Elon Reeve Musk FRS (born June 28, 1971) is a business magnate and investor. He is the founder, CEO and Chief Engineer at SpaceX; angel investor, CEO and Product Architect of Tesla, Inc.; founder of The Boring Company; and co-founder of Neuralink and OpenAI. With an estimated net worth of around US$203 billion as of June 2022, Musk is the wealthiest person in the world according to both the Bloomberg Billionaires Index and the Forbes real-time billionaires list.
How did Elon Musk get started?
Elon Musk was 24 years old when he moved to California to pursue a Ph.D. in applied physics at Stanford University. But, with the Internet exploding and Silicon Valley booming, Musk had entrepreneurial visions dancing in his head. He left the Ph.D. program after just two days.14
X.com
In 1995, with $15,000 and his younger brother Kimbal at his side, Musk started Zip2, a web software company that would help newspapers develop online city guides.1516
In 1999, Zip2 was acquired by Compaq Computer Corp. for $341 million.17 Musk used his Zip2 buyout money to create X.com, a fintech venture before that term was in wide circulation.
X.com merged with a money transfer firm called Confinity, and the resulting company came to be known as PayPal.18 Peter Thiel ousted Musk as PayPal’s CEO before eBay (EBAY) bought the payments company for $1.5 billion, but Musk still profited from the buyout via his 11.7% PayPal stake.1920 “My proceeds from PayPal after tax were about $180 million,” Musk said in a 2018 interview. “$100 million of that went into SpaceX, $70 million into Tesla and $10 million into SolarCity. And I literally had to borrow money for rent.”
Musk became involved with the electric cars venture as an early investor in 2004, ultimately contributing about $6.3 million to begin with and joined the team, including engineer Martin Eberhard, to help run a company then known as Tesla Motors. Following a series of disagreements, Eberhard was ousted in 2007, and an interim CEO was hired until Musk assumed control as CEO and product architect. Under his watch, Tesla has become the world’s most valuable automaker and one of his best-known brands.
Has Elon Musk ever invented anything?
These days, it’s impossible not to think of Musk without quickly thinking of Tesla, the publicly traded electric-car company whose stock has increased nearly 700 percent in the last 2.5 years to just under $213 a share at press time.
SpaceX, Falcon rocket
An unmanned SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket launches from Cape Canaveral, Fla., June 28, 2015. The rocket exploded about two minutes after liftoff, destroying a cargo ship bound for the International Space Station, NASA said.
X.com (PayPal) e-payments
In 1999, Musk co-founded a company called X.com, which focused on financial services and email payments. A year later, X.com merged with Confinity and adopted the name of that company’s best-known service, PayPal.
Hyperloop
Musk’s latest idea might be his most ambitious. This transportation system, introduced in 2013 and still in the formulative stages, aims to allow commuters to travel between Los Angeles and San Francisco in 35 minutes or less.
Electric Jet
Musk hasn’t officially started working on this project, but last year at MIT’s Aeronautics and Astronautics Centennial Symposium, he said he was “toying” with the concept. Musk also has mused on The Colbert Report about the opportunity to have a “vertical takeoff and landing electric supersonic jet,”
Web-based phone calls
Back in 1997, Musk had an idea about allowing computers to call land lines (something he secured a patent for in 2001). The idea was a bit less intricate than what we use today with Skype, though.
Location-specific searches
In the early days of the Internet, finding a business that was close to you wasn’t the priority it is today. Musk, in 1998, thought it might be someday, though. His idea was to create a system that initially searched for results in the geographic area closest to you.
Has Elon Musk been space?
Unlike Bezos and Branson, Musk has yet to travel to space himself. “Return to Space” doesn’t address that outlier, and Vasarhelyi said they never asked him about it. As with the daredevil exploits of rock climber Alex Honnold in “Free Solo” and the cave divers at the center of last year’s “The Rescue,” the directors put their greatest emphasis on the people willing to put their lives at risk — that is, the astronauts themselves.
The movie recaps the two catastrophic shuttle explosions, Challenger (which erupted during the ascent) and Columbia (which exploded during reentry) to make it clear that even as the Dragon capsule is far safer than its predecessors, a single misstep could result in instant death. “A lot of people take for granted how dangerous space travel is,” said Chin. “I mean, strapping two rockets with thousands of tons of rocket propellant to yourself — these astronauts’ lives are literally in the hands of scientists.”
Even Musk can’t force their hands. In one unsettling moment, NASA calls off a launch due to bad weather, while a despondent Musk makes an unsuccessful attempt to talk mission control out of the decision. That failsafe may be the best advertisement that SpaceX could ask for: Even the reckless guy in charge can’t screw things up. “I would trust SpaceX to go to space,” Vasarhelyi said, “but it’s the only company I would.”
Is Elon Musk daughter Transgender?
One of Elon Musk’s children wants nothing to do with him, and has filed legal docs to drop his famous last name — in fact, she’s changing her full name, and legally declaring her gender identity.
The documents were filed in L.A. County by Xavier Musk … at least that was the name she was given at birth, but now — having turned 18 in April — she says she wants her name to be Vivian Jenna Wilson.
In the docs, she says she wants to be recognized as female — but the name change isn’t just about her transitioning, there’s clearly a rift with dear ol’ Dad. Vivian lists her reason for the name change as … “Gender Identity and the fact that I no longer live with or wish to be related to my biological father in any way, shape or form.”
Neither Elon Musk or Vivian has previously said anything publicly about their relationship or her transition. Interestingly though, back in December 2020, Elon tweeted he supports the transgender community, but added … “All these pronouns are an esthetic nightmare.”
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