Companies founded by Elon Musk
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( From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia )
Elon Reeve Musk FRS (/ˈiːlɒn/ EE-lon; born June 28, 1971) is an
entrepreneur and business magnate. He is the founder, CEO, and Chief Engineer at SpaceX; early stage
investor,[note 2] CEO, and Product Architect of Tesla, Inc.; founder of The Boring Company; and co-founder of
Neuralink and OpenAI. A centibillionaire, Musk is one of the richest people in the world.
Musk was born to a Canadian mother and South African father and raised in Pretoria, South Africa. He briefly
attended the University of Pretoria before moving to Canada aged 17 to attend Queen's University. He 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 brother Kimbal. The startup was acquired by Compaq for
$307 million in 1999. Musk co-founded online bank X.com that same year, 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 is CEO
and CTO. In 2004, he joined electric vehicle manufacturer Tesla Motors, Inc. (now Tesla, Inc.) as chairman and
product architect, becoming its CEO in 2008. In 2006, he helped create SolarCity, a solar energy services
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. In 2016, he co-founded Neuralink, a
neurotechnology company focused on developing brain–computer interfaces, and founded The Boring Company, a
tunnel construction company. Musk has proposed the Hyperloop, a high-speed vactrain transportation system.
Musk has been the subject of criticism due to unorthodox or unscientific stances and highly publicized
controversies. In 2018, he was sued for defamation by a British caver who advised in the Tham Luang cave rescue;
a California jury ruled in favor of Musk. In the same year, 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, temporarily stepping down from his chairmanship and accepting limitations on his Twitter usage.
Musk has spread misinformation about the COVID-19 pandemic and has received criticism from experts for his other
views on such matters as artificial intelligence, cryptocurrency, and public transport.
Childhood and family
Elon Reeve Musk was born on June 28, 1971, in Pretoria, South Africa. His mother is Maye Musk (née Haldeman), a
model and dietitian born in Saskatchewan, Canada, but raised in South Africa. His father is Errol Musk, a South
African electromechanical engineer, pilot, sailor, consultant, and property developer. Musk has a younger
brother, Kimbal (born 1972), and a younger sister, Tosca (born 1974). His maternal grandfather, Joshua Haldeman,
was an American-born Canadian, and Musk has British and Pennsylvania Dutch ancestry. After his parents divorced
in 1980, Musk mostly lived with his father in Pretoria and
elsewhere, a choice he made two years after the divorce and subsequently regretted. Musk has become estranged
from his father, whom he describes as "a terrible human being... Almost every evil thing you could possibly
think of, he has done." He has a half-sister and a half-brother on his father's side.
Around 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, by age 12, sold the code of a BASIC-based video game he created
called Blastar to PC and Office Technology magazine for approximately $500. An awkward and introverted child,
Musk was bullied throughout his childhood and was once hospitalized after a group of boys threw him down a
flight of stairs. He attended Waterkloof House Preparatory School and Bryanston High
School before graduating from Pretoria Boys High School.
Aware it would be easier to enter the United States from Canada, Musk applied for a Canadian passport through
his Canadian-born mother. While awaiting the documentation, he attended the University of Pretoria for five
months; this allowed Musk to avoid mandatory service in the South African military. Arriving in Canada in June
1989, Musk failed to locate a great-uncle in Montreal and instead stayed at a youth hostel. He then traveled
west to live with a second-cousin in Saskatchewan. He stayed there for a year, working odd jobs at a farm and
lumber-mill.[28] In 1990, Musk entered Queen's University in Kingston, Ontario. Two years later, he transferred
to the University of Pennsylvania; he graduated in 1997 with a Bachelor of Science degree in economics and a
Bachelor of Arts degree in physics.
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. In 1995, Musk was accepted to a Doctor of Philosophy (Ph.D.) program in materials
science at Stanford University in California. Musk attempted 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 an Internet startup.
Musk made $165 million when PayPal was sold to eBay in 2002. He was first listed on the Forbes Billionaires List in 2012, with a net worth of $2 billion. At the start of 2020, Musk had a net worth of $27 billion. Throughout that year, his net worth increased by
$150 billion, largely driven by his ownership of around 20% of Tesla stock. During this, Musk's net worth was often volatile.
For example, it dropped $16.3 billion in September, the largest single-day plunge in the history of the Bloomberg Billionaires Index. In November of that year, Musk passed Facebook co-founder Mark Zuckerberg to become the third-richest person in the world; a week later he passed Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates to become the second-richest. In January 2021, Musk, with a net worth of $185 billion, surpassed Amazon founder Jeff Bezos to become the richest person in the world. Bezos reclaimed the top spot the following month.
Around three-quarters of Musk's wealth derives from Tesla. Musk does not receive a salary from Tesla; he agreed in 2018 to a compensation plan with the board that ties his personal earnings to Tesla's valuation and revenue. The deal stipulated that Musk only receives the compensation if Tesla reaches certain market
values. It was the largest such deal ever done between a CEO and board.[227] In the first award, given in May 2020, he was eligible to purchase 1.69 million TSLA shares (about 1% of the company) at below-market prices, which was worth about $800 million.