About Elon Musk

   

                       About Elon Musk

 Elon Reeve Musk FRS (/ˈiːlɒn/ EE-lon; born June 28, 1971) is a business magnate and investor. He is the founder, CEO and chief engineer of SpaceX; angel investor, CEO and product architect of Tesla, Inc.; founder of The Boring Company; co-founder of Neuralink and OpenAI; president of Musk Foundation; and owner of Twitter, Inc.. With an estimated net worth of around $210 billion as of October 27, 2022,[4] Musk is the wealthiest person in the world according to both the Bloomberg Billionaires Index and Forbes' real-time billionaires list.[5][6]

Musk was born and grew up in Pretoria, South Africa. He attended the University of Pretoria before moving to Canada at age 17, acquiring citizenship through his Canadian-born mother. Two years later, he matriculated at Queen's University and transferred to the University of Pennsylvania, where he received bachelor's degrees in economics and physics. He moved to California in 1995 to attend Stanford University but decided to instead 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 the online bank X.com, which merged with Confinity in 2000 to form PayPal. eBay bought PayPal in 2002 for $1.5 billion.

In 2002, Musk founded SpaceX, an aerospace manufacturer and space transport services company, and is its CEO and chief engineer. In 2004, he was an early investor in the 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 promoting friendly artificial intelligence. In 2016, he co-founded Neuralink, a neurotechnology company focused on developing brain–computer interfaces, and he founded The Boring Company, a tunnel construction company. In 2022, Musk purchased Twitter for $44 billion. He has proposed a hyperloop high-speed vactrain transportation system and is the president of the Musk Foundation, which donates to scientific research and education.

Musk has promoted contentious perspectives regarding politics and various technologies, especially on Twitter. He has also been criticized for making unscientific statements, such as spreading COVID-19 misinformation. In 2018, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) sued Musk for tweeting that he had secured funding for a private takeover of Tesla, which the SEC characterized as false and misleading. 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 the Tham Luang cave rescue.

Early life

Childhood and family

Further information: Musk family

Elon Reeve Musk was born on June 28, 1971, in Pretoria, one of the capital cities of South Africa,[7][8] and was baptized into the Anglican church.[9] Musk has British and Pennsylvania Dutch ancestry.[10][11] His mother is Maye Musk (née Haldeman), a model and dietitian born in Saskatchewan, Canada, and raised in South Africa.[12][13][14] His father, Errol Musk, is a South African electromechanical engineer, pilot, sailor, consultant, and property developer, who was a half-owner of a Zambian emerald mine near Lake Tanganyika.[15][16] Musk has a younger brother, Kimbal, (born 1972) and a younger sister, Tosca, (born 1974).[14][17]

Musk's family was wealthy during his youth.[16] His father was elected to the Pretoria City Council as a representative of the anti-apartheid Progressive Party, with his children reportedly sharing their father's dislike of apartheid.[7] His maternal grandfather, Joshua Haldeman, was an adventurous American-born Canadian who took his family on record-breaking journeys to Africa and Australia in a single-engine Bellanca airplane.[18][19][20] After his parents divorced in 1980, Musk mostly lived with his father.[10] Musk later regretted his decision because he has become estranged from his father.[21] He has a paternal half-sister and a half-brother.[18][22]

In his biography of Musk, Ashlee Vance described Musk as an awkward and introverted child.[23] When Musk was age ten, he developed an interest in computing and video games, teaching himself how to program from his Commodore VIC-20[24] user manual. At age twelve, he sold his BASIC-based game Blastar to PC and Office Technology magazine for approximately $500.[25][26]

Education

Musk attended Waterkloof House Preparatory School, Bryanston High School, and Pretoria Boys High School, from which he graduated.[27] Musk applied for a Canadian passport through his Canadian-born mother,[28][29] knowing that it would be easier to immigrate to the United States this way.[30] While waiting for his application to be processed, he attended the University of Pretoria for five months; this allowed him to avoid mandatory service in the South African Defence Force.[31]

Musk arrived in Canada in June 1989 and lived with a second cousin in Saskatchewan for a year,[32] working odd jobs at a farm and lumber-mill.[33] In 1990, he entered Queen's University in Kingston, Ontario.[34][35] Two years later, he transferred to the University of Pennsylvania, where he completed studies for a Bachelor of Arts degree in physics and a Bachelor of Science degree in economics from the Wharton School in 1995.[36][37]

In 1994, Musk held two internships in Silicon Valley: one at the energy storage startup Pinnacle Research Institute, which investigated electrolytic ultracapacitors[failed verification] for energy storage, and another at the Palo Alto–based startup Rocket Science Games.[38] In 1995, he was accepted to a Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) program in materials science at Stanford University.[39] However, Musk decided to join the Internet boom instead[40] and applied for a job at Netscape, to which he reportedly never received a response.[28]

Business career

In 1995, Musk, his brother Kimbal, and Greg Kouri founded Zip2.[41][42] Errol Musk provided them with $28,000 in funding.[43] The company developed an Internet city guide with maps, directions, and yellow pages, and marketed it to newspapers.[44] They worked at a small rented office in Palo Alto,[45] Musk coding the website every night.[45] Eventually, Zip2 obtained contracts with The New York Times and the Chicago Tribune.[46][unreliable source?] The brothers persuaded the board of directors to abandon a merger with CitySearch;[47] however, Musk's attempts to become CEO were thwarted.[48] Compaq acquired Zip2 for $307 million in cash in February 1999,[49][50] and Musk received $22 million for his 7-percent share.[51]

X.com and PayPal

Main articles: X.com, PayPal, and PayPal Mafia

Later in 1999, Musk co-founded X.com, an online financial services and e-mail payment company.[52] X.com was one of the first federally insured online banks and over 200,000 customers joined after its initial months of operation.[53] Even though Musk founded the company, investors regarded him as inexperienced and replaced him with Intuit CEO Bill Harris by the end of the year.[54]

In 2000, X.com merged with online bank Confinity to avoid competition,[45][54][55] as Confinity's money-transfer service PayPal was more popular than X.com's service.[56] Musk then returned as CEO of the merged company. His preference for Microsoft over Unix-based software caused a rift among the company's employees, and led Peter Thiel, Confinity's founder, to resign.[57] With the company suffering from compounding technological issues and the lack of a cohesive business model, the board ousted Musk and replaced him with Thiel in September 2000.[58][b] Under Thiel, the company focused on the money-transfer service and was renamed PayPal in 2001.[60][61]

In 2002, PayPal was acquired by eBay for $1.5 billion in stock, of which Musk—the largest shareholder with 11.72% of shares—received $175.8 million.[62][63] In 2017, more than one and a half decades later, Musk purchased the X.com domain from PayPal for its sentimental value.[64][65] In 2022, Musk discussed a goal of creating "X, the everything app

SpaceX

Early days

In early 2001, Musk became involved with the nonprofit Mars Society and discussed funding plans to place a growth-chamber for plants on Mars.[67] In October of the same year, he traveled to Moscow with Jim Cantrell and Adeo Ressi to buy refurbished intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs) that could send the greenhouse payloads into space. He met with the companies NPO Lavochkin and Kosmotras; however, Musk was seen as a novice[68] and the group returned to the United States empty-handed. In February 2002, the group returned to Russia with Mike Griffin (president of In-Q-Tel) to look for three ICBMs. They had another meeting with Kosmotras and were offered one rocket for $8 million, which Musk rejected. He instead decided to start a company that could build affordable rockets.[68] With $100 million of his own money,[69] Musk founded SpaceX in May 2002 and became the company's CEO and Chief Engineer.[70][71]

First launches

SpaceX attempted its first launch of the Falcon 1 rocket in 2006.[72] Though the rocket failed to reach Earth orbit, it was awarded a Commercial Orbital Transportation Services program contract from NASA Administrator (and former SpaceX consultant[73]) Mike Griffin later that year.[74][75] After two more failed attempts that nearly caused Musk and his companies to go bankrupt,[72] SpaceX succeeded in launching the Falcon 1 into orbit in 2008.[76] Later that year, SpaceX received a $1.6 billion Commercial Resupply Services contract from NASA for 12 flights of its Falcon 9 rocket and Dragon spacecraft to the International Space Station, replacing the Space Shuttle after its 2011 retirement.[77] In 2012, the Dragon vehicle docked with the ISS, a first for a commercial spacecraft.[78] Musk credited the NASA award, one of the last actions by Mike Griffin as NASA Administrator, for saving the company.[79]

Working towards its goal of reusable rockets, in 2015 SpaceX successfully landed the first stage of a Falcon 9 on an inland platform.[80] Later landings were achieved on autonomous spaceport drone ships, an ocean-based recovery platform.[81] In 2018, SpaceX launched the Falcon Heavy; the inaugural mission carried Musk's personal Tesla Roadster as a dummy payload.[82][83] Since 2019,[84] SpaceX has been developing Starship, a fully-reusable, super-heavy-lift launch vehicle intended to replace the Falcon 9 and the Falcon Heavy.[85] In 2020, SpaceX launched its first crewed flight, the Demo-2, becoming the first private company to place astronauts into orbit and dock a crewed spacecraft with the ISS.[86]

Starlink

Main article: Starlink

In 2015, SpaceX began development of the Starlink constellation of low-Earth-orbit satellites to provide satellite Internet access,[87] with the first two prototype satellites launched in February 2018. A second set of test satellites, and the first large deployment of a piece of the constellation, occurred in May 2019, when the first 60 operational satellites were launched.[88] The total cost of the decade-long project to design, build, and deploy the constellation is estimated by SpaceX to be about $10 billion.[89][c] Some critics, including the International Astronomical Union, have alleged that Starlink blocks the view of the sky and poses a collision threat to spacecraft.[92][93][94]

During the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine, Musk sent Starlink terminals to Ukraine to provide internet access and communication,[95] an action praised by Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy.[96][97] However, Musk refused to block Russian state media on Starlink, declaring himself "a free speech absolutist".[98][99]

In October 2022, Musk stated that about 20,000 satellite terminals had been donated to Ukraine, together with free data transfer subscriptions, which cost SpaceX $80 million. After first asking the United States Department of Defense to pay for further units and future subscriptions on behalf of Ukraine,[100] Musk publicly stated SpaceX would continue to offer Starlink products and services to the Ukrainian government for free, at a cost he estimated at $400 million for the following 12 months.

Tesla, Inc.—originally Tesla Motors—was incorporated in 2003 by Martin Eberhard and Marc Tarpenning, who financed the company until the Series A round of funding.[104] Both men played active roles in the company's early development prior to Musk's involvement.[105] 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.[106] Musk took an active role within the company and oversaw Roadster product design but was not deeply involved in day-to-day business operations.[107]

Following a series of escalating conflicts in 2007, and the 2008 financial crisis, Eberhard was ousted from the firm.[108][page needed][109] Musk assumed leadership of the company as CEO and product architect in 2008.[110] A 2009 lawsuit settlement with Eberhard designated Musk as a Tesla co-founder, along with Tarpenning and two others.[111][112] As of 2019, Musk was the longest-tenured CEO of any automotive manufacturer globally.[113] In 2021, Musk nominally changed his title to "Technoking" while retaining his position as CEO.[114]

Tesla first built an electric sports car, the Roadster, in 2008. With sales of about 2,500 vehicles, it was the first serial production all-electric car to use lithium-ion battery cells.[115] Tesla began delivery of its four-door Model S sedan in 2012.[116] A cross-over, the Model X was launched in 2015.[117] A mass-market sedan, the Model 3, was released in 2017.[118] The Model 3 is the all-time bestselling plug-in electric car worldwide, and in June 2021 it became the first electric car to sell 1 million units globally.[119][120] A fifth vehicle, the Model Y crossover, was launched in 2020.[121] The Cybertruck, an all-electric pickup truck, was unveiled in 2019.[122] Under Musk, Tesla has also constructed multiple lithium-ion battery and electric vehicle factories, named Gigafactories

Since its initial public offering in 2010,[124] Tesla stock has risen significantly; it became the most valuable carmaker in summer 2020,[125][126] and it entered the S&P 500 later that year.[127][128] In October 2021, it reached a market capitalization of $1 trillion, the sixth company in U.S. history to do so.[129] On November 6, 2021, Musk proposed, on Twitter, to sell 10% of his Tesla stock, since "much is made lately of unrealized gains being a means of tax avoidance".[130] After more than 3.5 million Twitter accounts supported the sale, Musk sold $6.9 billion of Tesla stock in the week ending November 12,[130] and a total of $16.4 billion by year end, reaching the 10% target.[131] In February 2022, The Wall Street Journal reported that both Elon and Kimbal Musk were under investigation by the SEC for possible insider trading related to the sale.[132]

In 2022, Musk unveiled a robot developed by Tesla, Optimus.[133]

SEC lawsuit

In 2018, Musk was sued by the SEC for a tweet claiming that funding had been secured for potentially taking Tesla private.[134][d] The lawsuit characterized the tweet as false, misleading, and damaging to investors, and sought to bar Musk from serving as CEO of publicly traded companies.[134][138][139] Two days later, Musk settled with the SEC, without admitting or denying the SEC's allegations. As a result, Musk and Tesla were fined $20 million each, and Musk was forced to step down for three years as Tesla chairman but was able to remain as CEO.[140] Musk has stated in interviews that he does not regret posting the tweet that triggered the SEC investigation.[141][142] In April 2022, the shareholder who sued Musk over the tweet, along with several Tesla shareholders, said that a federal judge had ruled that the tweet was false, although the ruling in question has not been unsealed.[143]

In 2019, Musk stated in a tweet that Tesla would build half a million cars that year.[144] The SEC reacted to Musk's tweet by filing in court, asking the court to hold him in contempt for violating the terms of a settlement agreement with such a tweet; the accusation was disputed by Musk. This was eventually settled by a joint agreement between Musk and the SEC clarifying the previous agreement details.[145] The agreement included a list of topics that Musk would need preclearance before tweeting about.[146] In 2020, a judge prevented a lawsuit from proceeding that claimed a tweet by Musk regarding Tesla stock price ("too high imo") violated the agreement.[147][148] FOIA-released records showed that the SEC itself concluded Musk has subsequently violated the agreement twice by tweeting regarding "Tesla's solar roof production volumes and its stock price

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