Elon Musk, a South African-born American entrepreneur who co-founded the online payment service PayPal and created SpaceX, a manufacturer of launch vehicles and spacecraft, was born on June 28, 1971, in Pretoria, South Africa. Not only did he serve as CEO of the electric car company Tesla, but he was also an early and crucial investor in the company. In 2022, Musk also bought Twitter.

The Beginnings

Musk’s parents, both immigrants, are from different countries. His early success in business was aided by his precocious skill with computers. He made his first video game at the age of 12 and sold it to a computer magazine. Musk left South Africa in 1988 after obtaining a Canadian passport because he was unwilling to support apartheid through military service and because he wanted to take advantage of the better economic opportunities in the United States.

Elon Musk Credentials

At the age of seventeen, Musk fled South Africa for Canada, where he enrolled at Queen’s University and avoided mandatory military service. Musk obtained his Canadian citizenship the same year he applied for his American citizenship, in part because he believed it would be simpler to do so. Originally from South Africa, Musk came to the United States in 1992 to attend Penn’s Wharton School of Business and Department of Physics.

He first completed a bachelor’s degree program in economics and then another in physics. After graduating from Penn, Musk moved to California to pursue a doctorate in energy physics at Stanford University. Elon Musk dropped out of Stanford University after only two days in order to launch his first successful business, so he never received that Ph.D.

Initial Accomplishments

For Musk, technology became an escape. Using a Commodore VIC-20, an early and reasonably affordable home computer, he became acquainted with programming at age 10. Musk was soon competent enough to design Blastar, a video game in the style of Space Invaders. He sold the game’s BASIC code to a PC magazine for $500.

Musk and his brother wanted to construct a video game arcade near their school during a significant incident from Musk’s childhood. Their parents rejected the proposal.

Musk’s University Years

Musk went to Canada at age 17. Eventually, he would get Canadian citizenship through his mother.

Musk enrolled in Queen’s University in Kingston, Ontario, after moving to Canada. It was there that he met the aspiring author Justine Wilson. Before divorcing in 2008, they would marry and raise five sons together, including twins and triplets.

Personal Eccentricities

Musk’s now-famous tweet from a month prior stated his intention to take Tesla private and that the necessary cash was in place.

Musk later paid a $20 million fine on behalf of Tesla and the SEC settled a complaint alleging he deliberately deceived investors with the tweet by agreeing to have Tesla’s lawyers review and approve tweets containing important corporate information before they were published.

Musk sought to have the case’s consent decree thrown out in March 2022.

Musk referred to the SEC officials overseeing the matter using very negative dialogue during a live April 2022 TED talk.

Has Elon Musk tied the knot?

Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk has been divorced three times, twice from his second wife Talulah Riley.

He had dated Canadian singer/songwriter Claire Elise Boucher, better known as Grimes, from 2018 to 2022, and the couple welcomed a boy in 2020 and a daughter in 2022. They’re still inseparable pals today.

From his first marriage to Justine Musk, he also has five boys.

To enter the United States.

Musk spent his first two years of college at Queen’s before deciding to go to Penn. He double-majored, but college life wasn’t all studying for him. He acquired a 10-bedroom fraternity house with a classmate and turned it into a makeshift club.

Musk has two undergraduate degrees: a BS in physics from Caltech and a BA in economics from the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School.

Both majors were important forerunners to Musk’s professional life, but physics was the one that stuck with him.

MoneyGram & SpaceX

Musk started out at Queen’s University in Kingston, Ontario, before transferring to Penn in 1992. He graduated from Penn with a BA in physics and a BS in economics in 1997. He started physics graduate school at Stanford University in California but dropped out after two days because he believed the Internet would have a greater impact on society.

In 1995, he started the company Zip2 to serve as a resource for online newspapers by providing them with access to local business directories and maps. After computer manufacturer Compaq paid Musk $307 million to acquire his company Zip2 in 1999, he started X.com, which eventually evolved into PayPal, an online financial services company that specializes in remitting funds electronically. During 2002, eBay paid $1.5 billion to acquire PayPal.

Musk has long been of the opinion that, in order for life to succeed, humans must evolve into a multi planet species. But the high cost of rocket launchers left him unsatisfied. He established Space Exploration Technologies (SpaceX) in 2002 with the intention of developing cheaper rockets. Both the smaller Falcon 1 (first launched in 2006) and the larger Falcon 9 (first launched in 2010) were created to be significantly cheaper than comparable rockets on the market. In 2018, SpaceX successfully launched their third rocket, the Falcon Heavy, which was designed to lift 117,000 pounds (53,000 kg) into orbit at a fraction of the price of its main competitor, the Boeing Company’s Delta IV Heavy.

Super Heavy-Starship system, SpaceX’s follow-up to the Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy, has been announced. The maximum mass that could be placed into low Earth orbit by the Super Heavy’s first stage is 220,000 pounds (100,000 kg). The Starship, a spacecraft built for quick travel between Earth’s urban centres and the establishment of outposts on the Moon and Mars, would be the cargo.

The Dragon cargo ship was developed by SpaceX and is used to transport cargo to the ISS (ISS). In 2020, two astronauts, Doug Hurley and Robert Behnken, will ride on a crewed flight aboard Dragon to the ISS, demonstrating the spacecraft’s capability to transport up to seven passengers. In 2020, researchers successfully launched the first Super Heavy-Starship system test flights. Musk is the CEO and chief designer of SpaceX’s Falcon rockets, Dragon, and Starship.

Tesla

Musk was intrigued by the potential of electric cars for a long time, and he ended up being a major investor in Tesla Motors, an electric car company founded by entrepreneurs Martin Eberhard and Marc Tarpenning in 2004. Roadster, Tesla’s first vehicle, was released in 2006 and boasted a range of 245 miles (394 km) on a single charge. It was a sports car that could go from 0 to 60 miles (97 km) per hour in under four seconds, making it unlike the conventional electric vehicles that Musk found boring and uninteresting. The IPO in 2010 brought in about $226 million for the company.

Tesla’s flagship Model S sedan debuted two years later to widespread critical acclaim for both its performance and design. The 2015 release of the company’s Model X luxury SUV was met with even more acclaim than the previous year’s models. In 2017, production began on the Model 3, a less expensive vehicle that quickly became the best-selling electric car in history.

In 2013, Musk proposed the Hyperloop as an alternative to California’s high-speed rail system because of its high price tag ($68 billion). The Hyperloop would use a pneumatic tube to transport pods of 28 people from Los Angeles to San Francisco, a distance of 350 miles (560 km), in just 35 minutes, at a top speed of 760 miles (1,220 km) per hour (near the speed of sound). Musk stated that the Hyperloop could be built for $6 billion, and that it could carry the six million passengers who take that route annually if the pods left every two minutes. But he claimed he simply did not have time to focus on Hyperloop development between overseeing SpaceX and Tesla.

Twitter

Musk began using Twitter in 2009, and as of 2022, he had amassed more than 85 million followers as @elonmusk, making him one of the site’s most popular accounts. Having previously voiced his displeasure with Tesla’s public trading status, Musk tweeted in August 2018 that he had “secured funding” to take the company private at a value of $420 per share.

After a month, the SEC filed a securities fraud lawsuit against Musk, claiming he had spread “false and misleading” information through his tweets. Reportedly due to Musk’s resignation threat, Tesla’s board rejected the SEC’s proposed settlement shortly thereafter.

The news, however, caused a precipitous drop in Tesla stock, and a more severe agreement was ultimately accepted. Musk agreed to step down as chairman for three years, though he was able to keep his position as CEO. He also agreed to have his tweets reviewed by Tesla’s legal team before they were posted and agreed to pay $20 million in penalties, split equally between Tesla and himself.

Musk has criticised Twitter’s commitment to free speech, citing the company’s content-moderation policies as evidence. Musk’s purchase of more than 9 percent of Twitter was revealed in early April 2022 SEC filings. Soon after, Twitter announced that Musk would join the board of directors, but Musk ultimately decided against joining the board and instead made a $44 billion bid to acquire all of Twitter’s shares at $54.20 each. Twitter’s board of directors approved the deal, effectively making him the company’s sole owner. Musk has stated that he intends to “enhance the product with new features, make the algorithms open source to increase trust, defeat the spam bots, and authenticate all humans” for the company.

Musk announced his bid withdrawal in July 2022, claiming Twitter was in “material breach of multiple provisions” of the purchase agreement and citing a lack of information about bot accounts as reasons. Twitter board chair Bret Taylor replied that the company was “committed to closing the transaction on the price and terms agreed upon with Mr. Musk.” Twitter filed suit against Musk in an attempt to coerce him into purchasing the company. As of September 2022, Twitter’s shareholders had approved Musk’s offer. Despite the legal obstacles, Musk went ahead with the purchase, and it was finalized in October.

The Real Reason Elon Musk is Destroying Twitter’s Profits

Elon Musk released an open letter to advertisers in the last hours before he officially acquired Twitter. Musk was aware that large corporations were particularly concerned about his plans to drastically cut the amount of content moderation on the site. Advertisers’ “brand safety,” the fear that their advertising won’t appear next to misleading or harmful material, was a concern. Musk acknowledged such worries in his letter, stating that he hoped Twitter would become “the most respected advertising platform in the world” but also admitted that the site could not become “a free-for-all” platform.

Over the next two weeks, he practically single-handedly brought the worst fears of advertisers to fruition.

Musk shared a picture of a Wehrmacht soldier with a joke about how messaging technology has evolved, and he linked it to a right-wing conspiracy theory about Paul Pelosi, the husband of the House speaker. He urged undecided people to support the Republican party. Also, he warned he would unleash “thermonuclear name and shame” on advertisers who continued to shun the site due to pressure from activist groups.

Musk believes that advertisements for well-known brands are meaningless and counterproductive to the growth of businesses because of their superficiality and deceptiveness.

Tesla does not pay for or engage in advertising endorsements,” he tweeted in 2019. We invest that money into making our products better instead. He argued that Tesla should consider advertising in order to buy positive press because mainstream outlets rarely criticize their major sponsors. Musk implied disdain for traditional brand advertising in his open letter to the advertising industry, preferring instead ads that “can show you a service or product or medical treatment that you never even knew existed.” Those aren’t the kinds of commercials you’d typically see from General Mills.

Conclusion

Musk’s commercial career reflects his idealism and passion for human advancement, as well as his early interests in philosophy, science fiction, and fantasy fiction. He works in areas he deems vital to the future of humanity, including the shift to renewable energy, space exploration, and the internet. Despite the inevitable setbacks, Musk has defied sceptics, disrupted businesses, and earned the most money ever from PayPal, Tesla Motors, SolarCity, and SpaceX. With his latest acquisition of Twitter, Musk intends to continue changing the future of technology.