Elon Musk

• Born: June 28, 1971
• Place of Birth: Pretoria, South Africa

Introduction

Elon Musk used his technology skills and business savvy to become a successful US-based serial entrepreneur. His first company, Zip2, which he cofounded with his brother shortly after leaving the graduate physics program at Stanford University, provided online content publishing software for local news organizations and was acquired by Compaq. As a founder and early driving force behind the online payment-processing company PayPal, Musk reaped significant financial rewards from PayPal's initial public offering (IPO) in early 2002—the first successful IPO of a technology company after the US terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001. After eBay acquired the post-IPO PayPal later in 2002, Musk then used the significant wealth he had accumulated to cofound, invest in, and become chief executive officer (CEO) of both Space Exploration Technologies (SpaceX) and Tesla Motors. In these roles, Musk is largely credited with having developed the Falcon 9/Dragon, a commercial successor to the Space Shuttle, and the Tesla Roadster, the first viable electric car of the modern era. Under his direction, Tesla also invested heavily in developing self-driving vehicle technologies. In 2022, Musk made headlines for purchasing social media giant Twitter and initiating a number of changes at the company, including renaming it to X in July 2023. He subsequently became increasingly involved in American politics, wielding significant influence over Donald Trump's successful second bid for the US presidency in 2024.

Early Life

Elon Musk was born on June 28, 1971, in Pretoria, Transvaal (now Gauteng), South Africa, one of three children born to Canadian model and dietitian Maye Musk (née Haldeman) and South African engineer Errol Musk, now divorced. He left high school and emigrated from South Africa to Canada in 1988 at the age of seventeen, primarily because he objected philosophically to mandatory conscription into the South African military, which at the time was the primary enforcement vehicle for apartheid. Apartheid, the country's former system of racial segregation, was enshrined in law and enforced for nearly fifty years until it was ended in the mid-1990s.

After studying for two years at Queen's University in Kingston, Ontario, Musk relocated to the United States to pursue business and physics at the University of Pennsylvania, from which he received separate bachelor's degrees in each subject. Following his graduation from that institution, Musk relocated to Silicon Valley, California. Originally, the reason for the relocation was to earn a doctorate degree in applied physics and materials science from Stanford University, but Musk participated in that program for only a few days before leaving it to cofound Zip2, an online content publishing software company.

Early Career

After leaving Stanford's graduate physics program, Musk and his brother cofounded Zip2, which provided online content publishing software for local news organizations such as the New York Times and the Chicago Tribune. Ultimately, business pressures forced the Musk brothers to sell a controlling interest in Zip2 to venture capitalists; in 1999, Compaq acquired Zip2 in the hope of using it to buttress its AltaVista search engine division. The reported cash and stock purchase price for Zip2 was nearly $350 million, of which Musk's reported share was $22 million.

Following the successful sale of Zip2, Musk cofounded X.com, an internet financial services company focused on email payments. In early 2000, X.com merged with a company named Confinity, initially a payments and cryptography company limited to the Palm Pilot platform and cofounded by Max Levchin and Peter Thiel, among others. Musk became CEO of the combined entity for a time, then chief product officer; ultimately he was credited with having been the primary architect of a viral campaign that quickly fueled the company's growth. Because of personality conflicts and political struggles on the management team, however, Musk left the company in late 2000, keeping his significant equity stake in the company, by then renamed PayPal.

In February 2002, PayPal sold an IPO of just less than 10 percent of its then-outstanding stock, raising more than $70 million and increasing its stock price by more than 50 percent on the first day of trading. In the process, PayPal became the first successful internet IPO following the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001. Musk's 11.7 percent share of the company had a value of roughly $86 million. In October 2002, PayPal was acquired by eBay for $1.5 billion worth of eBay stock. Musk, then thirty-one, made roughly $172 million from his ownership stake in PayPal.

SpaceX

In 2002, Musk reportedly used $100 million of his own money to found Space Exploration Technologies (SpaceX), which develops rockets and spacecraft. Products include Falcon 1, a launch vehicle that in 2008 became the first privately developed liquid-fuel rocket to put a satellite into Earth orbit; Falcon 9, also a launch vehicle, which in 2012 became the first privately developed rocket of any type to deliver to the International Space Station (ISS); and Dragon, a free-flying, reusable spacecraft used to transport cargo and crew members into low Earth orbit, which in 2012 was launched to the ISS using SpaceX's Falcon 9.

In December 2008, SpaceX was awarded a National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) contract having a value of up to $3.1 billion for not less than twelve flights of its Falcon 9/Dragon to the ISS, replacing the Space Shuttle after it retired in 2011. During the second phase of its Commercial Crew Development (CCDev) program, NASA supplied funding for SpaceX to develop refinements that would enable Dragon to carry a crew. By August 2017, SpaceX had flown twelve resupply missions to the ISS. December 2015 marked the first Falcon 9 landing, an unprecedented feat for an orbital-class rocket. Another SpaceX product became the world's most powerful rocket, possessing the ability to carry payload weighing more than twice the payload of the US Space Shuttle (the next closest vehicle). Falcon Heavy made its first launch in February 2018, with a Tesla Roadster on board.

In addition to having been the primary founder and funder of SpaceX, Musk has been its CEO and chief technology officer. He envisions humans one day colonizing other planets such as Mars, a desire that has fueled the SpaceX mission from its inception. Toward that goal, Musk announced in September 2016 the Interplanetary Transport System program that will create the technology needed to support interplanetary space travel. Musk also continued to promote SpaceX, unveiling a new plan for the massive BFR rocket in 2017 and discussing a planned mission to Mars. He further announced in February 2017 that two wealthy individuals had contracted with SpaceX to travel around the moon in a Dragon spacecraft in 2018, which would for all accounts be the first instance of tourism in space. The flight was later delayed. In 2018, Musk announced his company had been cleared to launch a system of low-orbit satellites aimed at providing improved internet service. By 2021, that system, called Starlink, was providing high-speed broadband internet to rural areas of the US that previously had little or no access to reliable internet, with plans to expand the service globally.

SpaceX made headlines in early 2018 for its mysterious Zuma mission, in which it launched a satellite of unknown function for an unidentified government agency. Because of the classified nature of the payload, much speculation arose about whether the launch was in fact successful or not. Another notable launch in 2018 brought the ISS supplies that included an experimental device intended to help remove dangerous space debris from orbit around the earth. SpaceX also continued its efforts to improve the reusability of its rockets, though it had trouble in attempts to recover fairings from spent rockets. In 2019, SpaceX launched the Crew Dragon, which became the first US spacecraft to autonomously dock to the ISS. In March 2020, SpaceX launched its twentieth commercial resupply services mission, using the Dragon to launch the commercial Bartolomeo payload hosting platform to the ISS.

In May 2020 Musk realized his goal of returning human spaceflight to the United States when the Dragon spacecraft completed a successful mission to and from the ISS, carrying two NASA astronauts onboard. Later that year, NASA certified SpaceX's human spaceflight system for crew missions to the ISS, making SpaceX the first commercial operation to achieve that certification. SpaceX completed two more crewed flights to the ISS: one in November 2020 and one in April 2021. The April 2021 launch was the first spaceflight in history to reuse both its Dragon spacecraft and the Falcon 9 rocket. Previously, most rockets were designed to burn upon reentry and thus could only be used once. Also in 2021 SpaceX launched the Inspiration4 mission, which became the first all-civilian spaceflight, when it sent four private citizens to orbit Earth for three days aboard the Crew Dragon spacecraft. Meanwhile, the company's Starlink system continued to expand, with over 4,300 satellites in orbit by mid-2023.

In April 2023 SpaceX conducted its first test of its Starship rocket, the largest and most powerful rocket flown up to that point in history. However, after numerous issues during its launch, the Starship rocket disintegrated less than four minutes into its flight. Despite this setback, Musk said this initial test met his expectations and predicted that SpaceX would attempt another launch in the near future. In November 2023, SpaceX launched its second test of Starship, which reached a number of milestones that the initial test in April failed to attain. The capsule spent several minutes roughly ninety miles above Earth’s surface before SpaceX lost its signal. In March 2024 SpaceX conducted the third test launch of Starship, during which Starship traveled its farthest distance into space up to that point and completed almost its entire test flight; however, upon reentry into Earth's atmosphere, SpaceX lost contact with Starship, which disintegrated during its return to the planned crash location in the Indian Ocean. Suborbital test flights of Starship continued to make progress throughout 2024, and all elements of the spacecraft successfully survived reentry to Earth's atmosphere and landing on Earth's surface during Starship's June, October, and November flights.

Tesla and SolarCity

In 2003, Martin Eberhard and Marc Tarpenning cofounded Tesla Motors (now Tesla, Inc.), a car company solely devoted to producing electric cars. Musk and two others joined the company at an early stage and are now also considered to be part of the founding team; Musk in particular led the series A round of investment in February 2004. It is reported that he has used nearly $50 million of his own money to participate in the various funding rounds of Tesla, where he became its first chair and product architect, helping design the groundbreaking Tesla Roadster. Musk, who became CEO of the company in October 2008, has been credited with many of the company's achievements, including the design, engineering, and manufacturing of Tesla products; launching the company's regional sales and service centers across two continents; securing a $50 million investment and strategic partnership from Germany's Daimler; spearheading a successful cost-down program that enabled the company to achieve profitability in mid-2009; and guiding development of the Model S, an all-electric luxury sedan that debuted production in 2012. In October 2014, the company unveiled a new dual-motor version of the Model S that enabled the new vehicles to be all-wheel drive and have a longer range. Its first all-electric sport-utility vehicle (SUV), the Model X, was announced in 2015. The same year, Tesla, under Musk's direction, moved into the energy-storage market with a battery wall pack specifically for solar electricity, tying in with another Musk venture, SolarCity.

In 2006, Musk reportedly provided the initial concept for and (again) used his own money to help launch SolarCity, the largest US provider of solar power systems to homes, business, and government. Unlike SpaceX and Tesla, SolarCity initially saw Musk take a limited operational role; the company's cofounders, his cousins Peter and Lyndon Rive, ran the company on a day-to-day basis. With a 22 percent stake in SolarCity as of August 2016, however, Musk remained the largest shareholder and chair of the board. In November 2016, Tesla stockholders voted to approve the $2.6 billion acquisition of SolarCity, which Musk explained would enhance his vision of a diversified renewable energy company that can generate, store, and utilize alternative power for homes, cars, and businesses without the use of fossil fuels. Following the acquisition, SolarCity became a subsidiary of Tesla, Inc., and was rolled into Tesla Energy. The Rives left the company in June and July 2017, leaving Musk in charge.

Meanwhile, Musk continued to receive criticism over Tesla's struggles with production and profitability. After he carried out layoffs and restructuring that appeared to improve operations, he then drew significant attention in August 2018 for announcing he was considering making Tesla a private company. While the announcement drove company stock up, it attracted scrutiny from the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and lawsuits from investors over potential stock manipulation, and Musk later noted Tesla would remain public. He later openly discussed how the turmoil around Tesla took a heavy toll on his personal life and well-being. In September 2018, Musk gave rise to further controversy when he was seen smoking marijuana on air during an interview on The Joe Rogan Experience. (The interview took place in California, where marijuana was legal.) Tesla's stock dropped 9 percent after the incident, but soon rebounded. Later that month, it was announced that Musk would step down as chair of Tesla's board of directors and also pay a $20 million fine in an agreement with the SEC. He remained the CEO.

In the 2010s, Musk also began to face accusations of labor violations due to practices at a Tesla plant in California; in particular, he and his colleagues at Tesla allegedly practiced anti-union activities. A 2019 ruling by the National Labor Board required Musk to delete an anti-union tweet; additionally, Tesla was required to rehire a worker fired for union organizing.

In 2019, Musk appeared at the groundbreaking of Tesla's first large-scale manufacturing plan outside the US—in China. That year, Tesla also unveiled two new car models: the Cybertruck, a vehicle combining the utility of a traditional truck with the performance of a sports car, and the Model Y compact SUV. The following year, Musk reduced his annual salary to zero dollars, while continuing to earn significant compensation through stock and performance bonuses.

By the mid-2010s, Tesla had begun pouring resources into developing self-driving cars, something Musk considered to be the future of the automotive industry. In 2014, Musk announced the development of Autopilot, which he considered to be a safe and effective self-driving system, and predicted that Tesla would eventually produce fully autonomous self-driving cars. Starting in October 2015, Tesla Model S drivers were able to use Autopilot features, and in 2021, Musk announced the release of a beta version of the company's full self-driving technology (FSD). The rollout of this technology, which relied on cameras for a fully autonomous driving experience, was marred by multiple accidents, at least one of them fatal. These accidents brought negative publicity for both Musk and Tesla; by the end of 2021, the company faced an investigation from US auto regulators, as well as multiple lawsuits from crash victims.

In 2022, Musk led Tesla through a number of developments, including the release of the Tesla Semi, a semi-truck. Amid ongoing lawsuits related to issues with the company's self-driving car technology, in July 2022 the company was forced to pay $10.5 million to the family of one victim of a fatal Tesla-related accident. While Musk criticized the conclusions of US government regulators who found issues with the company's FSD technology, in February 2023 Tesla recalled 362,000 vehicles. That month, Musk also revealed that Tesla would establish a new engineering headquarters in Palo Alto, California, although he chose to keep the company's corporate headquarters in Texas. Despite its legal challenges, Tesla remained a leader in the US EV market into the mid-2020s.

Twitter

In April 2022, after weeks of negotiations, Musk spent roughly $44 billion to purchase Twitter, one of the world's leading social media companies; as part of the deal, Musk announced plans to make the company private. He promised to quintuple the company's revenue by 2028, reduce its reliance on advertising revenue, and enact other changes, including greater transparency around the company's technology and practices. However, the markets reacted unfavorably to this announcement, and Twitter's market value fell by more than $125 billion by the end of April. Afterward, Musk began to distance himself from the deal and also began to further scrutinize the company's practices. In July, Musk notified Twitter of his formal intent to cancel his purchase and withdraw from the deal; in response, the company sued Musk for breaching a legally binding agreement.

Despite these legal issues, in October 2022 Musk again changed his mind and decided to move forward with his purchase of Twitter, which was finalized at a total cost of $44 billion, or $54.20 a share. Musk's purchase resulted in a number of immediate and sweeping changes at the company. After taking over, Musk fired Twitter CEO Parag Agrawal and a number of executives, installed himself as CEO, and laid off a number of Twitter employees. In subsequent weeks, the company continued to fire much of its workforce and hundreds of employees resigned rather than continue to work under Musk's leadership. Under Musk's direction, Twitter's system of user verification was overhauled, and an $8/month subscription fee was put in place for users who wanted to have a blue check mark on their profile, which signifies that the profile is verified. However, Twitter was forced to suspend sign-ups for this service, known as the Blue subscription service, due to a significant and sudden increase in fake profiles of notable people and brands successfully acquiring verification.

Musk's dynamic shakeup of Twitter continued into November. That month, the company reinstated a number of previously banned accounts, including the account of former US president Donald Trump, whose account had been permanently suspended following the January 6, 2021, attack on the US Capitol Building. Alongside the restoration of these accounts, some observers noted a significant increase in hate speech on the social media platform.

During the first months of 2023, Musk oversaw further changes at Twitter, including continued job cuts; by March, more than 3,750 employees had been laid off or fired, with some employees claiming they had been fired after criticizing Musk. An advisory firm that had been involved in Musk's acquisition of Twitter also accused him of not paying for their services and filed a lawsuit against him. Despite these controversies, in March of that year Musk announced that Twitter's financial situation had improved over the previous year and expressed hope that the company would become profitable within a few months. Meanwhile, a number of Twitter users reported issues, outages, and bugs with the site, which some observers blamed on job cuts among engineers responsible for keeping the site up and running.

One of Musk's most significant changes at Twitter occurred in July 2023 when he renamed the company to X and replaced the company's longtime logo, a blue bird, with the letter "X." Meanwhile, Musk continued to make efforts to lure back companies and brands which had distanced themselves from the platform in the aftermath of his takeover. Despite these efforts, Musk revealed in July 2023 that Twitter's advertising revenue had gone down 50 percent since his purchase of the company.

By that point, the company also faced renewed competition from longtime rival Meta, formerly known as Facebook. The same month that Twitter rebranded, Meta launched a new social media platform known as Threads, a text-based app intended to compete directly with Twitter. Amid this increased competition, Musk frequently and publicly feuded with Mark Zuckerberg, founder and CEO of Meta. During the summer of 2023, both men discussed engaging in a martial-arts fight against each other.

In November 2023, Musk stirred controversy after he replied to a post made by another user on X that expressed antisemitic beliefs. In his response, Musk reaffirmed that the post, which accused members of the Jewish faith of promoting hatred against White people, conveyed a factual sentiment. That same month, the nonprofit organization Media Matters reported that several prominent corporations' advertising campaigns appeared next to antisemitic and White nationalist content posted on X. The report and Musk’s controversial comments spurred a mass departure of high-profile advertisers from X; several corporations, including IBM, Comcast, and the Walt Disney Company, suspended their advertising campaigns on X and denounced Musk for his discriminatory behavior and promotion of hate speech. In late November, X filed a lawsuit against Media Matters, claiming its report contained defamatory information.

Other Projects

In 2016, Musk founded The Boring Company, a tunnel construction company that he began in the hopes of creating tunnels for cars to alleviate traffic congestion. In 2017, Musk announced that the company received government permission to construct a tunnel connecting New York, Philadelphia, Baltimore, and Washington, DC; however, the transit authorities of all four metropolitan areas denied any knowledge of such an agreement. Musk announced in March 2017 that the Boring Company would shift its priorities to creating passages for pedestrians and bicyclists, rather than cars. Nevertheless, in June of that year, the company won a contract with the city of Chicago to create a car route from O'Hare Airport to the city center.

In March 2017, Musk made a bet on Twitter with Mike Cannon-Brookes, cofounder of the Australian software company Atlassian, that he would install the world's largest lithium-ion battery in South Australia within one hundred days of signing an agreement with the state's government; if he failed to meet the deadline, Musk would supply the battery, valued at $50 million or more, for free. The agreement was signed in September of that year, with a deadline of December 1; Musk had the battery installed and working by the end of November, winning the bet.

In September 2017, following the devastation caused in Puerto Rico by Hurricane Maria, Musk donated $250,000 of his own money to the relief effort. He also had Tesla send hundreds of its Powerwall batteries, designed to store solar energy and then supply it for later use, to the still-powerless island, along with employees to install the batteries and to either repair or install the associated solar panels. In late October, Bill Chappell reported for NPR that the solar-panel-and-battery systems had restored reliable power to the Hospital del Niño (children's hospital) in San Juan, Puerto Rico's capital city. When a children's soccer team was trapped in a flooded cave in Thailand in 2018, Musk constructed a miniature submarine that he hoped could be used to rescue the children; however, by the time the submarine was completed, eight of the twelve children had been rescued, and the Thai government opted not to try using it. Musk publicly feuded with several of the divers assisting in the rescue mission, who said that his submarine was impractical because it was rigid and could not have gotten around obstacles in the cave.

In 2016, Musk founded Neuralink, a neurotechnology company that primarily focuses on brain implant technology. In May 2023, the US Food and Drug Administration approved Neuralink's request to conduct clinical trials on human test subjects. The study, called Precise Robotically Implanted Brain-Computer Interface (PRIME), used robotics to surgically implant the company's wireless brain-computer interface technology into the area of a subject's brain that dictates the intention of movement. In September 2023, Neuralink began recruiting participants for the company's first human clinical trials. The study specifically requested participants with quadriplegia due to a cervical spinal cord injury or amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS). Musk announced on X in January 2024 that Neuralink completed its first implantation procedure on a human test subject. Musk maintained an optimistic outlook on the initial results and reported successful detection of neuron activity following the subject's procedure.

Political Involvement

Although Musk began his involvement in American politics by donating to both sides of the aisle in the early 2000s, he increasingly supported Republican causes and candidates as the century progressed. By 2016, Musk had been appointed to President-elect Donald Trump's Strategic and Policy Forum, where he hoped to influence policies related to technology and space exploration. He also became part of President Trump's Manufacturing Jobs Initiative, a move that some found controversial due to Musk's stated disagreement with the Trump administration on many other issues. However, Musk defended his political advisory role as a way to further his goal of supporting a move to sustainable energy. He eventually stepped down from the positions in response to Trump's withdrawal of the United States from the Paris Climate Accord.

After Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022, Musk publicly supported Ukraine. He gave financial support to the Ukrainian government, and also offered to provide free Starlink satellite service to people in Ukraine, allowing them to remain connected to the internet despite heavy fighting; by April, an estimated 150,000 people in Ukraine were using the service. Musk also became embroiled in high-profile Twitter disputes with individuals connected to the Russian government. He mocked Russian space officials for cutting the US off from access to Russian space rockets, and also offered to fight Russian president Vladimir Putin in "single combat." In October, Musk's offer to help arrange a peace deal between Russia and Ukraine was dismissed by Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky, who criticized Musk for not fully understanding the conflict between the two countries. In August 2023, a former US Department of Defense official alleged that Musk had spoken directly to Putin at some point during the conflict to discuss a peace plan that he had proposed; this peace plan had drawn praise from the Russian government and criticism from Ukraine.

Musk subsequently played a notable role in Trump's successful bid for a second term in office. He poured substantial resources and energy into Trump's reelection campaign, including considerable financial contributions and public endorsements. Entering into Trump's inner circle of advisors, he became a regular fixture at Trump's private Florida residence, Mar-a-Lago, in the months leading up to the 2025 presidential inauguration. Furthermore, the media reported on Musk's increasing alignment with far-right movements internationally, including the extremist Alternative for Germany party, and critics warned he could wield significant influence in future European elections as well.

Personal Life

In 2000, Musk married Canadian-born author Justine Wilson, whom he met while attending Queen's University. Their first son died of sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS) when he was ten days old; they later had five children—a set of twins and a set of triplets, all boys—via in vitro fertilization. Musk and Wilson announced their separation in September 2008; they later divorced, remaining estranged but sharing joint custody of their children. In September 2010, Musk married British actor Talulah Riley-Milburn. They announced the end of their relationship in January 2012 but subsequently remarried in 2013. They were divorced again in 2016. In 2018, Musk began dating musician Grimes. The couple had a son, X Æ A-12 (nicknamed X), in May 2020. In December 2021, Grimes gave birth to the couple's second child, named Exa Dark Sideræl. Musk also had twin children with Canadian venture capitalist Shivon Zillis, born in November 2021. Zillis and Musk had worked together at Neuralink. In 2023, Musk revealed that he and Grimes had a third child together, named Techno "Tau" Mechanicus. On September 29, 2023, Grimes filed a petition against Musk to establish a parental relationship in the San Francisco Superior Court in California.

Musk is a self-described workaholic who has claimed to work more than a hundred hours per week, leaving scarce time for leisure activities. He is also an active philanthropist, counting among his philanthropic endeavors the Musk Foundation, which focuses its philanthropic efforts on science education, pediatric health, and clean energy; the X Prize Foundation, which promotes renewable energy technologies; and has served on the boards of the Space Foundation, the National Academies' Aeronautics and Space Engineering Board, and the Planetary Society.

In April 2012 Musk joined the Giving Pledge, first popularized by Warren Buffett and Bill Gates, joining them in offering his moral commitment to ultimately donate the majority of his fortune to philanthropy. A 2022 filing with the SEC revealed that in 2021, Musk gave $5.7 billion to charity. According to a 2023 filing with the SEC, Musk reportedly donated approximately $1.9 billion worth of Tesla stock to charity in 2022.

Musk has received numerous awards and accolades for his work, including the National Wildlife Federation's 2008 National Conservation Achievement Award, Inc. magazine's 2007 Entrepreneur of the Year award, and the Fédération Aéronautique Internationale's 2009 Gold Space Medal (the highest award in air and space). He was also included in Time magazine's 2010 list of 100 People Who Most Affect the World and Forbes magazine's 2011 list of America's 20 Most Powerful CEOs 40 and Under. He was awarded honorary membership in the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) in 2016, and in 2018 he was elected a fellow of the Royal Society, the oldest continuously existing science academy.

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