Entrepreneur and business magnate Elon Reeve Musk (born June 28, 1971) owns several companies. According to estimates of Musk's net worth as of January 2022, he is the richest person in the world. A child of a Canadian mother and a South African father, Musk was raised in Pretoria, South Africa.
A philanthropist and entrepreneur
After founding PayPal,
an Internet money-transfer service, Musk became a multi-millionaire by 33. Musk
makes science fiction dreams a reality as one of the new breed of billionaires
the New York Times calls thrillionaires. SpaceX, based in El Segundo,
California, conducts space exploration. Launched in 2005, SpaceX hopes to set
up a Mars colony one day and develop space tourism.
Musk had an interest in
computer science and video games by age 10. Musk acquired a Commodore VIC-20 at
this time. The code for a video game that he created, called Blastar, was sold
to PC and Office Technology magazine for approximately $500
when he was 12. Musk faced bullying throughout his childhood due to his shy and
introverted nature. He was once hospitalized after being thrown down a flight
of stairs by a group of boys. Elon Musk attended both Waterkloof
House Preparatory School and Bryanston High School before graduating from
Pretoria Boys High School.
Become a citizen
He has been a citizen of three countries: South Africa, Canada, and the United States since 1971.
Education
He graduated from the University of Pennsylvania with a BS and a BA.
An entrepreneurial career
Zip2
The three founding members of Zip2 with angel investor funding launched the company in 1995. A small office rented in Palo Alto housed the venture. The company developed and marketed an Internet city guide with maps and directions, similar to Yellow Pages.
X.com and PayPal
Musk co-founded X.com in
1999, an e-mail payment service and online financial
services company. Over 200,000 users joined the service within its first
months, making it one of the first federally-insured online banks. The X.com
service was less popular than Confinity's PayPal money-transfer service.
- He is the founder and CEO and
Chief Engineer of SpaceX.
- Tesla CEO and chief architect.
- A co-founder of The Boring
Company and X.com (now a PayPal subsidiary).
- Founders of Neuralink, OpenAI,
and Zip2.
Nonprofits and donations
Musk leads the Musk
Foundation, which provides solar-powered energy systems in disaster areas,
among other projects. The foundation has contributed over 350 times since 2002.
Nearly half went to scientific research and education nonprofits. In addition
to the Wikimedia Foundation and the University of Pennsylvania, Kimbal's Big
Green is another notable beneficiary. The foundation's website was only
33 words in plain text, which Vox described as "entertaining in its
simplicity and yet strikingly opaque". Some critics have
expressed their disappointment with the foundation's relatively modest
donation. He donated $25 million to non-profits between 2002 and 2018, with
almost half of that going to Musk's OpenAI. Forbes awarded Musk a philanthropic
score of 1 in 2020 because he had given away less than 1% of his net worth.
In addition, Musk is also one of the trustees of the X Prize Foundation. As a prize, he will donate $100 million to whoever develops the best carbon capture technology by 2021.
Wealth
Forbes
magazine's estimate of Musk's net worth from 2012 to 2021
In 2002, Musk made $165
million from the sale of PayPal to eBay. In 2012, he was the first billionaire
to appear on Forbes's Billionaires List.
Musk had a net worth of
$27 billion as of the beginning of 2020. According to net worth at the end of
last year, he owned around 20% of Tesla shares. His net worth fluctuated over
this period.
