Elon Reeve Musk (born June 28, 1971) is a South African-born American entrepreneur, investor, and business magnate who has become one of the most transformative and controversial figures of the 21st century. As the driving force behind SpaceX, Tesla, Inc., and X (formerly Twitter), he has fundamentally disrupted the aerospace, automotive, and social media industries. His ventures are propelled by ambitious, civilization-level goals: accelerating the world's transition to sustainable energy and making humanity a multi-planetary species by colonizing Mars.
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| Elon Musk |
Early Life and Education (1971-1995)
Musk was born in Pretoria, South Africa, to Maye Musk, a Canadian model and dietitian, and Errol Musk, a wealthy South African electromechanical engineer. From a young age, Musk was an avid reader and displayed a prodigious aptitude for computing. At 12, he taught himself programming and created a video game called Blastar, which he sold to a computer magazine for approximately $500.
In 1988, at age 17, Musk moved to Canada to attend Queen's University in Kingston, Ontario, partially to avoid mandatory service in the South African military during the apartheid era. In 1992, he transferred to the University of Pennsylvania (UPenn) in the United States. He graduated in 1995 with two bachelor's degrees: one in economics from the Wharton School and one in physics from the College of Arts and Sciences.
That same year, Musk moved to California to pursue a Ph.D. in applied physics and materials science at Stanford University. He dropped out after only two days, deciding instead to capitalize on the burgeoning dot-com boom.
The Dot-Com Millionaire (1995-2002)
Zip2
In 1995, Elon and his brother, Kimbal, founded Zip2 with a small amount of family money. The company provided and licensed online city guide software—essentially an early version of Google Maps and Yelp combined—to newspaper publishers like The New York Times and the Chicago Tribune. In 1999, Compaq Computer acquired Zip2 for $307 million in cash. Musk, then 27, received $22 million for his 7% share.
X.com and PayPal
Musk immediately rolled his Zip2 fortune into his next venture, X.com, a company he co-founded in 1999 with the vision of creating a full-service online bank. In 2000, X.com merged with its main competitor, Confinity, a software company that had developed a popular and simple payment transfer service called PayPal.
Musk, as the largest shareholder, became CEO of the merged entity. However, internal disputes over the company's technical architecture (Musk wanted to move the platform from Unix to Microsoft) led to his ousting as CEO in late 2000 while he was on vacation. He remained on the board.
In October 2002, eBay acquired PayPal for $1.5 billion in stock. As the largest individual shareholder, Musk netted approximately $176 million from the sale. This capital would become the foundation for his next, far riskier, ventures.
The "Bet-It-All" Ventures (2002-2008)
With his new fortune, Musk embarked on two high-risk, capital-intensive projects in industries with enormous barriers to entry: rocketry and electric vehicles.
SpaceX (Founded 2002)
Musk's lifelong passion for space exploration led him to investigate the feasibility of sending a small greenhouse to Mars—a project he called "Mars Oasis"—to capture public imagination and reinvigorate interest in space.
Frustrated by the exorbitant cost of launch vehicles, he traveled to Russia to buy refurbished intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs) but found them to be prohibitively expensive. On the flight back, Musk famously calculated that he could build rockets himself for a fraction of the cost by applying principles of vertical integration.
In 2002, he founded Space Exploration Technologies Corp. (SpaceX) with $100 million of his own money. The company's stated mission is to revolutionize space technology, with the ultimate goal of establishing a self-sustaining colony on Mars. After multiple failures that nearly bankrupted the company, SpaceX's fourth launch of the Falcon 1 in 2008 became the first privately developed liquid-fuel rocket to reach Earth orbit.
Tesla, Inc. (Joined 2004)
Tesla Motors was founded in 2003 by engineers Martin Eberhard and Marc Tarpenning. Musk was not a founder; he was the company's first major investor, leading its $7.5 million Series A funding round in 2004 with $6.5 million of his own money. He joined the board of directors as chairman.
Tesla's mission was to prove that electric vehicles (EVs) could be superior to gasoline-powered cars, starting with a high-end sports car (the Roadster, 2008) and using the profits to build progressively more affordable models.
During the 2008 financial crisis, Tesla was on the brink of collapse. Musk took over as CEO and funded the company with his remaining personal wealth, saving it from bankruptcy. A 2009 lawsuit settlement with Eberhard allows Musk, Eberhard, Tarpenning, and two others to all use the title of "co-founder."
The Industrialist: Scaling Up (2008-Present)
SpaceX Dominance
Under Musk's leadership as CEO and Chief Engineer, SpaceX achieved a series of historic milestones:
Falcon 9 (2010): Its workhorse rocket, which became the world's leading commercial launch vehicle.
Dragon (2012): The first private spacecraft to dock with the International Space Station (ISS).
Reusability (2015): Successfully landed an orbital-class rocket booster (Falcon 9) for the first time, a feat that dramatically reduced the cost of space access.
Crew Dragon (2020): Became the first private company to send astronauts into orbit and to the ISS, ending America's reliance on Russian Soyuz rockets.
Starlink: A satellite constellation designed to provide high-speed internet to the entire globe, now with millions of users.
Starship: Its next-generation, fully reusable super-heavy-lift rocket, designed for missions to the Moon and Mars, which is undergoing active development.
Tesla's Ascent
As Tesla CEO, Musk oversaw the launch of the Model S (2012), the Model X (2015), the mass-market Model 3 (2017), and the Model Y (2020), which became the world's best-selling car. He drove the construction of massive "Gigafactories" in Nevada, New York, Shanghai, Berlin, and Texas to produce batteries and vehicles at scale. In 2016, Tesla acquired SolarCity, a solar panel company founded by his cousins, to create a vertically integrated sustainable energy company offering EVs, solar roofs, and battery storage (Powerwall).
The "Everything" Mogul (2016-Present)
While running SpaceX and Tesla, Musk launched several other companies:
The Boring Company (2016): An infrastructure and tunneling company aimed at alleviating urban traffic with a high-speed, underground public transport system known as the "Loop." Its first major project is operational at the Las Vegas Convention Center.
Neuralink (2016): A neurotechnology company developing implantable brain-computer interfaces (BCIs). Its stated goals are to help people with paralysis control external devices and, in the long term, to create a symbiosis between human and artificial intelligence.
Acquisition of Twitter / X (2022): In one of the most chaotic corporate acquisitions in history, Musk purchased the social media platform Twitter for $44 billion in October 2022. He stated his goal was to protect "free speech" and to use Twitter as an "accelerant" for creating "X, the everything app," modeled after China's WeChat. He took the company private, fired most of its executive team and workforce, and officially rebranded the platform to X in July 2023. Linda Yaccarino was named CEO but resigned in July 2025, with Musk remaining as Chairman and CTO.
xAI (2023): Musk founded a new artificial intelligence company to "understand the nature of the universe." It is intended as a competitor to other major AI labs like OpenAI (which Musk co-founded in 2015 but left in 2018). Its first product is "Grok," a chatbot designed to be "truth-seeking" and "sarcastic." In a major corporate restructuring in March 2025, xAI acquired X Corp.
Impact, Persona, and Personal Life
Musk is a uniquely polarizing figure. To his admirers, he is a visionary genius on par with Thomas Edison or Henry Ford, tackling humanity's biggest problems. To his critics, he is a reckless and erratic leader who over-promises, courts controversy, and flouts regulations (most notably in his long-running public battles with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, or SEC).
His management style is famously intense, and his public statements on X have sparked numerous scandals and influenced everything from stock prices to cryptocurrency markets.
As of 2025, Musk has 14 children with four different women: Canadian author Justine Wilson (mother to twins and triplets); the musician Grimes (mother to X Æ A-Xii, Exa Dark Sideræl, and Techno Mechanicus); Neuralink executive Shivon Zilis (mother to twins Strider and Azure, among others); and conservative influencer Ashley St. Clair. His first son, Nevada, passed away from Sudden Infant Death Syndrome (SIDS) in 2002.
His legacy remains unwritten, but his impact is undeniable. He has forced legacy industries in automotive and aerospace to pivot and innovate, while his direct control of a global "digital town square" and a leading-edge AI company makes him one of the most powerful and consequential individuals of the modern era.