It raised $1.8 billion through its initial public offering (IPO). 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. Even before the PayPal sale, Musk was dreaming up his next move, including a wild plan to send mice or plants to Mars. In early 2002, Musk founded the company that would be known as Space Exploration Technologies, or SpaceX, with $100 million of the money received from the PayPal sale.
- A setback came in November 2017, when an explosion occurred during a test of the company’s new Block 5 Merlin engine.
- He said that the concept of the Chicago loop would be different from his Hyperloop, its relatively short route not requiring the need for drawing a vacuum to eliminate air friction.
- With a fellow student, he bought a 10-bedroom fraternity house, which they used as an ad hoc nightclub.
- Elon Musk, born in Pretoria, South Africa, is one of the most successful entrepreneurs of all time.
Bullied as a Child
Elon and Talulah—who starred on HBO’s Westworld—married in 2010. “We were engaged after, I think, two weeks of knowing each other.”The two divorced in 2012, then remarried a year later before divorcing again in 2016. In June 2024, she wed Love Actually alum Thomas Brodie-Sangster. Also in 2022, Griffin’s twin sister filed a petition to change her full name in accordance with her new gender identity, writing, “I no longer live with or wish to be related to my biological father in any way, shape or form.” The billionaire has also expressed interest in launching his own AI venture.
South African-born businessman (born / From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
SpaceX reported that no one was hurt, and that the issue would not hamper its planned rollout of a future generation of Falcon 9 rockets. Musk made headlines in May 2012, when SpaceX launched a rocket that would send the first commercial vehicle to the International Space Station. He bolstered his portfolio with the purchase of SolarCity in 2016 and cemented his standing as a leader of industry by taking on an advisory role in the early days of President Donald Trump’s administration. Musk’s 18-year-old daughter petitioned in court to change her name to match her gender identity, USA TODAY reported.
SolarCity and The Boring Company
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. Musk is a South Africa-born billionaire entrepreneur who serves as CEO of Tesla, a popular electric vehicle manufacturer, and SpaceX.
Their busy schedules caused the couple to break up in August 2017; they got back together in January 2018 and split again one month later. Musk also reportedly found a market for The Boring Company’s flamethrowers. After announcing they were going on sale for $500 apiece in late January 2018, he claimed to have sold 10,000 of them within a day. In late October of that year, Musk posted the first photo of his company’s progress to his Instagram page. He said the 500-foot tunnel, which would generally run parallel to Interstate 405, would reach a length of two miles in approximately four months. The Roadster, also set to be released in 2020, will become the fastest production car ever made, with a 0 to 60 time of 1.9 seconds.
The book also stated that around Father’s Day 2022, the on-again, off-again couple welcomed a child named Techno Mechanicus, nicknamed Tau, also via surrogate. The biography includes a photo, dated June 2022, of Elon feeding the baby boy. “I just broke up with my girlfriend,” Elon told Rolling Stone at the time. “I was really in love, and it hurt bad…Well, she broke up with me more than I broke up with her, I think.”
Just a month earlier, Musk posted an infamous tweet claiming he was considering taking Tesla private and had secured the needed funding. After months of legal wrangling, the billionaire’s plan to buy the social media platform came to fruition, and Musk took control of the company on October 28, 2022. 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.
Musk noted that the Hyperloop could take from seven to 10 years to be built and ready for use. The news quickly turned serious again when it was reported that Tesla’s outside directors had retained two law firms to deal with the SEC inquiry and the CEO’s plans to take the company private. Six days later, Musk sought to clarify his position with a statement in which he pointed to discussions with the managing director of the Saudi Arabian sovereign wealth fund as the source of his “funding secured” declaration.
In 2004, Elon Musk cofounded Tesla Motors, of which he is the sole product architect. The company has built an electric sports car, the Tesla Roadster, the Model S, an economy model four door electric sedan and plans to build more affordable compact cars in the future. Elon Reeve Musk was born in 1971 in Pretoria, South Africa, the oldest of three children.
In 2022, he acquired Twitter for $44 billion, merged the company into newly created X Corp. and rebranded the service as X the following year. In March 2023, Musk founded xAI, an artificial intelligence company. Elon’s father is an engineer and like Elon, was born in South Africa. Errol and Heide went on to have two daughters together before they, too, broke up.
He is also the CEO of Solar City, a company that makes solar panels, and the CEO & CTO of SpaceX, an aerospace company. While sometimes at odds with the president’s controversial measures, such as a proposed ban on immigrants from Muslim-majority countries, Musk defended his involvement with the new administration. Musk has pursued an interest in artificial intelligence, becoming co-chair of the nonprofit OpenAI.
The port property presented an ideal location for SpaceX, as its mammoth rocket will only be movable by barge or ship when completed. In September 2017, Musk presented an updated design plan for his BFR (an acronym for either “Big F—ing Rocket” or “Big Falcon Rocket”), a 31-engine behemoth topped by a spaceship capable of carrying at least 100 people. He revealed that SpaceX was aiming to launch the first cargo missions to Mars with the vehicle in 2022, as part of his overarching goal of colonizing the Red Planet. A setback came in November 2017, when an explosion occurred during a test of the company’s new Block 5 Merlin engine.
Tesla also produces commercial energy infrastructure including grid management programs. He then moved to Canada in 1988 when he was 17 after obtaining Canadian citizenship through his mother. He got it before his South African military service was to begin. He felt that it would be easier to emigrate to the United States from Canada than from South Africa. Musk and his brother started Zip2, a software company, in 1995. He then started X.com, which merged with the company Confinity to make PayPal.
The car was initially priced at $35,000, a much more accessible price point than the $69,500 and up for its Model S and X electric sedans. In late March 2018, SpaceX received permission from the U.S. government to launch a fleet of satellites into low orbit for the purpose of providing Internet service. The satellite network, named Starlink, would ideally make broadband service more accessible in rural areas, while also boosting competition in heavily populated markets that are typically dominated by one or two providers. In March 2017, SpaceX saw the successful test flight and landing of a Falcon 9 rocket made from reusable parts, a development that opened the door for more affordable space travel. In 1999, Elon and Kimbal Musk used the money from their sale of Zip2 to found X.com, an online financial services/payments company.