Elon Musk

At 53 years old, Elon Musk has this physical status:

Elon Reeve Musk (born June 28, 1971) is a technology entrepreneur, investor, and engineer.

He holds South African, Canadian, and U.S. citizenship; is the founder, CEO, and Chief engineer/designer of SpaceX; co-founder of Neuralink; and initial co-chairman of OpenAI; and chief engineer and product architect of Tesla, Inc.

In 2018, he was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society (FRS).

He appeared on Forbes' list of the World's Most Influential People in December 2016 and ranked (co-)first on the Forbes list of the World's Most Influential Leaders of 2019.

He has a net worth of $22.8 billion and is ranked by Forbes as the 40th richest individual in the world.

Musk, who was born in Pretoria, South Africa, immigrated to Canada when he was 17 to Queen's University.

Early life

Elon Reeve Musk was born in Pretoria, one of South Africa's capital cities, on June 28, 1971, and was baptized into the Anglican church. Musk has German and Pennsylvania Dutch roots. Maye Musk (née Haldeman), a model and dietitian born in Saskatchewan, Canada, and raised in South Africa, is his mother. Errol Musk, a South African electromechanical engineer, pilot, sailor, engineer, and property developer, who was a half-owner of a Zambian emerald mine near Lake Tanganyika, was his father. Musk's younger brother, Kimbal (born 1972), and a younger sister, Tosca (born 1974) are among his siblings.

Musk's family was wealthy during his youth. His father was elected to the Pretoria City Council as a representative of the Anti-Apartheid Progressive Party, and his children were reportedly revealed to the public that apartheid is a crime. Joshua Haldeman, his maternal grandfather, was an explorer who took his family on record-breaking journeys to Africa and Australia in a single-engine Bellanca plane. Musk lived with his father after his parents divorced in 1980. Musk later regretted his decision because he was estranged from his father. He has a paternal half-sister and a half-brother.

Musk's biography, Ashlee Vance, described him as an awkward and introverted child. As Musk was age ten, he took an interest in computing and video games, learning how to program from his Commodore VIC-20 user manual. He sold his BASIC-based game Blastar to PC and Office Technology magazine for about $500.

Musk attended Waterkloof House Preparatory School, Bryanston High School, and Pretoria Boys High School, from which he graduated. Musk applied for a Canadian passport through his Canadian-born mother, understanding that this will make it much simpler to immigrate to the United States this way. He attended the University of Pretoria for five months, allowing him to avoid mandatory service in the South African Defence Force while waiting for his application to be processed.

Musk arrived in Canada in June 1989 and spent a year in Saskatchewan with a second cousin who was engaged in odd jobs at a farm and lumber mill. He began attending Queen's University in Kingston, Ontario, in 1990. He transferred to the University of Pennsylvania, where he earned a Bachelor of Arts degree in physics and a Bachelor of Science degree in economics from Wharton School in 1995.

Musk performed two internships in Silicon Valley in 1994: one at the energy storage startup Pinnacle Research Institute, which developed electrolytic ultracapacitors for energy storage, and the other at the Palo Alto-based startup Rocket Science Games. He was accepted by Stanford University in 1995 to a Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) program in materials science. Musk, on the other hand, decided against joining the Internet and took up work at Netscape, to which he never received a response.

Personal life

Musk lived in California from the early 2000s to late 2020, where both Tesla and SpaceX were created. He moved to Texas in 2020, saying that California had become "complacent" as a result of the state's economic triumph. Musk admitted that he had Asperger syndrome while hosting Saturday Night Live in May 2021. Autism self-advocators have chastised him for using the word since "Asperger syndrome" had been deprecated in the DSM-5, and its diagnosis was subpoenaed under the broad category of autism spectrum disorders.

When attending Queen's University in Ontario, Canada, Musk met his first wife, Canadian Justine Wilson, who married in 2000. At the age of ten weeks, their first child died of sudden infant death syndrome. Following his death, the pair decided to use IVF to continue their family. In 2004, they had twins and triplets in 2006, and in 2006. In 2008, the couple divorced and divided custody of their children. One of the twins officially changed her name to reflect her gender identity in 2022 and then chose Wilson as her last name because she no longer wanted to be associated with Musk. Musk attributed his daughter's emigration of his daughter to "the alleged takeover of elite schools and universities by neo-Marxists" in a October 2022 interview with FT.com.

Musk first met English actress Talulah Riley in 2008. They married at Dornoch Cathedral in Scotland two years later. The couple wed in 2012 divorced before remarrying the following year. Musk finalized a second divorce from Riley in 2016. Musk dated Amber Heard for several months in 2017; he had reportedly been searching for her since 2012. Johnny Depp accused Musk of having an affair with Heard when she was still married to Depp. Musk and Heard denied the affair.

Musk and Canadian musician Grimes announced in 2018 that they were dating. In May 2020, the Grimes gave birth to their son. Musk and Grimes' name was "X A-12"; however, it would have breached California laws because it contained characters that are not included in the modern English alphabet, and the word was changed to "X A-Xii." This caused more confusion because a letter is not a letter in the modern English alphabet. The child was eventually identified X AE A-XII Musk, with "X" as a first name, "AE A-XII" as a middle name, and "Musk" as a surname. Grimes and Musk had their second child, Exa Dark Sider Musk (nicknamed "Y"), born by surrogacy in December 2021. Despite the pregnancy, Musk confirmed that the two were "separated" in September 2021; in a interview with Time in December 2021, Musk said he was single. Grimes said of her relationship with Musk in March 2022: "I would certainly think of him as my boyfriend, but we're very flexible." Grimes tweeted later this month that she and Musk had broken up again, but that they were on good terms.

Insider revealed in court documents in July 2022 that Musk had twins with Shivon Zilis, director of operations and special projects at Neuralink in November 2021. They were born weeks before Musk and Grimes had their second child via surrogate in December. Given that Zilis openly reported Musk, the news "increased" concerns regarding workplace ethics. Musk reportedly had an affair with Google co-founder Sergey Brin's wife in 2021, resulting in the Brins' divorce the following year. Musk denied the study.

Business Insider cited an anonymous friend of an unidentified SpaceX contract flight attendant as suspecting that Musk committed sexual assault in 2016. Musk, SpaceX, and the former flight attendant entered into a severance contract in November 2018, promising not to sue due to the allegations. "If I were inclined to participate in sexual assault, this is unlikely to be the first time in my entire 30-year career that it comes to light," Musk said. He characterized the Business Insider article as a "politically motivated hit piece." Tesla's shares fell by more than 6% after the publication of the Business Insider article, decreasing Musk's net worth by $10 billion. "Some investors considered the greatest risk – the possibility that a business could be seriously harmed by the loss of a single individual," Barron wrote.

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Business career

Musk, his brother Kimbal, and Greg Kouri formed Zip2 in 1995. According to Ashlee Vance's biography of Musk, the Musks' father, Errol Musk, provided them with $28,000 during this time, but Elon Musk denied this, claiming that his father invested in a later round of funding. The company produced an Internet city guide with maps, directions, and yellow pages, as well as selling it to newspapers. They worked at a small rented office in Palo Alto, Musk, coding the website every night. Zip2 and the Chicago Tribune followed each other as a result of their employment with The New York Times and the Chicago Tribune. The brothers advised the board of directors not to abandon a merger with CitySearch, but Musk's attempts to become CEO himself were thwarted. In February 1999, Compaq bought Zip2 for $307 million in cash, but Musk received $22 million for his 7 percent interest.

Musk co-founded X.com, an online financial services and e-mail payment firm, later in 1999. X.com was one of the first federally insured online banks, and over 200,000 people followed following its first months of business. Despite Musk's creation, investors regarded him as inexperienced and informed Intuit CEO Bill Harris by the end of the year.

X.com combined with online bank Confinity to prevent competition in 2000, as Confinity's money-transfer service PayPal was more popular than X.com's. Musk was then named CEO of the merged company, but the company's merged firm later became CEO. His preference for Microsoft over Unix-based software created a division among the company's employees, which led to a departure among the company's workers, which caused Confinity's founder Peter Thiel to resign. With the company suffering from compounding technological difficulties and a lack of a cohesive corporate model, the board ousted Musk and replaced him with Thiel in September 2000. The company, under Thiel, concentrated on the money transfer market and was renamed PayPal in 2001.

PayPal was purchased by eBay in 2002 for $1.5 billion in stock, of which Musk, the largest shareholder with 11.7 percent of the company's shares, received $175.8 million. Musk bought the X.com domain from PayPal in 2017 for more than a decade. Musk discussed the possibility of creating "X, the everything app" in 2022.

Musk became involved with the nonprofit Mars Society in early 2001 and discussed funding plans to build a growth chamber for plants on Mars. He and Jim Cantrell and Adeo Ressi travelled to Moscow in October to purchase refurbished intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs) that might launch the greenhouse payloads into space. Musk worked with companies NPO Lavochkin and Kosmotras, but the company was still a rookie, and the group returned to the United States empty handed. With Mike Griffin (president of In-Q-Tel) returning to Russia in February 2002 to look for three ICBMs, the group returned to Russia. They had another meeting with Kosmotras and were offered one rocket worth $8 million, which Musk turned down. He instead founded a company that could produce inexpensive rockets. Musk founded SpaceX in May 2002 and became the company's CEO and Chief Engineer with $100 million in his own money.

In 2006, SpaceX launched the Falcon 1 rocket for the first time. Despite the fact that the rocket was unable to land on Earth orbit, NASA Administrator (and former spaceX consultant) Mike Griffin awarded a Commercial Orbital Transportation Services program contract later this year. SpaceX achieved in 2008 after two more failed attempts that almost caused Musk and his companies to go bankrupt, SpaceX successfully launched the Falcon 1 into orbit. SpaceX's Commercial Resupply Services contract with NASA for 12 flights of its Falcon 9 rocket and Dragon spacecraft to the International Space Station in late 2011, reversing the Space Shuttle after its 2011 retirement. The Dragon vehicle docked with the ISS in 2012, the first for a commercial spacecraft. Musk credited the NASA award, one of Mike Griffin's last moves as NASA Administrator, for saving the organization.

In 2015 SpaceX successfully launched the first stage of a Falcon 9 on an inland platform, aiming for reused rockets. Later landings were made on autonomous spaceport drones, an ocean-based recovery platform. SpaceX unveiled the Falcon Heavy in 2018; Musk's personal Tesla Roadster was carried as a dummy payload on the inaugural mission. SpaceX has been constructing Starship, a fully recyclable, super-heavy lift launch vehicle built to replace the Falcon 9 and the Falcon Heavy. SpaceX's first crewed flight, the Demo-2, became the first private company to fly astronauts and dock a crewed spacecraft with the ISS in 2020.

SpaceX launched the Starlink constellation of low-orbit satellites in 2015 to provide satellite internet access to millions of viewers worldwide, with the first two prototype satellites launched in February 2018. In May 2019, when the first 60 operational satellites were launched, a second pair of test satellites and the first large deployment of a piece of the constellation occurred. According to SpaceX, the total cost of the decade-long effort to plan, build, and deploy the satellite is expected to be about $10 billion. Several commentators, including the International Astronomical Union, have argued that Starlink blocks the view of the sky and poses a danger to spacecraft.

Musk sent Starlink terminals to Ukraine during the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine, a move that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy lauded. Musk, on the other hand, refused to block Russian state media on Starlink, despite identifying himself as "a free expression absolutist."

Musk said in October 2022 that about 20,000 satellite terminals had been donated to Ukraine, as well as free data transfer services that cost SpaceX $80 million. Musk revealed in advance that SpaceX will continue to provide Starlink products and services to Ukrainian civilians for free, despite a cost that he estimated at $400 million for the first 12 months.

Tesla, Inc., formally Tesla Motors, was founded in 2003 by Martin Eberhard and Marc Tarpenning, who funded the company until it was approved in the Series A round of funding. Both men were instrumental in the company's early growth before Musk's involvement. Musk initiated 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 and joined Tesla's board of directors. Musk played a key role in the company and oversaw the Roadster product development process, but was not particularly involved in day-to-day company activities.

Following a series of rising conflicts in 2007 and the 2008 financial crisis, Eberhard was dismissed from the company. Musk assumed the company's leadership as CEO and product architect in 2008. Musk was named as a Tesla co-founder in a 2009 lawsuit with Eberhard, as well as Tarpenning and two others. Musk was the longest-tenured CEO of any automotive company in the United States as of 2019. Musk nominally changed his name to "Technoking" in 2021, though keeping his position as CEO.

In 2008, Tesla introduced the Roadster, the first hybrid sports car. It was the first serial production all-electric vehicle to use lithium-ion battery cells, with sales of about 2,500 units. In 2012, Tesla began producing its four-door Model S sedan. The Model X, which is a cross-over, was introduced in 2015. In 2017, the Model 3 became a mass-market sedan. The Model 3 is the most popular plug-in electric car in the world, and in June 2021 it became the first electric vehicle to sell 1 million units globally. In 2020, the Model Y crossover, a new car, was introduced. In 2019, the Cybertruck, an all-electric pickup truck, was announced. Tesla also built multiple lithium-ion battery and electric vehicle factories under Musk, referred to as Gigafactories.

Tesla's shares have risen significantly since the initial public offering in 2010, and it also entered the S&P 500 later this year. It was the sixth company in the United States to do so in October 2021, with a market capitalization of $1 trillion. Musk suggested on Twitter on Friday that 10% of his Tesla shares be sold on November 6, 2021, because "much is made lately of unrealized gains being a means of tax avoidance." Musk sold $6.9 billion of Tesla stock in the week ending November 12, a total of $16.4 billion by year's end, meeting the 10% target. More than 3.5 million Twitter accounts promoted the sale. Both Elon and Kimbal Musk were under scrutiny by the SEC in February 2022 for possible insider trade connected to the sale, according to the Wall Street Journal in February 2022.

Musk was sued by the SEC in 2018 after a tweet claiming that no funds had been obtained for potentially taking Tesla private. The court ruled that the tweet was inaccurate, misleading, and damaging to investors, and that Musk was banned from serving as CEO of publicly traded companies. Musk pleaded guilty of the SEC's allegations two days later, but not without denying or denying them. Musk and Tesla were fined $20 million each, and Musk was expected to step down for three years as Tesla chairman but was allowed to remain as CEO. Musk has said in interviews that he does not regret releasing the tweet that sparked the SEC probe. A federal judge had ruled the tweet was inaccurate in April 2022, as the shareholder and many Tesla shareholders said that the tweet had been wrong, but the decision in question has not been unsealed.

Musk announced in a tweet in 2019 that Tesla would produce half a million cars this year. With such a tweet, the SEC responded to Musk's tweet by filing a lawsuit in court, asking the court to hold him in contempt for breaching the terms of a settlement deal; Musk denied this. Musk and the SEC's joint deal eventually settled, clarifying the previous agreement terms. Musk would need preclearance before tweeting about it. A judge suspended a lawsuit that said a Musk tweet describing Tesla's stock price ("too high imo") breached the deal in 2020. According to FOIA-released reports, Musk had earlier violated the deal twice by tweeting about "Tesla's solar roof production numbers and its stock price."

Musk developed SolarCity's first concept and financial resources in 2006, which was acquired by his cousins Lyndon and Peter Rive. SolarCity was the country's second largest solar power system manufacturer by 2013 by the year's 2012. Musk proposed the possibility of SolarCity building an advanced manufacturing plant in Buffalo, New York, tripling the size of the country's largest solar plant. The factory was started in 2014 and was completed in 2017. It was a joint venture with Panasonic until early 2020.

Tesla acquired SolarCity for over $2 billion in 2016 and converted it with its battery unit to produce Tesla Energy. Tesla's stock price dropped by more than 10% as a result of the transaction's announcement. SolarCity was having liquidity problems at the time. Several shareholder groups filed a lawsuit against Musk and Tesla's CEOs, arguing that the SolarCity purchase was solely to benefit Musk and came at the expense of Tesla and its shareholders. Tesla settled the case in January 2020, leaving Musk as the sole surviving defendant. Musk's favour was ruled in his favour two years later by the court.

Musk co-founded Neuralink, a neuroscience start-up firm, in 2016 with an investment of $100 million. Neuralink aims to bring the human brain and artificial intelligence (AI) together by designing AI-based brain stimulators that enable machine merging. Such technologies could save memory or allow the devices to communicate with applications. Alzheimer's disease, Alzheimer's disease, and spinal cord injury are among the company's potential treatments.

Musk unveiled work on a machine that could embed threads into a human brain in 2019. Musk described one of their early equipment as "a Fitbit in your skull" that might be able to fix paralysis, deafness, blindness, and other disabilities. Many neuroscientists and journals slammed these claims, with MIT Technology Review describing them as "highly speculative" and "neuroscience theater" in the MIT Technology Review. Musk unveiled a pig with a Neuralink implant that monitored neural activity related to odor during the parade.

At the University of California's Primate Research Center, Neuralink has conducted further animal experiments on Macaque monkeys. The company unveiled a video in which a Macaque performed the video game Pong with a Neuralink implant in 2021. Animal cruelty has surfaced in the company's animal trials, which have resulted in the deaths of some monkeys. The Children's Committee for Responsible Medicine has reported that Neuralink's animal experiments in violation of the Animal Welfare Act. By the year's end, Neuralink announced that clinical trials would begin in 2022. Musk is the sole author of an October 2019 paper that discusses some of Neuralink's findings, but the Neuralink team's researchers were ranked as such.

Musk founded The Boring Company in 2017 and unveiled plans for specialized, underground, high-occupancy cars that could travel up to 150 mph in major cities and thus avoid above-ground traffic. Early in 2017, the company began discussions with regulatory bodies and began building a 30-foot (15 m) wide, 50-foot (15 m) long, and 15-foot (4.6 m) deep "test trench" on the grounds of SpaceX's offices, which needed no licenses. In 2018, the Los Angeles tunnel, which is less than two miles long, opened to journalists. When traveling at suboptimal speeds, it used a Tesla Model X's and was reported to be a rough ride.

Two tunnel projects that were announced in 2018 in Chicago and West Los Angeles have been cancelled. However, a tunnel beneath the Las Vegas Convention Center was finished in early 2021. More tunnel expansions have been approved by local authorities. Tunnel building for Fort Lauderdale, Florida, was allowed in 2021.

Musk expressed an interest in purchasing Twitter as early as 2017. Musk bought Twitter shares in January 2022, gaining a 5 percent interest in the company in March; by April, he had a 9% stake, making him the company's largest shareholder. He did not submit the required SEC paperwork within ten days of his interest passing by 5%, which was a breach of US securities laws. On April 4, when he did not publicly announce his investment in a SEC 13G IPO, the company's 2013 IPO saw the largest intraday increase since the company's 2013 IPO. Musk's acquisition of a substantial stake in Twitter came after Musk's tweets in March, in which he challenged Twitter's commitment to freedom of expression and suggested the creation of a rival social media platform, but the remarks were made after he had acquired 7.5% of Twitter's stake.

Musk agreed to a deal on April 4 that would appoint him to Twitter's board of directors and barre him from purchasing more than 49% of the company. However, Musk made a $43 billion bid to buy Twitter on April 13, launching a takeover attempt to buy 100% of Twitter's shares at $54.20 per share. In reaction, Twitter's board unveiled a shareholder rights bill, making it more costly for any single investor to own more than 15% of the company without the board's permission. Musk's fourth quarter, including $12.5 billion in loans against his Tesla stock and $21 billion in equity financing, came a week later. Musk's bid for around $44 billion was successful later that day.

Tesla's stock market value fell more than $125 billion in reaction to the offer, leaving Musk with a loss of more than 30% of his net worth. Vijaya Gadde's Twitter followers followed him, triggering some of them to engage in sexist and racial discrimination against her. Musk declared that the transaction was "on hold" following a revelation that 5 % of Twitter's daily active users were spam accounts, prompting Twitter's shares to fell more than 10%. Despite initially announcing that he remained committed to the transaction, he sent notice of his resignation in July; the Board of Directors on Twitter replied that they were committed to keeping him to the deal. In the Chancery Court of Delaware for breaching a legally binding deal to purchase Twitter in 2022, Twitter officially sued Musk. Musk revived in October 2022, offering Twitter for $54.20 per share. On October 27, Musk announced that the deal had been closed, and Parag Agrawal, the CEO, was promptly dismissed by Twitter.

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