Who Is Elon Musk?

South African business person Elon Musk is known for establishing #Tesla Motors and #SpaceX, which propelled a milestone business shuttle in 2012.

Elon Reeve Musk (conceived June 28, 1971) is a South African-conceived #American business person and agent who established X.com in 1999 (which later moved toward becoming #PayPal), SpaceX in 2002 and #TeslaMotors in 2003. Musk turned into a multimillionaire in his late 20s when he sold his new business, Zip2, to a division of Compaq Computers. Musk stood out as truly newsworthy in May 2012, when SpaceX propelled a rocket that would send the main business vehicle to the International Space Station. He reinforced his portfolio with the buy of #SolarCity in 2016, and established his remaining as a pioneer of industry by going up against a warning part in the beginning of President #DonaldTrump's organization.

Elon Musk’s Net Worth
As of December 2017, @ElonMusk net worth is $20.2 billion, according to @Forbes. He earned his first billion with the sale of PayPal in 2002; his company SpaceX is valued at more than $20 billion.

Education
At age 17, in 1989, Elon Musk moved to Canada to attend Queen’s University and avoid mandatory service in the South African military. He left in 1992 to study business and physics at the University of Pennsylvania. He graduated with an undergraduate degree in economics and stayed for a second bachelor’s degree in physics.

After leaving Penn, Elon Musk headed to Stanford University in California to pursue a PhD in energy physics. However, his move was timed perfectly with the Internet boom, and he dropped out of Stanford after just two days to become a part of it, launching his first company, Zip2 Corporation. An online city guide, Zip2 was soon providing content for the new websites of both The New York Times and the Chicago Tribune. In 1999, a division of Compaq Computer Corporation bought Zip2 for $307 million in cash and $34 million in stock options.

PayPal
In 1999, Musk co-founded X.com, an online financial services/payments company. An X.com acquisition the following year led to the creation of PayPal as it is known today, and in October 2002, PayPal was acquired by eBay for $1.5 billion in stock. Before the sale, Musk owned 11 percent of PayPal stock.

Founder of SpaceX
Musk founded his third company, Space Exploration Technologies Corporation, or SpaceX, in 2002 with the intention of building spacecraft for commercial space travel. By 2008, SpaceX was well established, and NASA awarded the company the contract to handle cargo transport for the International Space Station—with plans for astronaut transport in the future—in a move to replace NASA’s own space shuttle missions.

Falcon 9 Rockets
On May 22, 2012, Musk and SpaceX made history when the company launched its Falcon 9 rocket into space with an unmanned capsule. The vehicle was sent to the International Space Station with 1,000 pounds of supplies for the astronauts stationed there, marking the first time a private company had sent a spacecraft to the International Space Station. Of the launch, Musk was quoted as saying, "I feel very lucky. ... For us, it's like winning the Super Bowl."

In December 2013, SpaceX notched another milestone when Falcon 9 carried a satellite to geosynchronous transfer orbit, a distance at which the satellite would lock into an orbital path that matched the Earth's rotation. In February 2015, SpaceX launched another Falcon 9 fitted with the Deep Space Climate Observatory (DSCOVR) satellite, aiming to observe the extreme emissions from the sun that affect power grids and communications systems on Earth.

In March 2017, SpaceX enjoyed another breakthrough with the successful test flight and landing of a Falcon 9 rocket made from reusable parts, a development that opened the door for more affordable space travel. A setback came in November 2017, when an explosion occurred during a test of the company's new Block 5 Merlin engine. SpaceX reported that no one was hurt, and that the issue would not hamper its planned rollout of a future generation of Falcon 9 rockets.

Founder & CEO of Tesla
Elon Musk is the co-founder, CEO and product architect at Tesla Motors, a company dedicated to producing affordable, mass-market electric cars as well as battery products and solar roofs. Musk oversees all product development, engineering and design of the company's products. Five years after its formation, in 2008, the company unveiled the Roadster, a sports car capable of accelerating from 0 to 60 mph in 3.7 seconds, as well traveling nearly 250 miles between charges of its lithium ion battery. With a stake in the company taken by Daimler and a strategic partnership with #Toyota , Tesla Motors launched its initial public offering in June 2010, raising $226 million.

Additional successes include the Model S, the company's first electric sedan. Capable of covering 265 miles between charges, the Model S was honored as the 2013 Car of the Year by Motor Trend magazine.

In April 2017, Tesla announced that it surpassed General Motors to become the most valuable U.S. car maker. The news was an obvious boon to Tesla, which was looking to ramp up production and release its Model 3 sedan later that year.

In November 2017, Musk made another splash with the unveiling of the new Tesla Semi and Roadster at the company's design studio. The semi truck, which enters into production in 2019, boasts 500 miles of range as well as a battery and motors built to last 1 million miles. The Roadster, set to follow in 2020, will become the fastest production car ever made with its 0 to 60 time of 1.9 seconds.

"The point of doing this is to just give a hardcore smack-down to gasoline cars," Musk told the crowd. "Driving a gasoline sports car is going to feel like a steam engine with a side of quiche."

SolarCity Acquisition
In August 2016, in Musk’s continuing effort to promote and advance sustainable energy and products for a wider consumer base, a $2.6 billion dollar deal was solidified to combine his electric car and solar energy companies. His Tesla Motors Inc. announced an all-stock deal purchase of SolarCity Corp., a company Musk had helped his cousins start in 2006. He is a majority shareholder in each entity.

“Solar and storage are at their best when they're combined. As one company, Tesla (storage) and SolarCity (solar) can create fully integrated residential, commercial and grid-scale products that improve the way that energy is generated, stored and consumed,” read a statement on Tesla’s website about the deal.

Elon Musk’s Wives
Elon Musk has been married twice. He wed Justine Wilson in 2000. After a contentious divorce, Musk met actress Talulah Riley, and the couple married in 2010. They split in 2012 but married each other again in 2013. Their relationship ultimately ended in divorce in 2016.

Kids
Elon Musk has five sons with ex-wife Justine Wilson. In 2002, his first son with died at 10 weeks old from sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS). Musk and Wilson had five additional sons together: twins and triplets.

Birthday & Nationality
Elon Musk was born on June 28, 1971 in Pretoria, South Africa. He became a U.S. citizen in 2002.

Family and Early Life
Son of a Canadian mother and a South African father, Elon Musk spent his early childhood with his brother Kimbal and sister Tosca in South Africa. At 10, around the time his parents divorced, the introverted Elon developed an interest in computers. He taught himself how to program, and when he was 12 he made his first software sale of a game he created called Blastar.

Other Inventions & Innovations
Outside of his roles at SpaceX and Tesla, Musk has continually attempted to make his innovative ideas a reality.

Hyperloop
In August 2013, Elon Musk released a concept for a new form of transportation called the "Hyperloop," an invention that would foster commuting between major cities while severely cutting travel time. Ideally resistant to weather and powered by renewable energy, the Hyperloop would propel riders in pods through a network of low-pressure tubes at speeds reaching more than 700 mph. Musk noted that the Hyperloop could take from seven to 10 years to be built and ready for use.

Although he introduced the Hyperloop with claims that it would be safer than a plane or train, with an estimated cost of $6 billion — approximately one-tenth of the cost for the rail system planned by the state of California — Musk's concept has drawn skepticism. Nevertheless, the entrepreneur has sought to encourage the development of this idea. After he announced a competition for teams to submit their designs for a Hyperloop pod prototype, the first Hyperloop Pod Competition was held at the SpaceX facility in January 2017.

AI
Elon Musk has pursued an interest in Artificial Intelligence, becoming co-chair of the nonprofit OpenAI. The research company launched in late 2015 with the stated mission of advancing digital intelligence to benefit humanity. In 2017, it was also revealed that Musk was backing a venture called Neuralink, which intends to create devices to be implanted in the human brain and help people merge with software.

Boring Company
In yet another innovation, in January 2017 Elon Musk suddenly decided he was going find a way to reduce traffic by devoting resources to boring and building tunnels. He launched his venture, named "The Boring Company," with a test dig on the SpaceX property in Los Angeles. In late October, Musk posted the first photo of his company's progress to his Instagram page. He said the 500-foot tunnel, which would generally run parallel to Interstate 405, would reach a length of two miles in approximately four months.

High-Speed Train
In late November 2017, after Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel asked for proposals to build and operate a high-speed rail line that would transport passengers from O'Hare Airport to downtown Chicago in 20 minutes or less, Musk tweeted that he was all-in on the competition with his Boring Company. He said that the concept of the Chicago loop would be different from his #Hyperloop, its relatively short route not requiring the need for drawing a vacuum to eliminate air friction.

Trump Adviser
With Donald Trump announcing plans to pursue massive infrastructure developments after his successful election to the U.S. presidency in 2016, Musk found himself on common ground with the new president and his advisers. That December, he was named to President Trump’s Strategy and Policy Forum, and the following January he joined Trump's Manufacturing Jobs Initiative.

While sometimes at odds with the president's controversial measures, such as a proposed ban on immigrants from Muslim-majority countries, Musk defended his involvement with the new administration. "My goals," he tweeted in early 2017, "are to accelerate the world’s transition to sustainable energy and to help make humanity a multi-planet civilization, a consequence of which will be the creating of hundreds of thousands of jobs and a more inspiring future for all." On June 1, following Trump's announcement that he was withdrawing the U.S. from the Paris climate accord, Musk stepped down from his advisory roles.

Elon Musk’s Nonprofit
The boundless potential of space exploration and the preservation of the future of the human race have become the cornerstones of Musk's abiding interests, and toward these he has founded the Musk Foundation, which is dedicated to space exploration and the discovery of renewable and clean energy sources.

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