell for defending Musk and not taking harassment allegations seriously.

In a statement to the Journal, Shotwell said SpaceX fully investigates all allegations of harassment and takes appropriate action. She also told the Journal that Musk was “one of the best humans I know.”

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Samantha Masunaga is a business reporter for the Los Angeles Times. She’s worked at the paper since 2014.

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Billionaire Wakes Up To Find Elon Musk Barefoot In His Kitchen: 'We Made A Pot Of Tea And Sat Outside Under The Stars'

Zinger key points.

• Elon Musk surprised a fellow billionaire with a visit to his home early in the morning.
• The latest space race includes several companies and billionaires.

The night before a major event for a company he founded, billionaire  Richard Branson  was woken up by  Elon Musk . Here's the strange but true story connecting two key figures in the space sector.

What Happened:  In July 2021, Richard Branson went to space at the age of 71, hitting the milestone aboard a spacecraft from  Virgin Galactic   SPCE , a company he co-founded. The flight beat fellow billionaire  Jeff Bezos  to space in a race  between their respective space companies.

The night before his space flight, Branson abruptly woke up to the sight of Musk’s barefoot in his kitchen at 2:30 a.m. local time at his New Mexico home. A member of Branson's family let Musk enter the home.

"Elon had decided to surprise us," Branson  said , recalling the visit to The Sunday Times magazine. "He was there with his baby. Basically, he's a night animal."

Musk came to give his well wishes to Branson in person ahead of his trip to space.

"I woke up two hours earlier than I was meant to and jumped out of bed, and then actually realized I'd got the wrong time, but by then I was wide awake."

According to a new story from Branson, he shared a night with Musk drinking tea "under the stars."

"He doesn't really sleep at night and gets his sleep in the daytime. We made a pot of tea and sat outside under the stars and caught up."

Musk also traveled to the spaceport in New Mexico to watch Branson travel to space aboard the Virgin Galactic vehicle.

Musk and Branson first met at the wedding of Google co-founder  Larry Page,  which was held on Necker Island, the private island owned by Branson.

The surprise meeting between Branson and Musk wasn't the first, either. Branson also recalls a time in 2008 when he was snow skiing with his family in Switzerland. Musk showed up unexpectedly with a Tesla sports car.

"Elon had just built his first car and shipped it over and drove up to show it to us. We went for a drive in it, and it was extraordinarily comfortable and nice."

Branson says he suspected that Musk was looking for an investment in  Tesla Inc   TSLA at the time, which Branson said was "quite little" at the time.

"Elon is tremendously smart and even more driven. He has been inches from failure on many, many occasions and kept pushing. He's the Henry Ford of his generation."

Read Also:  Richard Branson Hangs Out With Elon Musk Before Historic Spaceflight 

Why It's Important:  Over the years, the race to space has been a major story. For decades, it was a battle between the U.S. and Russia for getting the first person into space and the first person on the moon.

Decades later, a battle was heating up between Virgin Galactic and  Blue Origin , the company founded by Bezos. The Amazon founder has also been in competition with Musk's own SpaceX over the years, including several lawsuits involving NASA.

Branson beat Bezos to space by nine days, and being cheered on by Musk might speak volumes of their friendship in the midst of the competitive nature of the space companies.

As  Benzinga previously reported,  Musk has placed a reservation to take a trip aboard a Virgin Galactic flight to space. Other notable names on the Virgin Galactic reservation logs include  Leonardo DiCaprio, Angelina Jolie  and  Justin Bieber.

Branson joked that Musk's astronaut training is necessary for the Virgin Galactic flight, and his flight may be postponed due to his takeover of Twitter.

"I would be delighted to see him aboard, but he's obviously got his hands full at the moment," Branson said.

For Branson and Musk, their space companies have seen different paths over the last five years. Musk’s SpaceX was recently valued at a reported $210 billion valuation, soaring in value over the last several years. The Branson founded Virgin Galactic has struggled with shares down 96% over the last five years, as seen in the Benzinga Pro chart below.

Branson has also said he  hopes to someday  go further into space aboard a SpaceX vehicle from Musk. 

Virgin Galactic space trip tickets are currently priced at $450,000 and over 60 passengers and crew members have gone to space aboard the company’s vehicles.

Branson has also booked future flights to space with Virgin Galactic for his 80th, 90th and 100th birthday.

"Most likely I'll book for my 110th birthday as well because I'm forever an optimist. I hope that on at least one of those trips the children and grandchildren come."

You may be wondering if there are perks of being friends with Branson or showing up at his house in the middle of the night to sip tea under the stars.

"We haven't done any discounts for space, not even for Elon."

This article was previously published by Benzinga and has been updated.

Photo: Shutterstock

© 2024 Benzinga.com. Benzinga does not provide investment advice. All rights reserved.

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