Biography of Elon Musk
Business magnate Elon Reeve Musk (born June 28, 1971) founded SpaceX, Tesla, Twitter, The Boring Company, Neuralink, OpenAI, and the Musk Foundation.
Musk is the world's second-richest person, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index and Forbes's real-time billionaire list, with an estimated net worth of $139 billion as of December 23, 2022.
Elon Musk Personnel Details
Full Name | Elon Reeve Musk |
Nickname | Iron Man |
Profession(s) | Entrepreneur, Investor, Famous For Being the CEO of Tesla and Space X |
Date of Birth | June 28, 1971 |
Age | (as of 2022) 51 Years |
Birthplace | Pretoria, Transvaal, South Africa |
Zodiac sign | Cancer |
Nationality | American [1] |
Hometown | Pretoria, Transvaal, South Africa |
Religion | Atheist |
Ethnicity/Race |
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Food Habit | Non-Vegetarian |
Political Inclination | He considers himself a half Republican and a half Democrate |
Hobbies | Reading, Playing Video Games, Travelling |
Elon Musk Height and Weight
Height (approx.) | in centimeters- 180 cm in meters- 1.80 m in feet inches- 5° 11” |
180 lbs. 82 Kgs. | |
Eye Color | ‘Moss Green |
Hair Color | Light Ash Blonde |
Elon Musk Education in brief
School |
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College/ University |
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Educational Qualifications) |
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Elon Musk Favorite
Actor | Robert Downey Jr. |
Film(s) | • Star Wars, • The Martian, • Thank You for Smoking |
TV Show | The Big Bang Theory |
Book(s) | • The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, • Foundation series |
Poet | Shakespeare |
Comic Character. | • Marvel’s X-Men • Style Quotient |
Car(s) Collection |
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Early life
Musk was born in Canada to a mother who was from Canada and a father who was from South Africa.
He demonstrated an early aptitude for computers and business. At the age of 12, he designed and developed a video game, which he later sold to a computer magazine.
Musk left South Africa in 1988, after obtaining a Canadian passport, because he refused to support apartheid through mandatory military duty and because he desired the higher economic prospects available in the United States.
Education
South African Pretoria Boys High School educated Musk.
Musk graduated from Waterkloof House Preparatory, Bryanston High School, and Pretoria Boys High School.
Musk asked for a Canadian passport through his Canadian-born mother to make immigrating to the US easier.
Five months at the University of Pretoria awaited his application.
Musk moved to Canada in June 1989 and worked various jobs at a farm and timber factory with a second cousin in Saskatchewan for a year.
He attended Kingston's Queen's University in 1990.
Two years later, he transferred to UPenn's Wharton School to get a Bachelor of Arts in physics and a Bachelor of Science in economics.
Musk believes he received the degree in 1995, whereas UPenn claims 1997.
He organized massive, ticketed house parties to pay for school and drafted a business plan for a Google Books-like electronic book-scanning service.
Musk apprenticed at Silicon Valley startups Rocket Science Games and Pinnacle Research Institute, which studied electrolytic ultracapacitors for energy storage, in 1994.
He joined Stanford's materials science Ph.D. program in 1995.
Musk dropped school two days after getting accepted and applied for a job at Netscape, but he never received a reply.
Entering the United States
Musk attended Queen's University for two years before moving to the University of Pennsylvania.
He pursued two degrees, although his time at college was only partially spent studying.
He purchased a 10-bedroom fraternity house with another student, which they turned into a makeshift nightclub.
Musk received a bachelor of science in physics and a bachelor of arts in economics from the Wharton School.
The two majors foreshadowed Musk's career, but physics had the most tremendous impact.
Physical science is a solid mental foundation, he would later remark. "Condense the issues to the most important facts, and then argue from that viewpoint".
Elon Musk's Personal Life
His personal life has generated much public attention.
Before married British actress Talulah Riley in 2002, with whom he had two sons, he dated her for several years.
They separated in 2008. He married Canadian Grimes in October 2017, and she released her debut solo single "Flesh Without Blood" on April 7, 2018.
Elon Musk and his wife have six children together. In attendance are Griffin, Xavier, Damian, Saxon, Kai, and X A-Xii.
Initial Works by Elon Musk
For Musk, technology became an escape.
At 10, he became acquainted with programming using a Commodore VIC-20, an early and relatively affordable home computer.
Shortly after, Musk had the skills necessary to create Blastar, a video game in the style of Space Invaders.
He made $500 from selling the game's BASIC code to a PC magazine.
As children, Musk and his sibling dreamed of opening an arcade (video game cafe) close to their school. Their parents rejected the proposal.
Elon's 15-month-old younger brother Kimball Musk had graduated from Queen's University with a business degree and joined him in California.
The brothers founded Zip2, a business directory with maps, as the early Internet became popular. Elon Musk entered a business that way.
Zip2 became profitable when the brothers attracted angel investors.
In 1999, Brothers sold Zip2 to Compaq for a sum of $307 million. Elon founded X.com, an online financial services company.
Confinity, founded by Peter Thiel and two others months after X.com and located in the same building, was its main competitor.
PayPal, an online money transfer service for individuals, became the name of the two companies in March 2000.
EBay bought PayPal for $1.5 billion in stock in October 2002.
At 31, Elon Musk, PayPal's largest shareholder with 11.7% of equity shares, had $165 million in eBay stock.
He has developed, co-founded, and led firms that address climate risk, single-planet dependency risk, and human species obsolescence risk since leaving PayPal.
He invested his early fortune in SpaceX and Tesla Motors.
Notable Achievements
Musk came to California at the age of 24 to earn a doctorate in applied physics at Stanford University.
But with the internet exploding and Silicon Valley booming, Musk's mind was filled with entrepreneurial ideas. Two days into the Ph.D. program, he left.
Zip2
Zip2 was founded in 1995 by Musk, his brother Kimbal, and Greg Kouri. Errol Musk contributed $28,000 to their project.
They developed and promoted to newspapers an online version of a city guide that includes maps, directions, and a yellow pages directory.
Musk coded the website every night in a modest leased office in Palo Alto. Zip2 eventually secured contracts with The New York Times and The Chicago Tribune.
The brothers persuaded the board of directors to forego a merger with CitySearch; however, Musk's campaign for CEO was unsuccessful.
In February 1999, Compaq paid $307 million in cash for Zip2, and Musk received $22 million for his 7% stake.
PayPal/SpaceX
He quit graduate physics school at Stanford University in California after two days because he believed the Internet might influence society more than physics.
He founded Zip2, an online newspaper map and business directory provider, in 1995.
Musk launched X.com, which ultimately became PayPal, an online money transfer company, after Compaq bought Zip2 for $307 million in 1999.
In 2002, eBay acquired PayPal for a total price of $1.5 billion
Musk believed that in order for humans to survive, they needed to become multiplanetary. Rocket launchers were too expensive, though.
He created SpaceX in 2002 to manufacture cheaper rockets. The Falcon 1 (2006) and Falcon 9 (2010) were supposed to be cheaper than rival rockets.
The 2018 Falcon Heavy, a third rocket, was designed to transport 117,000 pounds (53,000 kg) to orbit, roughly twice as much as its greatest competitor, the Boeing Company's Delta IV Heavy, for one-third the cost.
The Super Heavy–Starship is SpaceX's Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy successor.
The Super Heavy first stage could lift 100,000 kg (220,000 pounds) into low Earth orbit.
The payload would be the Starship, a spacecraft designed for quick transportation between Earth cities and creating bases on the Moon and Mars.
SpaceX's Dragon supplies the International Space Station (ISS). Dragon has carried seven astronauts to the ISS, including Doug Hurley and Robert Behnken in 2020. 2020 saw Super Heavy–Starship test flights.
Musk designed Falcon, Dragon, and Starship as SpaceX CEO.
As part of NASA's Artemis space program, SpaceX has been hired to build the lander that will take astronauts back to the Moon by 2025.
Starlink
50 Starlink satellites just prior to insertion into low Earth orbit
In February 2018, SpaceX launched the first two prototype satellites for their Starlink constellation of low-Earth-orbit satellites that would give satellite Internet access.
The second wave of test satellites and the first substantial deployment of a portion of the constellation happened in May 2019 with the launch of the first sixty operational satellites.
SpaceX estimates that the decade-long endeavor to design, construct, and deploy the constellation will cost approximately $10 billion.
Some critics, including the International Astronomical Union, have asserted that Starlink obstructs the view of the sky and places spacecraft at risk of collision.
Musk dispatched Starlink terminals to Ukraine during the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine to enable internet connection and communication.
Musk, though, declined to prohibit Russian official media on Starlink, declaring himself an "absolute defender of free expression."
Musk announced in October 2022 that SpaceX had provided 20,000 satellite terminals and free data transfer subscriptions to Ukraine at a cost of $80 million.
After requesting that the United States Department of Defense pay for more units and future subscriptions on Ukraine's behalf, Musk announced publicly that SpaceX would continue to offer Starlink to Ukraine for free, at a cost of $400 million per year to itself.
Tesla
Musk invested in Tesla Motors (later renamed Tesla) in 2004 after long been interested in electric cars.
Tesla's first automobile, the Roadster, could go 245 miles (394 km) on a single charge in 2006.
It was a sports automobile that could speed from 0 to 60 miles (97 km) per hour in under four seconds, unlike other electric cars, which Musk found boring. The 2010 IPO raised $226 million.
Two years later, Tesla released the Model S sedan, which automotive experts praised for its performance and design.
The 2015 Model X luxury SUV was lauded. In 2017, the cheaper Model 3 became the best-selling electric car.
Musk proposed the Hyperloop in 2013 to travel 350 miles (560 km) between Los Angeles and San Francisco in 35 minutes at 760 miles (1,220 km) per hour, nearly the speed of sound.
Musk stated that the Hyperloop will cost $6 billion and could transport six million people per year, with pods leaving every two minutes.
He said he was too busy with SpaceX and Tesla to work on the Hyperloop.
In April 2022, Musk, a frequent poster on the messaging network, declared a 9.2% ownership stake in Twitter.
Twitter reacted by offering Musk a seat on its board of directors, which he accepted but later declined.
Musk then sent Twitter's board a bear hug letter, proposing to acquire the company at $54.20 per share.
Musk reported $46.5 billion in committed financing for the transaction in a securities filing, and Twitter's board finally accepted his bid.
Musk moved to terminate the agreement in July 2022, claiming Twitter had failed to deliver certain information regarding fraudulent accounts.
The firm sued Musk to compel him to finalize the transaction.
On October 28, 2022, after months of legal battle, the billionaire's goal to purchase the social media site was accomplished, and he assumed control of Twitter.
Conclusion
Musk has always been ambitious.
His engineer father and dietician mother, who supported his tech interest, welcomed him.
He learned to program on his first computer at age ten. The 12-year-old constructed "Blastar," a playable video game, and sold it for $500.
Musk graduated from Pretoria Boys High in 1988. In 1989, he went to Queen's University in Ontario to avoid having to serve in the military in South Africa.
He left the University of Pretoria after five months. Musk studied economics at Penn's Wharton School.
After two days in Stanford's Physics Graduate Program, he left to pursue his goals of starting his own business.
As we read about Elon Musk's biography, he has pursued goals that have motivated him and his team.
Interplanetary space flight and electric automobiles are all about the future and improving conditions.