The world richest business tycoon and investor. He is on the 1st Rank with $255 B net worth as per Forbes and Bloomberg Billionaires Index July 2022.
He is the Founder, CEO, and Chief Executive Engineer at his own company SpaseX.
Angel Investor, CEO, and Product Architect of Tesla, Inc. a car manufacturing company (Tesla Motors).
Founder of the Boring Company to construct tunnel.
Co-founder of Neuralink based on AI neurotechnology.
Quick Summary
Childhood & Family
Elon Reeve Musk (Elon Musk) was born on June 28, 1971, in Pertoria the Capital city of apartheid South Africa.
His mother is Maye Musk a model and diet planner, she was born in Saskatchewan, Canada, but raised in South Africa. His father is Errol Musk an electromechanical engineer in South Africa. He is also a pilot, sailor, consultant, and property developer who was a half-owner of a Zambian emerald mine near Lake Tanganyika. Musk has a younger brother, Kimbal (born 1972), and a younger sister, Tosca (born 1974).
Musk’s family was wealthy during he was young. His father was elected to the Pretoria City Council as a representative of the anti-apartheid Progressive Party, after his parents divorced in 1980 when musk was only 9, Musk mostly lived with his father a choice he made two years after the divorce and subsequently regretted. Musk has become estranged from his father. He has a paternal half-sister and a half-brother.
At age 10 Musk developed an interest in computing and video games and acquired a Commodore VIC-20 He learned computer programming using a manual and, at age 12, sold the code of a BASIC-based video game he created called Blastar to PC and Office Technology magazine for approximately $500.
Education
Musk started his schooling in Waterkloof House Preparatory School and Bryanston High School after that he graduated from Pretoria Boys High School in South Africa.
He attended the University of Pretoria for five months. Musk arrived in Canada in June 1989 and lived with his second cousin in Saskatchewan for a year, and was working odd jobs at a farm and lumber-mill. In 1990, he got admission in Queen’s University in Kingston, Ontario. Two years later, he transferred to the University of Pennsylvania, where he completed studies for a Bachelor of Arts in economics and Bachelor of Science in physics from the Wharton School in 1995.
Musk held two internships in Silicon Valley during the summer vacation in 1994: at energy storage startup Pinnacle Research Institute, which investigated electrolytic ultra-capacitors for energy storage, and at the Palo Alto-based startup Rocket Science Games. In 1995, he was accepted to a (Ph.D.) program materials science at Stanford University at in California. Musk tried to get a job at Netscape but never received a response to his inquiries. He dropped out of Stanford after two days, deciding instead to join the Internet boom and launch a startup.
Business & Career
ZIP2
In 1995, Musk’s brother Kimbal, and Greg Kouri founded a web software company ZIP2. They borrowed funds from Musk’s father. They rented a small office in Palo Alto. Their company developed and marketed an Internet city guide for the newspaper publishing industry, with maps, directions, and yellow pages. Musk says that before the company became successful, he could not afford an apartment and instead rented an office; he slept on the couch, showered at the YMCA, and shared one computer with his brother. According to Musk, “The website was up during the day and I was coding it at night, seven days a week, all the time.
The Musk brothers obtained contracts with The New York Times and the Chicago Tribune and persuaded the board of directors to abandon plans for a merger with CitySearch. Musk’s attempts to become CEO were thwarted by the board. Acquired Zip2 for $307 million in cash in February 1999, and Musk received $22 million for his 7-percent share.
X.com
In 1999, Musk co-founded X.com, an online financial services and e-mail payment company. The startup was one of the first federally insured online banks, and, in its initial months of operation, over 200,000 customers joined the service. The company’s investors regarded Musk as inexperienced and replaced him with Intuit CEO Bill Harris by the end of the year. The following year, X.com merged with online bank Confinity to avoid competition.
Confinity Founded by Max Levchin and Peter Thiel, Confinity had its own money-transfer service, PayPal, which was more popular than X.com’s service.
SpaceX
In May 2002, Musk founded SpaceX and became the company’s CEO and Chief Engineer. After so many Struggles and meeting with company afford a rocket but instead of these he decided to start a company that could build affordable rockets. With $100 million of his early fortune.
SpaceX attempted its first launch of the Falcon 1 rocket in 2006 but the rocket failed to reach Earth orbit, SpaceX was awarded a Commercial Orbital Transportation Services program contract from NASA Administrator (and former SpaceX consultant) Mike Griffin later that year. After two more failed attempts that nearly caused Musk and his companies to bankrupt.
SpaceX succeeded in launching the Falcon 1 into orbit in 2008.
After the successful launch SpaceX received a $1.6 billion Commercial Resupply Service program contract from NASA for 12 flights of its Falcon 9 rocket and Dragon Space craft to the International Space Station, replacing the Space Shuttle after its 2011 retirement. In 2012, the Dragon vehicle berthed with International Space Station, a first for a private enterprise. Musk credited the NASA award, one of the last actions by Mike Griffin as NASA Administrator, for saving the company.
In 2015 SpaceX successfully launch & landed the first stage of a Falcon 9 on an inland platform towards the goal of reusable rocket. Later landings were achieved on autonomous spaceport drone ships, an ocean-based recovery platform. In 2018, SpaceX launched the Falcon Heavy; the inaugural mission carried Musk’s personal Tesla Roadster as a dummy payload.
To provide satellite Internet access SpaceX started development of the Starlink constellation of low Earth orbit. The First two prototype satellites launched in February 2015. In February 2018 two prototype satellites were launched. In May 2019 second set of test satellites and first large deployment of a piece of constellation occurred, when the first 60 operational satellites were launched. The constellation is estimated by SpaceX to be about $10 billion.
During the 2022 Russian Ukraine conflicts, Musk sent Starlink systems to Ukraine to provide internet access and communication, an action praised by Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy However, he refused to block Russian State Media on Starlink.
Musk led the Series A round of investment in February 2004; he invested $6.5 million, became the majority shareholder, and joined Tesla’s board of directors as chairman. Tesla Motors was incorporated in 2003 by Martin Eberhard and Marc Tarpenning, both financed the company until a serirs around of funding. Musk took an active role within the company and oversaw Roadster product design but not fully involved in day-to-day operation.
Tesla first built an electric sports car, Roadster in 2008, with sales of 2500 vehicles. It was the first serial production of all electric car uses lithium-ion battery cell. Tesla stock has risen significantly; it became the most valuable carmaker in summer 2020.
In October 2021 Tesla reached a market capitalization of $1 trillion, the sixth company to do so in US history.
SolarCity
Musk provided the initial concept and financial capital for Solar City. By 2013, Solar City was the second largest provider of solar power systems in the United States founded in 2006 by Musk’s cousins Lyndon and Peter Rive. In 2014 Musk promoted the idea of Solar City building an advanced production facility in Buffalo, New York, triple the size of the largest solar plant in the United States.
Neuralink
In 2016, Musk co-founded Neuralink, a neurotechnology, Startup Company with an investment of $100 million. Neuralink aims to integrate the human brain with artificial intelligence (AI) by creating devices that are embedded in the brain to facilitate its merging with machines. Such technology could enhance memory or allow the devices to communicate with software.
In 2022, Neuralink announced that clinical trials would begin by the end of the year.
The Boring Company
In 2017, Musk founded The Boring Company to construct tunnels. Musk revealed plans for specialized high occupancy vehicles that could travel up to 150 miles per hour, circumventing above-ground traffic in major cities.
In 2018 two tunnel projects announced for Chicago and West Los Angeles, but unfortunately have been cancelled. However, a tunnel beneath the Las Vegas Convention Centre was completed in early 2021. Local officials have approved further expansions of the tunnel system. In 2021, tunnel construction was approved for Fort Lauderdale, Florida.
As early as 2017, Musk expressed interest in buying Twitter. In January 2022, Musk began purchasing Twitter shares, reaching a 5% stake in the company in March. Musk successfully concluded his bid for approximately $44 billion.
On July 12, 2022, Twitter formally sued Musk in the Chancery Court of Delaware for breaching a legally binding agreement to purchase Twitter.