Who is Elon Musk? – Biography, Networth and Career

Elon Musk is the richest person in the world, with an estimated Networth of $273 billion according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index. He is also the founder and Chief Executive Officer of numerous companies such as Space X, Tesla, Open AI, Neuralink, and The Boring Company.

To honour this charismatic and visionary entrepreneur, RNN.NG decided to do complete profiling of the business magnate, which includes his biography, net worth and career.

Elon Musk Bio Data

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Elon Musk’s Biography

Elon Musk was born on June 28, 1971, in Pretoria, South Africa. His mother, Maye Musk is a Canadian model and dietitian, while his father Errol Musk, is a South African electromechanical engineer and pilot, who once owned half of the Zambian emerald mine near Lake Tanganyika.

He was the oldest child of the family with two other siblings, Kimbal Musk, a venture capitalist and a south African restauranteur and Tosca Musk an award-winning movie producer and director. The Family got broken in 1980 after the parents got divorced. Elon lived primarily with his father, whom he describes as “a terrible human being… almost every evil thing you could possibly think of, he has done.” 

The entrepreneur revealed that he had a terrible upbringing and a lot of adversity growing up due to his sour relationship with his father and his experience as a bullied child,  Detailing his experience in one of his books he wrote: “They got my best friend to lure me out of hiding so they could beat me up. And that hurt,” Musk said. “For some reason, they decided that I was it, and they were going to go after me nonstop. That’s what made growing up difficult. For a number of years, there was no respite. You get chased around by gangs at school who tried to beat the (expletive) out of me, and then I’d come home, and it would just be awful there as well.” “I had a terrible upbringing. I had a lot of adversity growing up.

Education

Elon Musk began his education at the  Waterkloof House Preparatory School, r in South Africa. He, however, furthered his education at the Bryanston High School before graduating from Pretoria Boys High School.

For his tertiary education,  he attended the University of Pretoria for five months but moved to Canada in 1989  to avoid mandatory service in the South African military. In 1990, he entered Queen’s University in Kingston, Ontario. Two years later, he transferred to the University of Pennsylvania, where he graduated in 1995 with a Bachelor of Arts degree in economics and a Bachelor of Science degree in physics.

In 1995, he was accepted to a Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) program in materials science at Stanford University in California. Musk attempted to get a job at Netscape but never received a response to his application. He dropped out of Stanford after two days, deciding instead to join the Internet boom and launch an Internet startup.

Career

Elon Musk began to develop an interest in computing, technology and entrepreneurship at the age of 10. He reportedly learnt computer programming using a manual and, at age 12, sold the code of a BASIC-based video game he created called Blastar to PC and Office Technology magazine for approximately $500.

Currently, he is the CEO of about 6 companies and owns shares in several others.

Zip 2

Elon’s first Project after dropping out of his PhD program at Stanford University was Zip 2, a company that provided and licensed online city guide software to newspapers. The company was founded as Global Link Information Network alongside side his brother Kimbal in 1995. Initially, the company provided local businesses with an Internet presence but later began to assist newspapers in designing online city guides before being purchased by Compaq Computer for $307 million in 1999. Musk however received $22 million for his 7-per cent share after the Compaq acquisition.

X.com (Paypal)

After the Zip2 acquisition, Elon Musk co-founded X.com an online financial services and e-mail payment company. The startup was one of the first federally insured online banks, and, in its initial months of operation, over 200,000 customers joined the service.  The following year, X.com merged with Confinity another online bank to form PayPal  The company was acquired by eBay in 2002 for $1.5 billion. Elon Musk who was the largest shareholder received $175.8 Million for his 11.72% shares

Space X

Elon Musk who believes humanity has to become a multiplanet species to continue its existence,  founded Space Exploration Technologies (SpaceX)  in 2002 to make more affordable rockets thereby aiding space exploration.  The Corporation attempted its first rocket (Falcon 1) launch in 2006,  although the rocket failed to reach Earth orbit, it was awarded a Commercial Orbital Transportation Services program contract from NASA later that year. After two more failed attempts,  SpaceX succeeded in launching the Falcon 1 into orbit in 2008, making it the first private liquid-fuel rocket to do so.

Aside from making affordable and reusable rockets, the company is also working toward Space Tourism for private individuals and also into the development of the Starlink constellation of low Earth orbit satellites in 2015 to provide satellite Internet access.  with the first two prototype satellites launched in February 2018.

Tesla Inc

Elon Musk was not the Founder of Tesla Inc, but an early Investor, he 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 the chairman. Musk however assumed leadership of the company as CEO and product architect in 2008 and was designated as a co-founder due to a 2009 lawsuit settlement.

Tesla built its first electric sports car, the Roadster, in 2008, selling over 2,500 units, it was the first serial production all-electric car to use lithium-ion battery cells. The company has built several models since its first release in 2008, such as the Model S sedan in 2012; the Model X  in 2015; the Model 3 in 2017 and the Model y in 2020 As of March 2020, Tesla is the world’s best-selling electric car, with more than 500,000 units delivered.

Since its initial public offering in 2010, Tesla stock has risen significantly, becoming the most valuable carmaker in  2020. In October 2021 it reached a market capitalization of $1 trillion, the sixth company to do so in U.S. history.

SolarCity

Elon Musk was the major financer of SolarCity, a company co-founded by his cousins, Lyndon and Peter Rive. The company sold and installed solar energy generation systems as well as other related products and services to residential, commercial, and industrial customers.

As of 2013, SolarCity was the second largest provider of solar power systems in the United States. In 2014, the company built an advanced production facility in Buffalo, New York, triple the size of the largest solar plant in the United States. Tesla however acquired SolarCity for over $2 billion in 2016 and merged it with its battery energy storage products division to create Tesla Energy.

Neuralink

In 2016, Musk co-founded Neuralink, a neurotechnology startup company to integrate the human brain with artificial intelligence (AI) by creating devices that are embedded in the human brain to facilitate its merging with machines. The devices will also reconcile with the latest improvements in artificial intelligence to stay updated. Such improvements could enhance memory or allow the devices to communicate with software more effectively.

Since its founding, the company has hired several high-profile neuroscientists from various universities. By July 2019, it had received $158 million in funding (of which $100 million was from Musk) and was employing a staff of 90 employees.

The Boring Company

In 2016, Musk founded The Boring Company, an infrastructure and tunnel construction services company. The company was formed as a subsidiary of SpaceX, becoming a separate and fully independent company in 2018. As of December 2018, 90% of the equity was owned by Musk, with 6% held by SpaceX in return for the use of SpaceX resources during the startup of the company.

The company whose major goals are to design an intra-city (“loop”) transit system has completed two tunnels in Las Vegas for loop travel. It has also completed one tunnel for testing loop travel in Los Angeles County. Other tunnels are in various stages of discussion and planning.

OpenAI

OpenAI is a not-for-profit artificial intelligence (AI) research company founded by Elon Musk in 2015, The company’s aim is to develop artificial general intelligence intended to be safe and beneficial to humanity. A particular focus of the company is to “counteract large corporations [and governments] who may gain too much power by owning super-intelligence systems”.

Twitter

In 2022, Musk became the highest shareholder of the giant social media company, Twitter after acquiring 7.5% of the company’s total share valued at the time at $2.64 billion at that time. On April 4 2022, Musk agreed to a deal that would see him appointed to Twitter’s board of directors and prohibit him from acquiring more than 14.9% of the company, but Musk decided not to join the board before his appointment became effective on April 9.

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Elon Musk’s Networth

Elon Musk who presently has an estimated Networth of S$273 billion made his first million dollars in 1999 after Compaq acquired his company for $307 million, thereby receiving $22 million for his 7-per cent share in the company.

He made $165 million when PayPal was sold to eBay in 2002 and was first listed on the Forbes Billionaires List in 2012, with a net worth of $2 billion. Musk who had a net worth of $27 billion in January 2020 had a net worth of $150 billion by the end of the year the increase of Telsa stocks in 2020. 

In January 2021 he overtook Jeff Bezos as the richest man in the world due to his $186 Billion net worth. In November 2021, Musk became the first person with a net worth of over $300 billion.

Personal Life

Musk met his first wife, Canadian author Justine Wilson while attending Queen’s University, and they got married in 2000. In 2002, the couple had their first Child, Nevada Alexander Musk, who died of sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS) at the age of 10 weeks.

The Couple however had five other children Twins Xavier and Griffin were born in April 2004, followed by triplets Kai, Saxon, and Damian in 2006. The couple got divorced in 2008 and share custody of their five sons.

In 2008, Musk began dating English actress Talulah Riley. They got married in 2010 and divorced in 2012.  In 2013, the couple remarried again but however got divorced in 2016.  Musk then dated Amber Heard for several months in 2017.

In May 2018, Musk and Canadian musician Grimes revealed that they were dating,  they had a son together who was named “X Æ A-12” and got separated in September 2021.