Elon Musk is one of the most famous business people in the world. He has helped innovate many industries, including electric cars and space travel. Elon Musk was born in Pretoria, South Africa, on June 28th, 1971, to a Canadian-born mother and a father. They had immigrated from Canada to South Africa for his job as an engineer at a paper company. Elon’s parents soon divorced when he was seven years old, and his mother moved back to her home country with him, where they lived until she remarried two years later. In 1995, after graduating from college in Canada with degrees in both physics and economics, he flew to California to pursue opportunities there.
Starting with FinTech, before there was “FinTech”
In California, in 1995, Elon started a company called Global Link Information Network, which would later be renamed Zip2, which helped people pay for their purchases online. A few years later, in 1999, he co-founded X.com, which would later merge Confinity, and that company then was known as PayPal. Later eBay eventually acquired PayPal in 2002 for $165 million. Elon Musk then founded SpaceX in 2002 and joined Tesla in 2003. He is the CEO of both companies. In 2010, he became involved with SolarCity as Chairman of the Board.
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Elon Musk’s net worth is estimated to be around $297 billion as of 2021. His work has revolutionized electric cars (Tesla), space travel (SpaceX), and solar energy (SolarCity). He has also shown an interest in sustainable living – his home is powered by solar energy, and he is known to be an avid fan of electric cars. Elon Musk has been married and divorced twice in 2000 and again in 2008 with his second wife, Talulah Riley. He has five sons from two marriages.
Energy, transportation, and mobility
Elon’s work at Tesla was integral to its success when they released their first production car – the Roadster. Elon is also known for being a visionary – he knows there are ways that we can improve our planet, such as sustainable living practices, cleaner energy sources (solar), reducing carbon emissions through space travel by reusing rockets or some other fuel source besides what we use now on Earth. Elon expressed interest in creating a new form of transportation called “Hyperloop,” which would transport passengers between Los Angeles and San Francisco in half an hour.
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He then took a step back from day-to-day operations at Tesla shortly after starting SolarCity, another one of Elon Musk’s ventures worth $580 million. Elon still holds a stake with about 20% in each venture while serving as their chairman; however, he now focuses most of his time on bringing The Boring Company (which seeks to reduce traffic by constructing tunnels) and Neuralink (a brain-computer interface startup) into fruition. Elon also hopes that these new projects will be able to help humans avoid becoming irrelevant against intelligence.
We cannot predict the future, but it’s likely that Elon Musk will unveil some more interesting innovations going forward. If you want to learn more about Elon Musk’s history, you can also watch the video below by SunnyV2 on YouTube.
YouTube: Becoming Elon Musk (Full Documentary)
Photo credit: The feature image has been done by Daniel Oberhaus.
