Elon Musk is the man behind the ambitious plan to colonize Mars. He intends to make space transportation affordable for the common man, and then to make Mars habitable and self-sufficient for the first humans to live there in the near future.
The self-taught computer programmer who is also an engineer, innovator and investor who has played a key role in the development of products that help businesses every day, such as B. PayPal, is also the CEO of Tesla Inc., a company specializing in the manufacture of renewable energy vehicles and solar panels.
In 2016, Forbes ranked him 21st in the list of the world’s most powerful people and is currently the 53rd richest person in the world.
biography
Musk was born Elon Reeve Musk on June 28, 1971, in Pretoria, South Africa to a Canadian mother and a South African father. He developed an interest in computers and computing around the age of 10. He later taught himself to code and then wrote the code for a video game that can still be seen online to this day.
During this time, Musk’s parents divorced and his mother moved back to Canada. He chose to stay with his father in South Africa where he attended high school. He first attended Waterkloof House Preparatory School before going to Bryanston High School. He was described at the time as an avid reader, a geek who went along with heavy bullying. After being beaten at school and hospitalized, he transferred to and graduated from Pretoria Boys High School.
After leaving Pennsylvania, Musk enrolled for a Ph.D. in Energy Physics from Stanford University, California. Known for doing the unthinkable, Musk left after just two days to pursue entrepreneurial ambitions that coincided with the internet boom of that decade. Soon after, with the help of some investors, he founded his first company called Zip2 Corporation, an online city guide software for newspapers. Four years after its inception, the company was acquired by Compaq for $307 million in cash and $34 million in stock options. As a share, he received $22 million from the sale.
With enough capital on hand, Musk immediately co-founded another company called X.com, which offers online financial services and payments. After a year of full functionality, the company merged with another software company called Confinity, which had a money transfer service called PayPal. With the money transfer service in focus, the merged company changed its name to PayPal in 2001 and was acquired a year later by eBay for $1.5 billion in shares, of which Musk was the largest shareholder with 11 percent.
His third company, called SpaceX, was founded after PayPal sale. Musk wanted to build a spacecraft for commercial spaceflight, but in the meantime received a contract from NASA to transport the cargo to the International Space Station. So far, he has managed to launch a series of rockets into space with an unmanned capsule to deliver supplies to astronauts and launch satellites into orbit.
In the time between Musk and SpaceX, Tesla Inc. was built and with him at the helm, the company was able to build an electric sports car that can accelerate from 0 to 60 mph in 3.7 seconds and nearly 250 miles between charges. Tesla has currently made General Motors the most valuable automaker in the United States.
Other companies in which Elon Musk plays an active role include SolarCity, Hyperloop, OpenAI, Neuralink, The Boring Company and Thud.
Family – mother brother
Elon Musk’s mother, Maye Musk (née Haldeman), is a model and dietician from Regina, Saskatchewan, Canada. A star in her own right, she has covered a number of magazines including New York and Time Magazine where she appeared nude on the covers. His brother, Kimbal Musk, is a restaurant owner and entrepreneur who owns The Kitchen Cafe, LLC and sits on the boards of Tesla, SpaceX, and Chipotle Mexican Grill. He and Elon founded Zip2 together in 1995 before he moved to New York to enroll at the French Culinary Institute.
Is Elon Musk Married? girlfriend, wife, children
Musk has been married twice, first in 2000 to Canadian author Justine Wilson, with whom he attended Queen’s University. The couple had five children together – twins and triplets – before their split in 2008. After a contentious divorce from his first wife, Musk began dating actress Talulah Riley that same year. The couple married in 2010 but separated in 2012. They remarried a year later, only to finalize their divorce in 2016.
Elon Musk was currently in a relationship with actress Amber Heard.
Short facts about Elon Musk – height, net worth
Birth name: Elon Reeve Musk
Place of Birth: Pretoria, South Africa
Date of Birth: June 28, 1971
Occupation(s): Entrepreneur, engineer and investor
Education: Queen’s University, University of Pennsylvania
Height: 1.88m
Weight: 82kg
Net worth (income and earnings): $19.4 billion