Elon Reeve Musk FRS ( EE-lon; born June 28, 1971) is a business magnate and investor. He is the founder, CEO, and Chief Engineer at SpaceX; angel investor, CEO, and Product Architect of Tesla, Inc.; founder of The Boring Company; and co-founder of Neuralink and OpenAI. With an estimated net worth of around US$203 billion as of June 2022,[4] Musk is the wealthiest person in the world according to both the Bloomberg Billionaires Index and the Forbes real-time billionaires list.[5][6]
Musk was born to White South African parents in Pretoria, where he grew up. He briefly attended the University of Pretoria before moving to Canada at age 17, acquiring citizenship through his Canadian-born mother. He matriculated at Queen's University and transferred to the University of Pennsylvania two years later, where he received bachelor's degrees in Economics and Physics. He moved to California in 1995 to attend Stanford University but decided instead to pursue a business career, co-founding the web software company Zip2 with his brother Kimbal. The startup was acquired by Compaq for $307 million in 1999. The same year, Musk co-founded online bank X.com, which merged with Confinity in 2000 to form PayPal. The company was bought by eBay in 2002 for $1.5 billion.
In 2002, Musk founded SpaceX, an aerospace manufacturer and space transport services company, of which he serves as CEO and Chief Engineer. In 2004, he was an early investor in electric vehicle manufacturer Tesla Motors, Inc. (now Tesla, Inc.). He became its chairman and product architect, eventually assuming the position of CEO in 2008. In 2006, he helped create SolarCity, a solar energy company that was later acquired by Tesla and became Tesla Energy. In 2015, he co-founded OpenAI, a nonprofit research company that promotes friendly artificial intelligence (AI). In 2016, he co-founded Neuralink, a neurotechnology company focused on developing brain–computer interfaces, and founded The Boring Company, a tunnel construction company. He also agreed to purchase the major American social networking service Twitter in 2022 for $44 billion. Musk has proposed the Hyperloop, a high-speed vactrain transportation system. He is the president of the Musk Foundation, an organization which donates to scientific research and education.
Musk has been criticized for making unscientific and controversial statements, such as spreading misinformation about the COVID-19 pandemic. In 2018, he was sued by the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) for falsely tweeting that he had secured funding for a private takeover of Tesla; he settled with the SEC but did not admit guilt, and he temporarily stepped down from his Tesla chairmanship. In 2019, he won a defamation case brought against him by a British caver who had advised in the Tham Luang cave rescue.Early lifeChildhood and family
Elon Reeve Musk was born on June 28, 1971, in Pretoria, a segregated suburb of apartheid South Africa.[7][8] His mother is Maye Musk (née Haldeman), a model and dietitian born in Saskatchewan, Canada,[9][10][11] but raised in South Africa. His father is Errol Musk, a White South African electromechanical engineer, pilot, sailor, consultant, and property developer who was once a half-owner of a Zambian emerald mine near Lake Tanganyika.[12][13] Musk has a younger brother, Kimbal (born 1972), and a younger sister, Tosca (born 1974).[11][14] His maternal grandfather, Joshua Haldeman, was an adventurous American-born Canadian who took his family on record-breaking journeys in a single-engine Bellanca airplane to Africa and Australia.[15][16][17] Musk has British and Pennsylvania Dutch ancestry.[18][19]
As a child, Musk's adenoids were removed because doctors suspected that he was deaf, but his mother later decided that he was just thinking "in another world."[20] The family was very wealthy in Elon's youth; Elon's father was also elected to the Pretoria City Council as a representative of the anti-apartheid Progressive Party, with the Musk children reportedly sharing their father's dislike of apartheid.[7] In an interview with The New York Times, Errol said his children had good relationships with Black people, including their domestic staff.[7] Musk decided not to participate in South Africa's mandatory military service because of the government's apartheid system.[7] Musk said this contributed to his decision to leave South Africa shortly after graduating from high school.[7][21]
After his parents divorced in 1980, Musk mostly lived with his father in Pretoria and elsewhere,[18] a choice he made two years after the divorce and subsequently regretted.[22] Musk has become estranged from his father.[22] He has a half-sister and a half-brother on his father's side.[15][23] Elon attended an Anglican Sunday school in his youth.[24]
Around age 10, Musk developed an interest in computing and video games and acquired a Commodore VIC-20.[25][26] 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.[27][28] An awkward and introverted child,[29] Musk was bullied throughout his childhood and was once hospitalized after a group of boys threw him down a flight of stairs[why?].[30] He attended Waterkloof House Preparatory School and Bryanston High School before graduating from Pretoria Boys High School.[31]Education
Aware that it would be easier to enter the United States from Canada,[32] Musk applied for a Canadian passport by jus sanguinis, through his Canadian-born mother.[33][34] While awaiting the documentation, he attended the University of Pretoria for five months; this allowed him to avoid mandatory service in the South African military.[35] Musk arrived in Canada in June 1989, and lived with a second cousin in Saskatchewan for a year,[36] working odd jobs at a farm near Waldeck and lumber-mill.[37][38] In 1990, he entered Queen's University in Kingston, Ontario.[39][40] Two years later, he transferred to the University of Pennsylvania, where he graduated in 1997 with a Bachelor of Arts degree in physics and a Bachelor of Science degree in economics from the Wharton School.[41][42][43]
In 1994, Musk held two internships in Silicon Valley during the summer: at energy storage startup Pinnacle Research Institute, which researched electrolytic ultracapacitors for energy storage, and at the Palo Alto-based startup Rocket Science Games.[44] In 1995, he was accepted to a Doctor of Philosophy (Ph.D.) program in materials science at Stanford University in California.[45] Musk tried to get a job at Netscape but never received a response to his inquiries.[33] He dropped out of Stanford after two days, deciding instead to join the Internet boom and launch an Internet startup.[46]Business careerZip2
In 1995, Musk, his brother Kimbal, and Greg Kouri founded web software company Zip2 with funds borrowed from Musk's father.[47][22] They housed the venture at a small rented office in Palo Alto.[48] The company developed and marketed an Internet city guide for the newspaper publishing industry, with maps, directions, and yellow pages.[49] Musk says that before the company became successful, he could not afford an apartment and instead rented an office and slept on the couch and showered at the YMCA, and shared one computer with his brother.[50]
According to Musk, "The website was up during the day and I was coding it at night, seven days a week, all the time."[48] The Musk brothers obtained contracts with The New York Times and the Chicago Tribune,[51] and persuaded the board of directors to abandon plans for a merger with CitySearch.[52] Musk's attempts to become CEO, a position held by its Chairman Rich Sorkin,[53] were thwarted by the board.[54] Compaq acquired Zip2 for $307 million in cash in February 1999,[55][56] and Musk received $22 million for his 7-percent share.[57][58]X.com and PayPal
In 1999, Musk co-founded X.com, an online financial services and e-mail payment company.[59] 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.[60] The company's investors regarded Musk as inexperienced and replaced him with Intuit CEO Bill Harris by the end of the year.[61] The following year, X.com merged with online bank Confinity to avoid competition.[48][61][62] Founded by Max Levchin and Peter Thiel,[63] Confinity had its own money-transfer service, PayPal, which was more popular than X.com's service.[64]