Elon Musk is a South African-born American entrepreneur who cofounded the electronic-payment firm PayPal and formed SpaceX, maker of launch vehicles and spacecraft.
He was also one of the first significant investors in, as well as chief executive officer of, the electric car manufacturer Tesla.
Musk was born to a South African father and a Canadian mother. He displayed an early talent for computers and entrepreneurship.
At age 12 he created a video game and sold it to a computer magazine.
In 1988, after obtaining a Canadian passport, Musk left South Africa because he was unwilling to support apartheid through compulsory military service and because he sought the greater economic opportunities available in the United States.
Musk attended Queen’s University in Kingston, Ontario, and in 1992 he transferred to the University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, where he received bachelor’s degrees in physics and economics in 1997.
He enrolled in graduate school in physics at Stanford University in California, but he left after only two days because he felt that the Internet had much more potential to change society than work in physics.
In 1995 he founded Zip2, a company that provided maps and business directories to online newspapers.
In 1999 Zip2 was bought by the computer manufacturer Compaq for $307 million, and Musk then founded an online financial services company, X.com, which later became PayPal, which specialized in transferring money online.
The online auction eBay bought PayPal in 2002 for $1.5 billion.
Full Name: Elon Reeve Musk
Date of Birth: June 28, 1971
Age: 50
Birth Place: Pretoria, Transvaal, South Africa
Nationality: South Africa, Canada and United States
Profession: Business
Networth: 242.4 billion USD
Personal Life:
Musk met his first wife, Canadian author Justine Wilson while attending Queen’s University, and they married in 2000.
In 2002, their first child, son Nevada Alexander Musk, died of sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS) at the age of 10 weeks. After his death, the couple decided to use IVF to continue their family.
Twins Xavier and Griffin were born in April 2004, followed by triplets Kai, Saxon, and Damian in 2006.
The couple divorced in 2008 and share custody of their five sons.
In 2008, Musk began dating English actress Talulah Riley, and in 2010, the couple married. In 2012, he announced a divorce from Riley in 2013, Musk and Riley remarried. In December 2014, he filed for a second divorce from Riley; however, the action was withdrawn.
In May 2018, Musk and Canadian musician Grimes revealed that they were dating. Grimes gave birth to their son in May 2020.
Companies:
Zip2 Corporation
Musk launched his first company, Zip2 Corporation, in 1995 with his brother, Kimbal Musk. An online city guide, Zip2 was soon providing content for the new websites of both The New York Times and the Chicago Tribune. In 1999, a division of Compaq Computer Corporation bought Zip2 for $307 million in cash and $34 million in stock options.
PayPal
In 1999, Elon and Kimbal Musk used the money from their sale of Zip2 to found X.com, an online financial services/payments company. An X.com acquisition the following year led to the creation of PayPal as it is known today.
In October 2002, Musk earned his first billion when PayPal was acquired by eBay for $1.5 billion in stock. Before the sale, Musk owned 11 percent of PayPal stock.
SpaceX
Musk founded his third company, Space Exploration Technologies Corporation, or SpaceX, in 2002 with the intention of building spacecraft for commercial space travel. By 2008, SpaceX was well established, and NASA awarded the company the contract to handle cargo transport for the International Space Station—with plans for astronaut transport in the future—in a move to replace NASA’s own space shuttle missions.
Awards:
Musk was elected a fellow of the Royal Society in 2018. In 2015, he received an honorary doctorate in engineering and technology at Yale, and IEEE Honorary Membership. Awards for his contributions to the development of the Falcon rockets include the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics George Low Transportation Award in 2008.
He was listed among Time magazine’s 100 Most Influential People in 2010,[406] 2013,[407] 2018,[408], and 2021.
In 2021, Musk was selected as Time’s “Person of the Year”. Time editor-in-chief Edward Felsenthal wrote that “Person of the Year is a marker of influence, and few individuals have had more influence than Musk on life on Earth, and potentially life off Earth too”.