Elon Reeve Musk (born June 28, 1971) was born in Pretoria, South Africa’s administrative capital. He has British and Pennsylvania Dutch ancestry. His mother, Maye Musk is a model and dietitian born in Saskatchewan, Canada, and raised in South Africa. His father, Errol Musk, is a South African electromechanical engineer, pilot, sailor, consultant, and property developer, who partly owned a Zambian emerald mine near Lake Tanganyika.
Musk is an entrepreneur, researcher, Engineer, businessman and investor. He is the founder, chairman, CEO and chief technology officer of SpaceX; angel investor, CEO, product architect and former chairman of Tesla, Inc.; owner, chairman and CTO of X Corp.; founder of the Boring Company and xAI; co-founder of Neuralink and OpenAI; and president of the Musk Foundation. He is the wealthiest person in the world, with an estimated net worth of US$219 billion as of November 2023, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index, and $241 billion according to Forbes, primarily from his ownership stakes in Tesla and SpaceX.
Childhood-
Musk’s family was wealthy during his youth. He had a lonely and sad childhood. His father was elected to the Pretoria City Council as a representative of the anti-apartheid Progressive Party and has said that his children shared their father’s dislike of apartheid. His maternal grandfather and namesake, Joshua Elon Haldeman, was an American-born Canadian who took his family on record-breaking journeys to Africa and Australia in a single-engine Bellanca airplane. Mother Haldeman was a member of the Social Credit Party of Canada, possessed antisemitic beliefs, and supported the Technocracy movement. After his parents divorced in 1980, Musk chose to live primarily with his father. Musk later regretted his decision and became estranged from his father. Musk was often bullied. In one incident, after calling a boy whose father had committed suicide “stupid”, Musk was severely beaten and thrown down concrete steps. He was also an enthusiast reader of books, attributing his success in part to having read Benjamin Franklin: An American Life, Lord of the Flies, the Foundation series, and The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. At age ten, he developed an interest in computing and video games, teaching himself how to program from the VIC-20 user manual. At age twelve, Musk sold his BASIC-based game Blastar to PC and Office Technology magazine for approximately $500.
Education-
Musk attended Waterkloof House Preparatory School, Bryanston High School, and Pretoria Boys High School, from where he graduated. Musk was a good but not exceptional student. Musk immigrated to Canada then the United States. Musk arrived in Canada in June 1989 and lived with a second cousin in Saskatchewan for a year, working odd jobs at a farm and lumber mill. In 1990, he entered Queen’s University in Kingston, Ontario. Two years later, he transferred to the University of Pennsylvania (UPenn), where he completed studies for a Bachelor of Arts degree in physics and a Bachelor of Science degree in economics from the Wharton School. Although Musk said he earned the degrees in 1995, UPenn maintains it awarded them in 1997. In 1994, Musk held two internships in Silicon Valley: one at energy storage startup Pinnacle Research Institute, which investigated electrolytic ultracapacitors for energy storage, and another at Palo Alto–based startup Rocket Science Games. In 1995, he was accepted to a PhD program in materials science at Stanford University. However, Musk decided to join the Internet boom, dropping out two days after being accepted and applied for a job at Netscape, to which he reportedly never received a response.
Business career-
Zip2-
In 1995, Musk, his brother Kimbal, and Greg Kouri founded Global Link, later renamed to Zip2. The company developed an Internet city guide with maps, directions, and yellow pages, and marketed it to newspapers. Musk coded this website. Compaq acquired Zip2 for $307 million in cash in February 1999,and Musk received $22 million for his 7-percent share.
X.com and PayPal-
in 1999, Musk co-founded X.com, an online financial services and e-mail payment company with $12 million of the money he made from the Compaq acquisition. X.com was one of the first federally insured online banks, and over 200,000 customers joined in its initial months of operation. In 2000, X.com merged with online bank Confinity The money-transfer service PayPal was more popular than X.com’s service. Musk became CEO of the merged company. In 2002, PayPal was acquired by eBay for $1.5 billion in stock, of which Musk—PayPal’s largest shareholder with 11.72% of shares—received $175.8 million. In 2017, more than 15 years later, Musk purchased the X.com domain from PayPal for its “sentimental value.
SpaceX-
In early 2001, Musk became involved with the nonprofit Mars Society and discussed funding plans to place a growth-chamber for plants on Mars. To built affordable rockets, Musk founded SpaceX in May 2002 and became the company’s CEO and Chief Engineer.
Starlink-
In 2015, SpaceX began development of the Starlink constellation of low-Earth-orbit satellites to provide satellite Internet access, with the first two prototype satellites launched in February 2018. A second set of test satellites, and the first large deployment of a piece of the constellation, occurred in May 2019, when the first 60 operational satellites were launched. The total cost of the decade-long project to design, build, and deploy the constellation is estimated by SpaceX to be about $10 billion.
Tesla-
Tesla, Inc., originally Tesla Motors, was incorporated in July 2003 by Martin Eberhard and Marc Tarpenning, who financed the company. Musk led the Series A round of investment in February 2004; he invested $6.5 million, became the majority shareholder, and joined Tesla’s board of directors as chairman.
Musk took an active role within the company and oversaw Roadster product design. After ousting of Eberhard, Musk assumed leadership of the company as CEO and product architect in 2008. A 2009 lawsuit settlement with Eberhard designated Musk as a Tesla co-founder, along with Tarpenning and two others. As of 2019, Musk was the longest-tenured CEO of any automotive manufacturer globally. In 2021, Musk nominally changed his title to “Technoking” while retaining his position as CEO.
SolarCity and Tesla Energy-
Musk provided the initial concept and financial capital for SolarCity, which his cousins founded in 2006. By 2013, SolarCity was the second largest provider of solar power systems in the United States. In 2014, Musk promoted the idea of SolarCity building an advanced production facility in Buffalo, New York, triple the size of the largest solar plant in the United States. Construction of the factory started in 2014 and was completed in 2017. It operated as a joint venture with Panasonic until early 2020. Tesla acquired SolarCity for over $2 billion in 2016 and merged it with its battery unit to create Tesla Energy.
Neuralink-
In 2016, Musk co-founded Neuralink, a neurotechnology startup company, with an investment of $100 million. Neuralink aims to integrate the human brain with artificial intelligence (AI) by creating devices that are embedded in the brain to facilitate its merging with machines. Such technology could enhance memory or allow the devices to communicate with software. In September 2023, the company was approved to initiate human trials; the company will conduct a six-year study.
The Boring Company-
In 2017, Musk founded the Boring Company to construct tunnels. It has built tunnels in the Los Angeles , Las Vegas and constructing tunnel for Fort Lauderdale, Florida.
Acquisition of Twitter-
On April 13, Musk made a $43 billion offer to buy Twitter, launching a takeover bid to buy 100% of Twitter’s stock at $54.20 per share. By the end of the month Musk had successfully concluded his bid for approximately $44 billion but when Tesla shares crashed he put it on hold. On July 12, 2022, Twitter sued Musk for breaching a legally binding agreement to purchase Twitter. In October 2022, Musk reversed again, offering to purchase Twitter at $54.20 per share. The acquisition was officially completed on October 27. He is the CEO of X.
Leadership Style- Musk is often described as a micromanager and has called himself a “nano-manager”.. He absolutist. Musk does not make formal business plans; instead, he says he prefers to approach engineering problems with an “iterative design methodology” and “tolerance for failures”. Musk’s handling of employees—whom he communicates with directly through mass emails—has been characterized as “carrot and stick”, rewarding those “who offer constructive criticism” while also being known to impulsively threaten, swear at, and fire his employees. Musk’s leadership has been praised but also criticized by many.
Awards-
Musk was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society (FRS) in 2018. In 2015, he received an honorary doctorate in engineering and technology from Yale University and IEEE Honorary Membership. Awards for his contributions to the development of the Falcon rockets include the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics George Low Transportation Award in 2008, the Fédération Aéronautique Internationale Gold Space Medal in 2010, and the Royal Aeronautical Society Gold Medal in 2012. Time has listed Musk as one of the most influential people in the world on four occasions in 2010, 2013, 2018, and 2021. Musk was selected as Time‘s “Person of the Year” for 2021.
Personal life-
From the early 2000s until late 2020, Musk resided in California, where both Tesla and SpaceX were founded. He then relocated to Texas, saying that California had become “complacent” about its economic success. Musk has 10 surviving children. He had 5 children from his first wife, Canadian author Justine Wilson, by using IVF . They had twins in 2004 followed by triplets in 2006. The couple divorced in 2008 and shared custody.
In 2008, Musk began dating English actress Talulah Riley. They married two years later at Dornoch Cathedral in Scotland. In 2012, the couple divorced, before remarrying the following year. Musk finalized a second divorce from Riley in 2016. Musk then dated Amber Heard for several months in 2017. In 2018, Musk and Canadian musician Grimes revealed that they were dating. Grimes gave birth to their son in May 2020. According to Musk and Grimes, his name was “X Æ A-12” which was changed to “X Æ A-Xi”. Musk and Grimes had their second child via surrogate in December 2021. In September 2023 it was revealed that the pair had a third child, a son named Techno Mechanicus “Tau” Musk. Musk had had twins with Shivon Zilis, director of operations and special projects at Neuralink, in November 2021.
Birth Chart of Elon Musk- (Nirayan Chart)
Elon Musk’s Birth Chart- (Sayan chart)-
