Elon Musk

Who is Musk?

A South African-born Elon Musk is a revolutionary entrepreneur changing the dynamics of transportation on Earth and Mars by Tesla and SpaceX. He is the founder of both the company and was also the co-founder of PayPal. Elon Musk immigrated to Canada at 17 and later transfer to the US as a student at the University of Pennsylvania. 

Everything ever said to praise Elon seems less as the day's progress. His ideas and visions drive him to make the Earth sustainable for the future generation and find an alternative to Earth by planning to colonize Mars in any earth-shattering crisis.

Born on June 28, 1971, to a Canadian mother and South African Father, Musk from very early developed an interest in computers. He learned to program computer code all by himself and later on created his first software, a game, Blastar, at the age of 12, which he sold to a magazine called PC and Office Technology for $500 approximately.

An introvert in nature, Elon had a hard time growing up. He had to Deal with his parent's divorce at the age of 10, and at school, other students bullied him; he was once thrown down the stairs by bullies. To overcome bullies' fear and the constant bullying, he learned Karate and wrestling to defend himself.

Elon became a Canadian citizen in 1989 and then became an American citizen in 2002. In his late 20s, Elon became a multimillionaire after selling his startup, Zip2, to a division of Compaq Computers.

Family

Maye Musk Elon's mother was a dietitian & model, and his father, Errol Musk, was a South African businessman. Elon is the oldest of three children, Kimbal and Tosca Musk, his sister. His brother Kimbal is a venture capitalist and environmentalist, and Tosca is an award-winning producer and director.

Elon lived with his father since his parents divorced each other.

The Rise of Elon Musk

Musk graduated with a Bachelor of Science in Physics and a Bachelor of Arts in Economics from the Wharton School. Bachelor of Science in Physics and a Bachelor of Arts in Economics was the academic course that shaped his career direction later on. Still, physics was the subject that made the best impression on his thinking and career. At the age of 24, in the year 1995, Musk migrated to California to pursue a Ph.D. in applied physics at Stanford University but left the program just after two days. The main reason behind this was that the prospect Internet and the Silicon Valley prospect were blossoming. He wanted to pursue a career in business, so with $28,000 and his younger brother Kimbal, they started Zip2, a web software company that would help newspapers develop online city guides.

In 1999, Compaq acquired Zip2 for $340 million. With the money he earned must then went on to create X.com, with the intent to shape the future of banking. Later on, X.com came to be known as PayPal after the merger with a company called Confinity. eBay purchased PayPal for $1.5 billion in 2002.

He then went on to venture into Space Exploration Technologies Corporation or SpaceX with the fund he generated. In 2003, Musk co-founded Tesla Motors, which he oversees all product development, engineering, and design of the company's products.

Elon Musk has become the world's richest person, as his net worth crossed $185bn (£136bn) in January 2021. He took the top spot from Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, who held it since 2017.

Relationships

At the age of 17, when Musk moved to Kingston, Ontario, to attend Queen's University, he met his first wife, Justine Wilson. The couple went their separate ways when Musk transferred to Wharton, but they reconnected when Musk started working on his first startup. The pair married in 2000. They both moved to Los Angeles and had a son, whom they lost to SIDS. Later, the couple had twins and triplets—five sons in total, whom Musk referred to as "the love of my life." 

The couple split in 2008, and after his divorce, Musk began dating actress Talulah Riley. In 2010, Riley and Musk married, but after two years of marriage, the couple divorced. In 2013, the couple remarried. Musk filed for a second divorce the following year, which later he withdrew, but in 2016, Riley filed for divorce, and the couple separated. The couple is still on good terms; in an interview with People, Riley said, "We still see each other all the time and take care of each other." 

Musk then began dating actress Amber Heard in 2016 but broke up a year later. Musk told the Rolling Stone, referring to the Amber Heard breakup, that "I was really in love, and it hurt bad."

In May 2018, Page Six reported that Musk and Grimes, a Canadian musician was quietly dating. On May 4, 2020, Musk announced their son's birth, who he and Grimes named "X Æ A-Xii Musk," seemingly pronounced "X Ash A-12."

Major Inventions and Innovations

SolarCity

In 2016 Tesla Motors Inc. announced an all-stock deal purchase of SolarCity Corp. to promote sustainable energy and product. 

The Boring Company

In 2017, Musk launched The Boring Company, a company dedicated to building tunnels to reduce street traffic. He began with a test dig on the SpaceX property in Los Angeles. In October of the same year, Elon shared 500-foot tunnel progress in an Instagram post. 

AI and Neuralink

In 2017, Musk backed a venture called Neuralink, which intends to create devices to be implanted in the human brain and help people merge with software. The devices consist of a microscopic chip that connects via Bluetooth to a smartphone, which would cure any diseases related to the brain like paralysis, blindness, and hearing loss. Furthermore, he also stated that Neuralink would progress and make human beings smarter and would one day be able to communicate without speaking.

Related Biographies