Elon Reeve Musk FRS (/ˈiːlɒn/; born June 28, 1971) is a business magnate, industrial designer, engineer, and philanthropist.[6] He is the founder, CEO, CTO and chief designer of SpaceX; early investor,[b] CEO and product architect of Tesla, Inc.; founder of The Boring Company; co-founder of Neuralink; and co-founder and initial co-chairman of OpenAI. He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society (FRS) in 2018.[9][10] Also that year, he was ranked 25th on the Forbes list of The World's Most Powerful People,[11] and was ranked joint-first on the Forbes list of the Most Innovative Leaders of 2019.[12] As of September 2, 2020, his net worth was estimated by Forbes to be US$93.3 billion,[13][14] making him the 5th richest person in the world. He is also the longest tenured CEO of any automotive manufacturer globally.
Musk was born to a Canadian mother and South African father and raised in Pretoria, South Africa. He briefly attended the University of Pretoria before moving to Canada when he was 17 to attend Queen's University. He transferred to the University of Pennsylvania two years later, where he received dual bachelor's degrees in economics and physics. He moved to California in 1995 to begin a Ph.D. in applied physics and material sciences at Stanford University, but dropped out to pursue a business career. He co-founded Zip2, a web software company, which was acquired by Compaq for $307 million in 1999. Musk then founded X.com, an online bank. It merged with Confinity in 2000, which had launched PayPal the previous year and was subsequently bought by eBay for $1.5 billion in October 2002.
In May 2002, Musk founded SpaceX, an aerospace manufacturer and space transport services company, of which he is CEO and lead designer. He joined Tesla Motors, Inc. (now Tesla, Inc.), an electric vehicle manufacturer, in 2004, the year after it was founded, became its product architect, and became its CEO in 2008. In 2006, he helped create SolarCity, a solar energy services company (now a subsidiary of Tesla). In 2015, Musk co-founded OpenAI, a nonprofit research company that aims to promote friendly artificial intelligence. In July 2016, he co-founded Neuralink, a neurotechnology company focused on developing brain–computer interfaces. In December 2016, Musk founded The Boring Company, an infrastructure and tunnel construction company focused on tunnels optimized for electric vehicles. In addition to his primary business pursuits, Musk envisioned an open-source high-speed transportation system known as the Hyperloop based on the concept of a vactrain.
Musk has also been the subject of criticism due to unorthodox stances and highly publicized scandals. When his submarine was rejected as a viable option for the 2018 Tham Luang cave rescue, Musk called a lead-diver a "pedo-guy". The diver sued Musk for libel, but a California jury ruled in favor of Musk. Also in 2018, Musk falsely tweeted that he had secured funding for a private takeover of Tesla at $420 a share. The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission sued him for the comment; Musk temporarily stepped down from chairman and settled with the SEC; the settlement included limitations on his Twitter usage. Musk has also received substantial criticism for his views on artificial intelligence, public transportation, and the COVID-19 pandemic.
Early life and family
Elon Reeve Musk was born on June 28, 1971, in Pretoria, Transvaal, South Africa.[15][16] His mother is Maye Musk (née Haldeman), a model and dietitian born in Saskatchewan, Canada,[17][18][19] but raised in South Africa. His father is Errol Musk, a South African electromechanical engineer, pilot, sailor, consultant and property developer.[20] He has a younger brother who was an early business partner of his, Kimbal (born 1972), and a younger sister, Tosca (born 1974), the CEO of the video streaming site Passionflix.[19][21][25] His maternal grandfather, Dr. Joshua Haldeman, was an American-born Canadian.[26] His paternal grandmother had both British and Pennsylvania Dutch ancestry.[27][28]
After his parents divorced in 1980, Musk lived mostly with his father in the suburbs of Pretoria,[27] a choice he made two years after his parents separated but which he subsequently regretted.[29] Musk has become estranged from his father, whom he has described as "a terrible human being... Almost every evil thing you could possibly think of, he has done."[29] He also has a half-sister[30] and a half-brother on his father's side.[31]
During his childhood, Musk was an avid reader.[32] At the age of 10, he developed an interest in computing while using the Commodore VIC-20.[33] He learned computer programming using a manual and, by the age of 12, sold the code of a BASIC-based video game he created called Blastar to PC and Office Technology magazine for approximately $500.[34][35] His childhood reading included Isaac Asimov's Foundation series, from which he drew the lesson that "you should try to take the set of actions that are likely to prolong civilization, minimize the probability of a dark age and reduce the length of a dark age if there is one".[29]
Musk was severely bullied throughout his childhood and was once hospitalized after a group of boys threw him down a flight of stairs.[29][36][37] He attended Waterkloof House Preparatory School and Bryanston High School[37] before graduating from Pretoria Boys High School.[38]
Although Musk's father insisted that Elon go to college in Pretoria, Musk became determined to move to the United States, saying "I remember thinking and seeing that America is where great things are possible, more than any other country in the world."[39] Musk knew it would be easier to get to the United States from Canada and moved there against his father's wishes in June 1989, just before his 18th birthday,[40][41] after obtaining a Canadian passport through his Canadian-born mother.[42][43]
Education
While awaiting Canadian documentation, Musk attended the University of Pretoria for five months.[44] Once in Canada, Musk entered Queen's University in 1989, avoiding mandatory service in the South African military.[45] He left in 1992 to study economics and physics at the University of Pennsylvania; he graduated in 1997 with a Bachelor of Science degree in economics from the Wharton School and a Bachelor of Arts degree in physics from the College of Arts and Sciences.[46][47][48]
In 1994, Musk held two internships in Silicon Valley during the summer: at an energy storage start-up called Pinnacle Research Institute, which researched electrolytic ultracapacitors for energy storage, and at the Palo Alto-based start-up Rocket Science Games.[49] Bruce Leak, the former lead engineer behind Apple's QuickTime who had hired Musk, noted: "He had boundless energy. Kids these days have no idea about hardware or how stuff works, but he had a PC hacker background and was not afraid to just go figure things out."[50]
In 1995, Musk was accepted to a Ph.D. program in energy physics/materials science at Stanford University in California.[51] In California, Musk attempted to get a job at Netscape, but never received a response to his job inquiries.[52] Eager to pursue opportunities in the Internet boom, he dropped out of Stanford, deciding to launch an internet startup instead.[53]
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