14/03/2023
Elon Musk is an entrepreneur, investor, and business magnate. He made headlines recently with his announcement of buying Twitter.
So let’s dive into some trivia and facts about his life and career.
His full name is Elon Reeve Musk
He was born in June 28, 1971
He is an entrepreneur, investor, and business magnate
He is the founder, CEO, and Chief Engineer at SpaceX
Musk is also the early-stage investor, CEO, and Product Architect of Tesla, Inc.
And the founder of The Boring Company
And co-founder of Neuralink and OpenAI
With an estimated net worth of around US$273 billion as of April 2022
Musk is the wealthiest person in the world according to both the Bloomberg Billionaires Index and the Forbes real-time billionaires list
Musk was born to a Canadian mother and White South African father
Musk was raised in Pretoria, South Africa
He briefly attended the University of Pretoria
He then moved to Canada at age 17 to avoid conscription
He was enrolled at Queen’s University and transferred to the University of Pennsylvania two years later
There he received a bachelor’s degree in economics and physics
He moved to California in 1995 to attend Stanford University
He decided instead to pursue a business career
Then he co-founded the web software company Zip2 with his brother Kimbal
The startup was acquired by Compaq for $307 million in 1999
The same year, Musk co-founded online bank X.com
It later 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 Chief Engineer
In 2004, he joined electric vehicle manufacturer Tesla Motors, Inc. (now Tesla, Inc.) as chairman and product architect
Elon Musk became 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
He founded The Boring Company, a tunnel construction company
He also agreed to purchase the major American social networking service Twitter in 2022 for $44 billion
Musk has proposed the Hyperloop, a high-speed vactrain transportation system
Elon Musk has been criticized for making unscientific and controversial statements
In 2018, he was sued by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) for falsely tweeting that he had secured funding for a private takeover of Tesla
He settled with the SEC but did not admit guilt, temporarily stepping down from his chairmanship and agreeing to limitations on his Twitter usage
In 2019, he won a defamation trial brought against him by a British caver who advised in the Tham Luang cave rescue
Musk has also been criticized for spreading misinformation about the COVID-19 pandemic
And for his other views on such matters as artificial intelligence, cryptocurrency, and public transport