business biography elon musk

Real Time Net Worth

• Elon Musk cofounded six companies, including electric car maker Tesla, rocket producer SpaceX and tunneling startup Boring Company.
• He owns about 12% of Tesla excluding options, but has pledged more than half his shares as collateral for personal loans of up to $3.5 billion.
• In early 2024, a Delaware judge voided Musk's 2018 deal to receive options equaling an additional 9% of Tesla. Forbes has discounted the options by 50% pending Musk's appeal.
• SpaceX, founded in 2002, is worth nearly $180 billion after a December 2023 tender offer of up to $750 million; SpaceX stock has quintupled its value in four years.
• Musk bought Twitter in 2022 for $44 billion, after later trying to back out of the deal. He owns an estimated 74% of the company, now called X.
• Forbes estimates that Musk's stake in X is now worth nearly 70% less than he paid for it based on investor Fidelity's valuation of the company as of December 2023.

Forbes Lists

I operate on the physics approach to analysis. You boil things down to the first principles or fundamental truths in a particular area and then you reason up from there. Elon Musk

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A Complete Timeline of Elon Musk’s Business Endeavors

W ith Elon Musk close to claiming a new role as owner of Twitter after a winning bid to purchase it for $44 billion this week , the billionaire entrepreneur can add the social media app to a long list of business ventures he has led, invested in, and supported over his lengthy career . Here’s a timeline of Musk’s most notable business endeavors—both successful and not—over the past three decades.

Along with his brother, Musk founded Zip2, an online business directory, as an online alternative to the standard paper yellow pages. (Google would not launch until 1998.) He sold it for over $300 million in 1999 to Compaq Computer Corporation. Musk was ousted as CEO in 1996, however, when the board of directors decided to install a more experienced leader in his stead.

1999: X.com

Musk invested some of his windfall from the Zip2 sale into his next venture: X.com, an online bank, launched with three other co-founders. X.com’s business model was innovative for its time, in that it incentivized sign-ups and eased the process of transferring funds digitally, with no need for mail or traditional banking infrastructure. In an interview with CBS MarketWatch at the time of the launch, Musk explained his business: “There are no minimum balances. You can open an account and receive a $20 promotional offer in your checking account. You can move $8 to your S&P fund, $3 each to your money market and bond fund, and be left with $6 in your checking.”

He went on to expand more philosophically on the new company: “In my view, the Internet had gone through a couple of stages and was ready for another stage,” he said. “The first stage was where people could trust the Internet for information. This was perhaps ’95 or ’96. The second was to trust the Internet for purchases and begin to use credit cards online to buy books, toys, pet food and that kind of thing. I think we’re at the third stage now where people are ready to use the Internet as their main financial repository.”

2000: PayPal

X.com merged with software company Confinity just one year later, forming PayPal , a secure online payments platform with a foundation in payments conducted for PalmPilots. PayPal would go on to be one of his most successful companies; Musk and his partners, including Confinity co-founder Peter Thiel , sold it to eBay in 2002 for a $1.5 billion stock deal. However, it was a rough start. PayPal was named at one point as one of the “worst business ideas” of 1999, and Musk himself was again removed from his role as CEO while on honeymoon in 2000 , replaced by the board with Thiel.

After going public on the NASDAQ stock exchange in 2002, eBay snapped up PayPal. They would hold onto PayPal until 2015, spinning it off into a separate entity.

2002: SpaceX

Musk next set his sights on a lofty goal: space exploration, and the future colonization Mars. In the past 20 years, SpaceX has dealt with a series of rocket launch failures and Starship explosions. But it has also become a heavy-hitter in the space industry with a number of records to its name, including being the first private company to send a craft to the International Space Station and send astronauts to orbit. It is known for its reusable rockets.

SpaceX is also behind the development of Starlink , a constellation of satellites intended to offer commercial internet service around the globe.

2002: The Musk Foundation

Founded as a 501(c)3 non-profit organization, the Musk Foundation is one of Musk’s least-talked-about endeavors. Its stated goals including supporting renewable energy and pediatric research and education, and the developing of “safe artificial intelligence to benefit humanity.” Between 2002 and 2018 it handed out around $25 million , about half of that to OpenAI, a company owned by Musk himself. (Since 2012, Musk has also been a signatory of The Giving Pledge, in which many of the world’s richest people have committed to giving away the majority of their wealth at some point.)

2004: Tesla

These days, Musk is perhaps best known for his leadership at Tesla , the electric car company named after famed inventor Nikola Tesla. Valued at over $1 trillion at one point in 2021, Tesla was founded in 2003 by two other men; Musk entered a Series A funding round with an investment of $6.5 million, and eventually took an increasingly active role in the company. He has been CEO since 2008. The Model 3 is the most popular electric car in production today, with over one million units sold globally.

Tesla has come in for its fair share of controversy , however, from dealing with long production and fulfillment delays to safety issues with its vehicles and employee complaints about working conditions and management practices.

2006: SolarCity

Founded by his cousins in 2006, SolarCity received Musk’s patronage from the offset; he was their primary financial backer. A solar energy company that became the leading residential solar installer in the U.S. by the mid-2010s, SolarCity installed solar energy systems that were leased to residential users. Musk, via Tesla, acquired SolarCity in 2016 for $2.6 billion in stock and incorporated it into its operations as Tesla Energy.

2015: OpenAI

Musk co-founded OpenAI as a non-profit in 2015, with a for-profit artificial intelligence research lab component; it was started with a $1 billion collective pledge from its founders. Musk has been open about his interest in developing “friendly” AI that supports humanity, but he ended up resigning from the board in 2018 due to conflicts with Tesla’s AI projects.

2016: Neuralink

Another research endeavor, Musk co-founded Neuralink in 2016 with the goal of working on “brain-machine interfaces,” or BMIs, that can be implanted directly into the body. Neuroscientists have been skeptical of Neuralink’s research and claims. While they currently conduct experiments on animals, they moved plans to begin working on human subjects to 2022.

2016: The Boring Company

Founded with the intention of helping dispel city traffic via underground tunnels as a subsidiary of SpaceX, the Boring Company is one of Musk’s side projects. Its aim: build tunnels. They first experimented by tunneling under the SpaceX factory in California. The Boring Company became an independent entity in 2018, and in 2021 completed a tunnel project in Las Vegas to shuttle visitors beneath the Las Vegas Convention Center. It is currently working on further tunnel projects in Las Vegas for underground transport. Other projects are primarily speculative.

Musk once spoke boldly about an ambitious “Hyperloop” system, creating tunnels across the country to revolutionize and speed up underground mass transport between cities. However, Hyperloop mentions have been scrubbed from the Boring Company’s website.

2022: Twitter

After buying up enough stock to make him a majority shareholder by April 1, Musk made the move to purchase Twitter for $44 billion at the end of April. His plans include making Twitter “better than ever” by “enhancing the product with new features, making the algorithms open source to increase trust, defeating the spam bots, and authenticating all humans.”

🚀💫♥️ Yesss!!! ♥️💫🚀 pic.twitter.com/0T9HzUHuh6 — Elon Musk (@elonmusk) April 25, 2022

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Early Life and Education

Notable accomplishments, personal eccentricities, the bottom line.

• Business Leaders
• Entrepreneurs

Who Is Elon Musk?

Nathan Laine / Bloomberg / Getty Images

Elon Musk, born in Pretoria, South Africa, is one of the most successful entrepreneurs of all time. Musk has achieved global fame as the chief executive officer (CEO) of electric automobile maker Tesla ( TSLA ) and the private space company SpaceX. Musk was an early investor in several tech companies, and in October 2022, he completed a deal to take X (formerly Twitter) private.

His success and personal style have given rise to comparisons to other colorful tycoons from U.S. history, including Steve Jobs , Howard Hughes, and Henry Ford . He was named the richest person in the world in 2021, surpassing Amazon ( AMZN ) founder Jeff Bezos. Musk is the richest person in the world as of Feb. 15, 2024.

Let’s look briefly at the life of the man who has scaled the pinnacle of the business world.

Key Takeaways

• Elon Musk is the charismatic CEO of electric car maker Tesla and rocket manufacturer SpaceX.
• Following a contested process, Musk completed a deal to buy the company behind X in October 2022, becoming the owner of the social media company.
• Born and raised in South Africa, Musk spent time in Canada before moving to the United States.
• Educated at the University of Pennsylvania in physics, Musk started getting his feet wet as a serial tech entrepreneur with early successes like Zip2 and X.com, which merged with a company that became PayPal.
• Musk has behaved eccentrically from time to time.

Bailey Mariner / Investopedia

Elon Reeve Musk was born in 1971 in Pretoria, South Africa, the oldest of three children. His father was a South African engineer, and his mother was a Canadian model and nutritionist. After his parents divorced in 1980, Musk lived primarily with his father. He would later dub his father “a terrible human being...almost every evil thing you could possibly think of, he has done.”

“I had a terrible upbringing. I had a lot of adversity growing up. One thing I worry about with my kids is they don’t face enough adversity,” Musk would later say.

Bullied as a Child

Musk attended the private, English-speaking Waterkloof House Preparatory School—he started a year early—and later graduated from Pretoria Boys High School. A self-described bookworm, he made few friends in those places.

“They got my best (expletive) friend to lure me out of hiding so they could beat me up. And that (expletive) hurt,” Musk said. “For some reason, they decided that I was it, and they were going to go after me nonstop. That’s what made growing up difficult. For a number of years, there was no respite. You get chased around by gangs at school who tried to beat the (expletive) out of me, and then I’d come home, and it would just be awful there as well.”

Early Accomplishments

Technology became an escape for Musk. At 10, he became acquainted with programming using a Commodore VIC-20, an early and relatively inexpensive home computer. Before long, Musk had become proficient enough to create Blastar—a video game in the style of Space Invaders. He sold the BASIC code for the game to a PC magazine for $500.

In one telling incident from his childhood, Musk and his brother planned to open a video game arcade near their school. Their parents nixed the plan.

Musk’s College Years

At 17, Musk moved to Canada. He would later obtain Canadian citizenship through his mother.

After emigrating to Canada, Musk enrolled at Queen’s University in Kingston, Ontario. It was there that he met Justine Wilson, an aspiring writer. They would marry and have six sons together, a first son, twins, and then triplets, before divorcing in 2008.

Entering the U.S.

After two years at Queen’s University, Musk transferred to the University of Pennsylvania. He took on two majors, but his time there wasn’t all work and no play. With a fellow student, he bought a 10-bedroom fraternity house, which they used as an ad hoc nightclub.

Musk graduated with a bachelor of science degree in physics, in addition to a bachelor of arts in economics from the  Wharton School . The two majors foreshadowed Musk’s career, but it was physics that left the deepest impression.

“(Physics is) a good framework for thinking,” he would say later. “Boil things down to their fundamental truths and reason up from there.”

Musk was 24 years old when he moved to California to pursue a Ph.D. in applied physics at Stanford University. But, with the Internet exploding and Silicon Valley booming, Musk had entrepreneurial visions dancing in his head. He left the Ph.D. program after just two days.

In 1995, with $15,000 and his younger brother Kimbal at his side, Musk started Zip2, a web software company that would help newspapers develop online city guides.

In 1999, Zip2 was acquired by Compaq Computer Corp. for $341 million. Musk used his Zip2 buyout money to create X.com, a fintech venture before that term was in wide circulation.

X.com merged with a money transfer firm called Confinity, and the resulting company came to be known as PayPal. Peter Thiel ousted Musk as PayPal CEO before eBay ( EBAY ) bought the payments company for $1.5 billion, but Musk still profited from the buyout via his 11.7% PayPal stake.

“My proceeds from PayPal after tax were about $180 million,” Musk said in a 2018 interview. “$100 (million) of that went into SpaceX, $70 (million) into Tesla, and $10 (million) into SolarCity. And I literally had to borrow money for rent.”

In 2017, Musk purchased the X.com domain name back from PayPal, citing its sentimental value.

Musk became involved with the electric cars venture as an early investor in 2004, ultimately contributing about $6.3 million, to begin with, and joined the team, including engineer Martin Eberhard, to help run a company then known as Tesla Motors. Following a series of disagreements, Eberhard was ousted in 2007, and an interim CEO was hired until Musk assumed control as CEO and product architect. Under his watch, Tesla has become the world’s most valuable automaker.

In addition to producing electric vehicles, Tesla maintains a robust presence in the solar energy space, thanks to its acquisition of SolarCity. The company currently produces two rechargeable solar batteries. The smaller Powerwall was developed for home backup power and off-the-grid use, while the larger Powerpack is intended for commercial or electric utility grid use.

Musk used most of the proceeds from his PayPal stake to found Space Exploration Technologies Corp., the rocket's developer commonly known as SpaceX. By his own account, Musk spent $100 million to found SpaceX in 2002 .

Under Musk’s leadership, SpaceX landed several high-profile contracts with the U.S. National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) and the U.S. Air Force to design space launch rockets. Musk has publicized plans to send an astronaut to Mars by 2025 in a collaborative effort with NASA.

The company was founded in March 2006 as Twitter by Jack Dorsey, Noah Glass, Biz Stone, and Evan Williams. Originally a private company, it went public in November 2013. It raised $1.8 billion through its initial public offering (IPO) .

Musk joined the site in June 2009. A frequent poster on the messaging network, Musk disclosed a 9.2% stake in X in April 2022. The company responded by offering Musk a seat on the board, which he accepted before declining days later. Musk then sent a bear hug letter to the board proposing to buy the company at $54.20 per share.

The company’s board adopted a poison pill provision to discourage Musk from accumulating an even larger stake, but they ultimately accepted Musk’s offer after he disclosed $46.5 billion in committed financing for the deal in a securities filing.

In July 2022, Musk attempted to cancel the deal , arguing that X had failed to provide certain information regarding fake accounts. The company sued Musk to require him to complete the deal.

After months of legal wrangling, the billionaire’s plan to buy the social media platform came to fruition, and Musk took control of the company on Oct. 28, 2022. The company was renamed X the following year.

During his May 8, 2021, appearance on the TV show Saturday Night Live , Musk revealed that he has Asperger’s syndrome, an autism spectrum disorder. “I’m actually making history tonight as the first person with Asperger’s to host SNL . Or at least the first to admit it,” he said. How does the neurodevelopment condition manifest itself? “I don’t always have a lot of intonation or variation in how I speak, which I’m told makes for great comedy,” Musk explained.

On Sept. 7, 2018, Musk smoked cannabis during a filmed interview for a podcast.

Just a month earlier, Musk posted an infamous tweet claiming he was considering taking Tesla private and had secured the needed funding. Musk subsequently settled a Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) complaint alleging he knowingly misled investors with the tweet by paying a $20 million fine along with the same penalty for Tesla and agreeing to let Tesla’s lawyers approve tweets with material corporate information before posting.

In March 2022, Musk filed a court motion to overturn the consent decree stemming from that case. In April 2022 during a live TED Talk, Musk called the SEC regulators on the case “bastards.”

Is Elon Musk Married?

Elon Musk has been divorced three times—twice from his second wife, Talulah Riley. From 2018 to 2022, he was in a relationship with Canadian singer/songwriter Claire Elise Boucher, professionally known as Grimes, with whom he had a son in 2020, a daughter in 2022, and a third child revealed in 2023. They remain best friends. He also has six boys from his first marriage to Justine Musk. He also shares twins with Shivon Zilis. Musk has a total of 11 children.

How Rich Is Elon Musk?

Elon Musk’s net worth was estimated at $205 billion as of Feb. 15, 2024, making him the wealthiest person on the planet.

Was Elon Musk Born Rich?

No, Elon Musk was born into a middle-class family. In 1995, when he founded X.com, he reportedly had more than $100,000 in student debt and struggled to pay rent.

What Does Elon Musk Do at Tesla?

Elon Musk is officially listed as the co-founder and chief executive officer of Tesla on the company’s website. In a 2021 securities filing, the company disclosed an additional Musk title as “Technoking of Tesla.”

What Companies Does Elon Musk Own?

Elon Musk is a large stakeholder in several companies, including Tesla, SpaceX, The Boring Co., Neuralink, and X Corp .

Musk’s early interests in philosophy, science fiction, and fantasy novels are reflected in his idealism and concern with human progress—and in his business career. He works in fields he has identified as crucial to humanity’s future, notably the transition to renewable energy sources, space exploration, and the Internet.

Musk has defied critics, disrupted industries, and made the most money anyone ever has from PayPal, Tesla Motors, SolarCity, and SpaceX—game changers all, despite the inevitable missteps.

The New York Times. “ Elon Musk Has Become the World’s Richest Person, as Tesla’s Stock Rallies .”

Bloomberg. “ Bloomberg Billionaires Index .”

Rolling Stone. “ Elon Musk: The Architect of Tomorrow .”

Bloomberg. “ Bloomberg Billionaires Index: Elon Musk .”

The Washington Post. “ The 22 Most Memorable Quotes from the New Elon Musk Book, Ranked .”

Gizmodo. “ Elon Musk: The Tech Maverick Making Tony Stark Look Dull .”

Anna Crowley Redding, via Google Books. “ Elon Musk: A Mission to Save the World .” Feiwel & Friends, 2019.

Esquire. “ Elon Musk: Triumph of His Will .”

Marie Claire. “ ‘I Was a Starter Wife’: Inside America’s Messiest Divorce .”

CNBC. “ Elon Musk Ran a Nightclub Out of His College Frat House to Make Money for Rent .”

Inc. “ Elon Musk Just Said MBAs Are Overrated, and He’s Dead Right .”

TED. “ Elon Musk: The Mind Behind Tesla, SpaceX, SolarCity... ,” read transcript, 19:19 (Video).

Fortune. “ Why Elon Musk Dropped Out of Stanford After Only Two Days .”

X. “ Elon Musk, Dec. 28, 2019, 6:22 PM .”

CNBC. “ Elon Musk Tried to Pitch the Head of the Yellow Pages Before the Internet Boom: ‘He Threw the Book at Me’ .”

Compaq Computer, via U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. “ Form 10-Q for the Quarterly Period Ended Sept. 30, 1999 ,” Page 6.

PayPal, via U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. “ Form S-1 ,” Page 9.

PayPal, via U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. “ Form 10-K for the Fiscal Year Ended Dec. 31, 2001 ,” Pages 75–78.

U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. “ Exhibit 99.1: eBay to Acquire PayPal .”

YouTube. “ Elon Musk Interview [I Made 180 Million Dollars but Still Had to Borrow Money for Rent] ,” 1:58–2:14 (Video).

X. “ Elon Musk, July 10, 2017, 9:10 PM .”

Wired. “ How Elon Musk Turned Tesla into the Car Company of the Future .”

Tesla. “ Tesla and SolarCity .”

Tesla. “ Powerwall .”

Tesla, via Internet Archive. “ Powerpack .”

SpaceX. “ Updates .”

YouTube. “ People Should Arrive on Mars in 2025 .” (Video)

Britannica. " X ."

X. " Elon Musk ."

U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. “ Schedule 13G, March 14, 2022 .”

X. “ Parag Agrawal, April 5, 2022, 8:32 AM .”

X. “ Parag Agrawal, April 10, 2022, 11:13 PM .”

U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. “ Amendment No. 2 to Schedule 13D/A, April 13, 2022 .”

U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. “ Form 8-K, April 15, 2022 .”

U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. “ Amendment No. 3 to Schedule 13D, April 20, 2022 .”

CNBC. “ Elon Musk Now in Charge of Twitter, CEO and CFO Have Left, Sources Say .”

The New York Times. " From Twitter to X: Elon Musk Begins Erasing an Iconic Internet Brand ."

YouTube. “ Elon Musk Monologue—SNL .” (Video)

YouTube. “ Joe Rogan Experience #1169—Elon Musk ,” 2:10–2:11 (Video).

X. “ Elon Musk, Aug. 7, 2018, 12:48 PM .”

U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. “ Elon Musk Settles SEC Fraud Charges; Tesla Charged with and Resolves Securities Law Charge .”

U.S. District Court, Southern District of New York. “ Defendant Elon Musk’s Notice of Motion to Quash & to Terminate Consent Decree .”

YouTube. “ Elon Musk Talks Twitter, Tesla and How His Brain Works—Live at TED2022 ,” 27:15–29:11 (Video).

Vanity Fair. “ Elon Musk Splits with Actress Talulah Riley for the Second (or Third?) Time .”

TODAY. " Who Are Elon Musk's Children? "

X. “ Grimes, March 10, 2022, 11:32 AM .”

Vanity Fair. “‘ Infamy Is Kind of Fun’: Grimes on Music, Mars, and Her Secret New Baby with Elon Musk .”

The Economic Times. “ Elon Musk Had Over $100K of Student Debt When He Started 1st Company, Turned His Room into Nightclub to Pay Rent .”

Tesla. “ Elon Musk .”

U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. “ Form 8-K, March 15, 2021 .”

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Biography of Elon Musk

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Elon Musk is best known for being the co-founder of PayPal, a money-transfer service for Web consumers, for founding Space Exploration Technologies or SpaceX, the first private company to launch a rocket into space and for founding Tesla Motors, which builds electric cars.

Famous Quotes from Musk

• "Failure is an option here. If things are not failing, you are not innovating enough."
• "It is where great things are possible" [Musk on moving to the USA]

Background and Education

Elon Musk was born in South Africa, in 1971. His father was an engineer and his mother is a nutritionist. An avid fan of computers, by the age of twelve, Musk had written the code for his own video game, a space game called Blastar, which the preteen sold for a profit.

Elon Musk attended Queen's University in Kingston, Ontario, Canada, and transferred to the University of Pennsylvania, where he earned two bachelor's degrees in economics and physics. He was admitted to Stanford University in California with the intention of earning a PhD in energy physics. However, Musk's life was about to change dramatically.

Zip2 Corporation

In 1995, at the age of twenty-four, Elon Musk dropped out of Stanford University after just two days of classes to start his first company called Zip2 Corporation. Zip2 Corporation was an online city guide that provided content for the new online versions of the New York Times and the Chicago Tribune newspapers. Musk struggled to keep his new business afloat, eventually selling majority control of Zip2 to venture capitalists in exchange for a $3.6 million investment.

In 1999, the Compaq Computer Corporation bought Zip2 for $307 million. Out of that amount, Elon Musk's share was $22 million. Musk had become a millionaire at the age of twenty-eight. That same year Musk started his next company.

Online Banking

In 1999, Elon Musk started X.com with $10 million dollars from the sale of Zip2. X.com was an online bank, and Elon Musk is credited with inventing a method of securely transferring money using a recipient's e-mail address.

In 2000, X.com bought a company called Confinity, which had started an Internet money-transfer process called PayPal. Elon Musk renamed X.com/Confinity Paypal and dropped the company's online banking focus to concentrate on becoming a global payment transfer provider.

In 2002, eBay bought Paypal for $1.5 billion and Elon Musk made $165 million in eBay stock from the deal.

Space Exploration Technologies

In 2002, Elon Musk started SpaceX aka the Space Exploration Technologies. Elon Musk is a long-standing member of the Mars Society , a nonprofit organization that supports the exploration of Mars, and Musk is interested in establishing a greenhouse on Mars. SpaceX has been developing rocket technology to enable Musk's project.

Tesla Motors

In 2004, Elon Musk cofounded Tesla Motors, of which he is the sole product architect. Tesla Motors builds electric vehicles . The company has built an electric sports car, the Tesla Roadster, the Model S, an economy model four door electric sedan and plans to build more affordable compact cars in the future.

In 2006, Elon Musk co-founded SolarCity, a photovoltaics products and services company with his cousin Lyndon Rive.

In December 2015, Elon Musk announced the creation of OpenAI, a research company to develop artificial intelligence for the benefit of humanity.

In 2016, Musk created Neuralink, a neurotechnology startup company with a mission to integrate the human brain with artificial intelligence. The aim is to create devices that can be implanted in the human brain and merge human beings with software.

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Elon Musk, a Canadian: How Tesla’s man was shaped by the country of his mother’s birth

This article was published more than 6 months ago. Some information may no longer be current.

The cover of Walter Isaacson's new book titled 'Elon Musk'. Supplied

Walter Isaacson is the author of biographies of Elon Musk, Jennifer Doudna, Leonardo da Vinci, Steve Jobs, Albert Einstein, Benjamin Franklin, and Henry Kissinger. He teaches history at Tulane and was the editor of Time and the CEO of CNN.

When he turned age 17, Elon Musk began pushing both his mother and father, trying to convince them to move from South Africa to the United States and take him and his siblings. Neither was interested. “So then I was like, ‘Well, I’m just going to go by myself,’” he says.

He first tried to get U.S. citizenship on the grounds that his mother’s father had been born in Minnesota, but that failed because his mother had been born in Canada and had never claimed U.S. citizenship. So he concluded that getting to Canada might be an easier first step. He went to the Canadian consulate on his own, got application forms for a passport, and filled them out not only for himself but for his mother brother, and sister (but not father). The approvals came through in late May, 1989.

Now known primarily as the chief executive of the electric-car company Tesla , Mr. Musk was shaped in a variety of ways by the three years he spent in Canada. The South Africa of his childhood was a violent place that made him a callous risk-taker; Canada, by contrast, was a friendly place where he didn’t always have to be on guard. He was able, especially at Queen’s University, to develop true friendships for the first time. And he also found his first mentor, from whom he learned lessons about how banks worked, and didn’t, that would influence his career from his cofounding of PayPal to his attempts to transform X, formerly known as Twitter , into a payments platform.

When Elon left South Africa, his father gave him US$2,000 in traveller’s cheques and his mother provided him with another US$2,000 by cashing out a stock account she had opened with the money she won in a beauty contest as a teenager. Otherwise, what he mainly had with him when he arrived in Montreal was a list of his mother’s relatives he had never met.

He planned to call his mother’s uncle, but discovered that he had left Montreal . So he went to a youth hostel, where he shared a room with five other people. “I was used to South Africa, where people will just rob and kill you,” he says. “So I slept on my backpack until I realized that not everyone was a murderer.” He wandered the town marveling that people did not have bars on their windows.

After a week, he bought a US$100 Greyhound Discovery Pass that allowed him to travel by bus anywhere in Canada for six months. He had a second cousin his age, Mark Teulon, who lived on a farm in Saskatchewan province not far from Moose Jaw, where his grandparents had lived, so he headed there.

The bus, which stopped at every hamlet, took days to wander across Canada. At one stop, he got off to find lunch and, just as the bus was leaving, ran to jump back on. Unfortunately, the driver had taken off his suitcase with his traveller’s cheques and clothes. All he had now was the knapsack of books he carried everywhere. The difficulty of getting traveller’s cheques replaced (it took weeks) was an early taste of how the financial-payments system needed disruption.

When he got to the town near his cousin’s farm, he used some of the change he had in his pocket to call. “Hey, it’s Elon, your cousin from South Africa,” he said. “I’m at the bus station.” The cousin showed up with his father, took him to a Sizzler steak house, and invited him to stay at their wheat farm, where he was put to work cleaning grain bins and helping to raise a barn. There he celebrated his eighteenth birthday with a cake they baked with “Happy Birthday Elon” written in chocolate icing.

After six weeks, he got back on the bus and headed for Vancouver to stay with his mother’s half-brother. When he went to an employment office, he saw that most jobs paid US$5 an hour. But there was one that paid US$18 an hour, cleaning out the boilers in the lumber mill. This involved donning a hazmat suit and shimmying through a small tunnel that led to the chamber where the wood pulp was being boiled while shoveling out the lime that had caked on the walls. “If the person at the end of the tunnel didn’t remove the goo fast enough, you would be trapped while sweating your guts out,” he recalls. “It was like a Dickensian steampunk nightmare filled with dark pipes and the sound of jackhammers.”

While Elon was in Vancouver, his mother, Maye Musk, flew from South Africa, having decided that she wanted to move as well. She sent back scouting reports to Elon’s sister, Tosca. Vancouver was too cold and rainy, she wrote. Montreal was exciting, but people there spoke French. Toronto , she concluded, was where they should go. Tosca promptly sold their house and furniture in South Africa, then she joined their mother in Toronto, where Elon also moved. His brother, Kimbal, stayed behind in Pretoria to finish his last year in high school.

At first they all lived in a one-bedroom apartment, with Tosca and her mother sharing a bed while Elon slept on the couch. There was little money. Maye remembers crying when she spilled some milk because she didn’t have enough to buy any more.

Tosca got a job at a hamburger joint, Elon as an intern in Microsoft’s Toronto office, and Maye at the university and a modeling agency, and she also worked as a diet consultant. “I worked every day and also four nights a week,” she says. “I took off one afternoon, Sunday, to do the laundry and get groceries. I didn’t even know what my kids were doing, because I was hardly at home.”

After a few months, they were making enough money to afford a rent-controlled three-bedroom apartment. It had felt wallpaper, which Maye insisted that Elon rip down, and a horrid carpet. They were going to buy a US$200 replacement carpet, but Tosca insisted on a thicker one for US$300 because Kimbal was coming over to join them and would sleep on the floor. Their second big purchase was a computer for Elon.

He had no friends or social life in Toronto, and he spent most of his time reading or working on the computer. Tosca, on the contrary, was a saucy teenager, eager to go out. “I’m coming with you,” Elon would declare, not wanting to be lonely. “No you’re not,” she would reply. But when he insisted, she ordered, “You have to stay ten feet away from me at all times.” He did. He would walk behind her and her friends, carrying a book to read whenever they went into a club or party.

Mr. Musk’s college-admissions test scores were not especially notable. On his second round of the SAT tests, he got a 670 out of 800 on his verbal exam and a 730 on math. He narrowed his choices to two universities that were an easy drive from Toronto: Waterloo and Queen’s. “Waterloo was definitely better for engineering, but it didn’t seem great from a social standpoint,” he says. “There were few girls there.” He felt he knew computer science and engineering as well as any of the professors at both places, but he desperately desired a social life. “I didn’t want to spend my undergraduate time with a bunch of dudes.” So in the fall of 1990 he enrolled at Queen’s.

He was placed on the “international floor” of one of the dorms, where, on the first day, he met a student named Navaid Farooq, who became his first real and lasting friend outside of his family. Mr. Farooq’s father was Pakistani and his mother Canadian, and he was raised in Nigeria and Switzerland, where his parents worked for United Nations organizations. Like Elon, he had made no close friends in high school. At Queen’s, he and Mr. Musk quickly bonded over their interests in computer and board games, obscure history and science fiction. “For me and Elon,” Mr. Farooq says, “it was probably the first place we were socially accepted and could be ourselves.”

During his first year, Mr. Musk got A’s in Business, Economics, Calculus, and Computer Programming, but he got B’s in Accounting, Spanish, and Industrial Relations. The following year, he took another course in Industrial Relations, which studies the dealings between workers and management. Again, he got a B. He later told the Queen’s alumni magazine that the most important thing he learned during his two years there was “how to work collaboratively with smart people and make use of the Socratic method to achieve commonality of purpose,” a skill, like those of industrial relations, that future colleagues would deem had been only partly honed.

He was more interested in late-night philosophy discussions about the meaning of life. “I was really hungry for that,” he says, “because until then I had no friends I could talk to about these things.” But most of all, he became immersed, with Mr. Farooq at his side, in the world of board and computer games.

Mr. Musk had enjoyed all types of video games as a teenager in South Africa, including first-person shooters and adventure quests, but at college he became more focused on the genre known as strategy games, ones that involve two or more players competing to build an empire using high-level strategy, resource management, supply-chain logistics, and tactical thinking.

While he was at Queen’s, the first great computer-based strategy game was released: Civilization . In it, players compete to build a society from prehistory to the present by choosing what technologies to develop and production facilities to build. Mr. Musk moved his desk so that he could sit on his bed and Mr. Farooq on a chair to face off and play the game. “We completely entered a zone for hours until we were exhausted,” Mr. Farooq says. They moved on to Warcraft: Orcs and Humans , where a key part of the strategy is to develop a sustainable supply of resources, such as metals from mines. After hours of playing, they would take a break for a meal, and Elon would describe the moment in the game when he knew he was going to win. “I am wired for war,” he told Mr. Farooq.

One class at Queen’s used a strategy game in which teams competed in a simulation of growing a business. The players could decide the prices of their products, the amount spent on advertising, what profits to plow back into research, and other variables. Mr. Musk figured out how to reverse-engineer the logic that controlled the simulation, so he was able to win every time.

When Kimbal moved to Canada and joined Elon as a student at Queen’s, the brothers developed a routine. They would read the newspaper and pick out the person they found most interesting. Elon was not one of those eager-beaver types who liked to attract and charm mentors, so the more gregarious Kimbal took the lead in cold-calling the person. “If we were able to get through on the phone, they usually would have lunch with us,” he says.

One they picked was Peter Nicholson, the executive in charge of strategic planning at Scotiabank. Mr. Nicholson was an engineer with a master’s degree in physics and a PhD in math. When Kimbal got through to him, he agreed to have lunch with the boys. Their mother took them shopping at Eaton’s department store, where the purchase of a US$99 suit got you a free shirt and tie. At lunch they discussed philosophy and physics and the nature of the universe. Mr. Nicholson offered them summer jobs, inviting Elon to work directly with him on his three-person strategic planning team.

Mr. Nicholson, then forty-nine, and Elon had fun together solving math puzzles and weird equations. “I was interested in the philosophical side of physics and how it related to reality,” Mr. Nicholson says. “I didn’t have a lot of other people to talk to about these things.” They also discussed what had become Mr. Musk’s passion: space travel.

When Elon went with Mr. Nicholson’s daughter, Christie, to a party one evening, his first question was, “Do you ever think about electric cars?” As he later admitted, it was not the world’s best come-on line.

One topic Mr. Musk researched for Mr. Nicholson was Latin American debt. Banks had made billions in loans to countries such as Brazil and Mexico that could not be repaid, and in 1989 the U.S. Treasury secretary, Nicholas Brady, packaged these debt obligations into tradable securities known as “Brady Bonds.” Because these bonds were backed by the U.S. government, Mr. Musk believed that they would always be worth 50 cents on the dollar. However, some were selling as low as 20 cents.

Mr. Musk figured that Scotiabank could make billions by buying the bonds at that cheap price, and he called the Goldman Sachs trading desk in New York to make sure they were available. “Yeah, how much you want?” the gruff trader on the phone responded. “Would it be possible to get five million?” Mr. Musk asked, putting on a deep and serious voice. When the trader said that would be no problem, Mr. Musk quickly hung up. “I was like, ‘Jackpot, no-lose proposition here,’ " he says. “I ran to tell Peter about it and thought they would give me some money to do it.” But the bank rejected the idea. The CEO said it already held too much Latin American debt. “Wow, this is just insane,” Mr. Musk said to himself. “Is this how banks think?”

Mr. Nicholson says that Scotiabank was navigating the Latin American debt situation using its own methods, which worked better. “He came away with an impression that the bank was a lot dumber than in fact it was,” Mr. Nicholson says. “But that was a good thing, because it gave him a healthy disrespect for the financial industry and the audacity to eventually start what became PayPal.”

Mr. Musk also drew another lesson from his time at Scotiabank: He did not like, nor was he good at, working for other people. It was not in his nature to be deferential or to assume that others might know more than he did.

Excerpt has been adapted from Elon Musk. Copyright © 2023 Walter Isaacson. Reprinted with permission from Simon & Schuster.

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Life and career biography of Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk

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Elon Musk is one of the most well known Silicon Valley CEOs of all time, but many only know what makes the headlines about the Tesla  and SpaceX executive. Dive deeper with Ladders into the life and career of Elon Musk.

Where is Elon Musk from?

Musk was born on June 28, 1971, making him 48-years-old at the time of publication. Musk was born in Pretoria, South Africa, where he lived until he moved to Canada at age 17. He holds South African, Canadian, and U.S. citizenship.  As of 2020, he lives in Los Angeles, California.

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What is Elon Musk’s net worth* over the years?

September 2014: $10.3 billion

March 2015: $12 billion

September 2015: $13.3 billion

March 2016: $10.7 billion

October 2016: $11.6 billion

October 2017: $20.8 billion

March 2018: $19.9 billion

October 2018: $19.6 billion

March 2019: $22.3 billion

October 2019: $19.9 billion

April 2020: $24.6 billion

*According to Forbes

What is Elon Musk’s net worth in 2020?

Forbes last reported Elon Musk’s net worth to be $24.6 billion in April 2020.

When did Elon Musk reach millionaire/billionaire status?

Musk became a millionaire in 1999 at age 27 when he sold Zip2 (his web-software company) for over $340 million. With a 7% share of the company, Musk received $22 million for the deal.

He reached billionaire-status in 2012 at age 40, debuting on Forbes Billionaires List with a net worth of $2 billion. Musk’s estimated net worth was $680 million in October 2011. The jump had to do with Tesla Motors experiencing a 30% increase in stock price year over year. Tesla stock jumped when they introduced the Model X in February 2012. At the time, Musk’s 29% stake in Tesla was worth just over $1 billion.

Elon Musk’s career path

Musk started his first company with his brother Kimbal in 1995 with money from a group of angel investors. The web software company developed and sold an Internet city guide for the newspaper publishing industry, gaining contracts with The New York Times and the Chicago Tribune . Zip2 was acquired in February 1999 for $340 million.

X.com and PayPal

Musk cofounded X.com in March 1999 using $10 million form the Zip2 sale. In 2000 the online financial services and e-mail payment company merged with Confinity, a company that had Paypal as a service. The company was renamed Paypal once the company decided to focus on that service. Musk was kicked out of his CEO role in October 2000. Paypal was acquired by eBay in October 2002 for $1.5 billion in stock. Musk received $165 million from the deal.

Space Exploration Technologies Corporation (aka SpaceX)

Musk decided to launch SpaceX when he attempted to buy a rocket but was told it would cost him $8 million. Seeing this as far too expensive, Musk started SpaceX in 2002 as a quest to develop and manufacture affordable space launch vehicles.  SpaceX boasts to have completed more than 100 launches contracted, more than 6,000 employees, and three vehicles: the  Falcon, the Falcon Heavy, and the Dragon.

Musk remains the Chief Executive Officer and Chief Technology Officer of the company. The long-term goal of SpaceX is to make commercial space travel possible and relatively affordable.

SpaceX has had major achievements and pitfalls since its 2002 beginnings. Check them out here:

• SpaceX was awarded a contract from NASA to continue creation and testing of Falcon 9 and Dragon as cargo transport vehicles.
• In 2008,  Falcon 1 became the first privately developed liquid-fuel rocket to reach Earth orbit.
• SpaceX was awarded a $1.6 billion commercial resupply services contract by NASA in 2008.
• In 2010  Dragon became the first privately developed spacecraft in history to reenter from low Earth orbit, making SpaceX the first privately funded company to successfully launch, orbit and recover a spacecraft.
• On May 25, 2012, the SpaceX Dragon vehicle became the first private spacecraft to visit the International Space Station. On October 7 Falcon 9 launches Dragon on a mission to bring 1,000 pounds of food and cargo to the astronauts on board.
• In October 2013, Grasshopper, a program announced in 2011 to create reusable rockets, completed a half-mile flight, hover, and landing. 
• Falcon 9 lands in the Atlantic Ocean, but is destroyed by heavy seas.
• Falcon 9 flies 1000 m (3,280 ft), completing the highest leap to date and lands safely.
• SpaceX awarded a $2.6 billion contract to fly American astronauts by NASA in 2014.
• In 2015 the Falcon 9 completed the first orbital-class land landing.
• On March 30, 2017, SpaceX completed the first re-flight of an orbital class rocket. Falcon 9 returned to Earth after the second time following the delivery of the payload.
• June 2017 saw the first Dragon re-flight.
• Falcon Heavy, the world’s most powerful operational rocket, launched in February 2018.
• Crew Dragon became the first American spacecraft to autonomously dock on the International Space Station on March 3, 2019.

SpaceX launch in May 2020:

SpaceX teamed with NASA to launch the first astronauts from the U.S. to the International Space Station since 2011.

NASA astronauts Robert Behnken and Douglas Hurley will fly on SpaceX’s Crew Dragon spacecraft. The spacecraft was expected to lift off on a Falcon 9 rocket at 4:33 p.m. on May 27, but due to unfavorable weather in the flight path, they decided not to launch. The next launch opportunity is Saturday, May 30 at 3:22 p.m. EDT.

. @AstroBehnken and @Astro_Doug before Crew Dragon flight pic.twitter.com/BVDlvTZxS9 — SpaceX (@SpaceX) May 27, 2020

The spacecraft, which will launch from Launch Complex 39A in Florida, will have an extended stay at the space station for the Demo-2 mission.

“As the final flight test for SpaceX, this mission will validate the company’s crew transportation system, including the launch pad, rocket, spacecraft, and operational capabilities,” NASA announced on its website . “This also will be the first time NASA astronauts will test the spacecraft systems in orbit.”

The Crew Dragon spacecraft is able to stay in orbit for about 110 days, but the specific mission duration will be determined once it is on station based on the readiness of the next commercial crew launch. Meeting NASA’s requirement, the operational Crew Dragon spacecraft is capable of staying in orbit for at least 210 days.

Once the mission is complete, the Crew Dragon will undock on its own with the two astronauts on board, depart the International Space Station and then re-enter the Earth’s atmosphere. The spacecraft will splashdown just off Florida’s Atlantic Coast and the crew will be picked up at sea by SpaceX’s Go Navigator recovery vessel, and then return to Cape Canaveral.

This Demo-2 mission is the final major step before NASA’s Commercial Crew Program is able to certify Crew Dragon for operational, long-duration missions to the space station.

As a result, the certification and regular operation of Crew Dragon will allow NASA to continue the research and technology investigations that are taking place onboard the station. This research lays the groundwork for future exploration of the Moon and Mars, including the Artemis program, which is expected to land the first woman and next man on the moon in 2024.

In February 2004 Musk led the Series A round of funding for Tesla, which was funded solely by cofounders Martin Eberhard and Marc Tarpenning until that point. During this time, Musk joined Tesla’s board of directors as chairman.

Musk became CEO and product architect of Tesla after the financial crisis in 2008 when cofounder Martin Eberhard was ousted from the company.

In 2014 Musk announced that Tesla would release all of the company’s patents in an effort to fight climate change and advance sustainable transport.

Tesla has put four cars on the market: Model S, Model 3, Model X, and Model Y. The Tesla Roadster is expected to be released in 2020. Tesla also sells electric powertrain systems to Daimler and Toyota.

Musk ran into issues with the Securities and Exchange Commission (S.E.C.) after the organization accused him of lying. The trouble began on Aug. 7, 2018 when Musk tweeted that he was considering taking Tesla private and had the “funding secured” to do so. The S.E.C. subpoenaed Tesla, saying Musk’s tweet was “false and misleading.” The tweet sent Tesla’s stock price up, which benefitted investors. Because the deal never went through, those shareholders were harmed in the end.

The trouble continued on Feb. 19, 2019, when Musk tweeted conflicting numbers about the amount of cars Tesla would produce in 2019. Musk agreed to have more official oversight about his tweets involving Tesla. The S.E.C. investigated Musk further and came to a new agreement on April 26, 2019. According to the agreement, Tesla’s securities lawyer must now pre-approve any public, written communication involving Tesla.

SolarCity was founded by Musk’s cousins, Lyndon, and Peter Rive, but the original concept and financial capital came from Musk himself. By 2013, seven years after the company’s founding, the company was the second largest provider of solar power in the country. In 2016, SolarCity was acquired by Tesla and remains a subsidiary of the company.

More than 600 students from over 40 countries will demonstrate their Pod designs for a next-generation, high-speed transportation system. pic.twitter.com/Ys8zWyTUfm — Hyperloop (@Hyperloop) June 22, 2018

Musk revealed the concept of Hyperloop, a high-speed transportation system, on August 12, 2013. Musk assigned 12 engineers from Tesla and SpaceX to create designs for the transportation system. The goal is to make transportation cheaper and more efficient.

While plans have been drawn and Musk announced in 2017 that he had received verbal government approval to build a Hyperloop on the East Coast, there has been no real moves to begin construction on a Hyperloop system.

Musk announced the creation of Open AI in December 2015. The not-for-profit artificial intelligence research company aims to create AI that will benefit all of humanity.

Musk cofounded Neuralink in 2016. The neurotechnology startup company is working towards creating devices that will integrate the human brain with artificial intelligence. These devices will be implanted in the brain in hopes to help people keep pace with advancements in AI.

The Boring Company

The Boring Company was born from a frustrating day sitting in traffic. In December 2016, Musk tweeted “[I] am going to build a tunnel boring machine and just start digging …” By January 2017, conversation with regulatory bodies was underway.

The company website explains that to reduce gridlock, traffic must either go up or down. Instead of investing in flying cars, The Boring Company believes that the answer lies in the creation of tunnels. Unfortunately, tunnels are expensive and difficult to create. The Boring Company is attempting to change the tunnel with innovative technology and smarter engineering.

Elon Musk’s education history

Musk avoided mandatory service in the South African military by enrolling in Queen’s University in Ontario, Canada, but didn’t finish his degree there. Instead, he left in 1992 to study business and physics at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia. In 1996 he received an economics degree from the Wharton School and a physics degree from the College of Arts and Sciences.

Musk then went to Stanford University in California to get his Ph.D. in energy physics but dropped out after two days to launch Zip2 Corporation.

Elon Musk’s first wife

Musk met his first wife Justine Wilson, a Canadian author, while he was a student at Queen’s University. The couple married in 2000 and separated in 2008.

Elon Musk’s second wife

Musk met his second wife, British actress Talulah Riley, in 2008 at a London club. The then 39-year-old Musk married the 25-year-old Riley in 2010 and separated in January 2012. The couple remarried in July 2013 but divorced again in 2016.

Elon Musk’s children

Musk has six children, all of whom are boys. Musk’s first wife Justine Wilson gave birth to a set of twins in 2004 (Griffin and Xavier) and a set of triplets (Damian, Saxon and Kai) in 2006. Musk and Wilson share custody of their five sons, who were all born through In Vitro Fertilization.

Musk’s first son (Nevada Alexander Musk) was born in 2002, but died of sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS) at 10-weeks-old.

Musk began dating Canadian singer Claire Elise Boucher, known as Grimes, in May 2018. Two years later, Grimes gave birth to Musk’s sixth son, X Æ A-12 Musk.

Elon Musk’s parents

Elon Musk’s parents are Errol and Maye Musk , who met in South Africa and married in 1970. The couple divorced in 1979. After graduating high school, Elon decided to move to Canada and Maye joined with his two siblings, Tosca and Kimbal, six months later in 1989.

Elon Musk’s list of recommended books

• “The Lord of the Rings” by J.R.R. Tolkien
• “The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy” by Douglas Adams
• “Benjamin Franklin: An American Life” by Walter Isaacson
• “Structures: Or Why Things Don’t Fall Down” by J.E. Gordon
• “Ignition: An Informal History of Liquid Rocket Propellants” by John D. Clark
• “Superintelligence: Paths, Dangers, Strategies” by Nick Bostrom
• “Our Final Invention” by James Barrat
• The “Foundation” trilogy by Isaac Asimov
• “The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress” by Robert Heinlein
• “Life 3.0: Being Human in the Age of Artificial Intelligence” by Max Tegmark
• “Merchants of Doubt” by Naomi Oreskes and Erik M. Conway
• ‘Einstein: His Life and Universe’ by Walter Isaacson

Famous Elon Musk quotes

Career advice

“When Henry Ford made cheap, reliable cars, people said, ‘Nah, what’s wrong with a horse?’ That was a huge bet he made, and it worked.”

“When something is important enough, you do it even if the odds are not in your favor.”

“Some people don’t like change, but you need to embrace change if the alternative is disaster.”

“It’s OK to have your eggs in one basket as long as you control what happens to that basket.”

Inspirational

“I could either watch it happen or be a part of it.”

“It is possible for ordinary people to choose to be extraordinary.”

“The first step is to establish that something is possible; then probability will occur.”

“You shouldn’t do things differently just because they’re different. They need to be… better.”

Elon Musk’s car collection

Ford Model T

It is said that Musk owned a Ford Model T, a car produced by Ford from 1908 to 1927, at some point in his life.

1967 Jaguar Series 1 E

Musk bought himself a 1967 E-Type Jaguar when he received an initial bonus check of $40,000 for Zip2.

This was the first car that Musk ever owned. He bought the car for $1,400 in 1994 and drove it for two years until one of its wheels fell off.

Hamann BMW M5

In 2007 Musk revealed in an interview with Vanity Fair that he owned a Hamann BMW M5.

Lotus Esprit S1

Musk bought the Lotus Esprit S1 at a London auction in 2013 for $997,000.

Forbes discovered that Musk owned an Audi Q7 during a 2012 walkthrough of his house. His Audi Q7 inspired the Tesla Model S because he was frustrated at the difficulty of accessing the third row.

Porsche 911

Forbes spotted the Porsche 911 during the same 2012 walkthrough of his house.

Musk bought himself this luxury vehicle after he sold PayPal. He later totaled the car while trying to show it off to Paypal cofounder Peter Thiel.

Musk most likely owns each version that Tesla has released, including the Model S, Model X, Model 3, and Model Y.

5 Things You May Not Know About Elon Musk

He developed and sold a video game at age 12

The budding CEO got his start in the technology industry after seeing a computer in a store for the first time at age 10. He learned to program and developed the code for a shooting-spaceship game called Blastar, which he sold to a computer magazine for $500. Naturally, the boy with grand ambitions didn't stop there, and he devised plans with his younger brother, Kimbal, to open an arcade near their school. However, those plans were nixed when their parents refused to provide their legal consent for a permit, and the brothers wound up selling chocolates to classmates instead.

He spent just two days at Stanford University

Musk enrolled at Stanford in 1995 for graduate studies in applied physics, but by that point, he was consumed with the game-changing capabilities of the internet. When applying for academic deferment, Musk said he would return in six months if his endeavors didn't pan out; the department chairman replied that he didn't expect to see the young computer whiz again, a prediction that proved 100 percent accurate. Musk went on to found Zip2, which established an online presence for brick-and-mortar organizations, and by the time Compaq swooped in to buy the company four years later, there was little need to resume his formal education.

He inspired the creation of a solar power company

In 2004, Musk was driving with his cousin Lyndon Rive to Burning Man, the annual late-summer festival held in Nevada's Black Rock Desert. A successful software entrepreneur in his own right, Rive confessed a desire to embark on a more meaningful enterprise. Musk suggested he consider the possibilities of solar power, and over the course of the drive and subsequent hedonism in the desert, the idea blossomed. Rive and his brother Peter created SolarCity, which grew into the country’s largest solar provider with their cousin on board as chairman. Something about Burning Man clearly fires up Musk’s imagination; he claims to have conceived the idea of a vertical takeoff and landing electric plane at the festival, calling it a "very creative place."

He is the real-life model for 'Iron Man's' Tony Stark

When Iron Man writer and director Jon Favreau was exploring ways to humanize the character of Tony Stark, the charismatic, super-smart protagonist of the comic book and movie series, actor Robert Downey Jr. suggested he get in touch with Musk. Favreau wound up shooting parts of Iron Man 2 at the SpaceX factory, and Musk later found a way to replicate his fictional counterpart’s methods of designing rocket parts on a computer screen by waving his hands across a sensor.

He owns a James Bond car

Musk owns the Lotus Esprit from the 1977 James Bond flick The Spy Who Loved Me , which (spoiler alert!) turns into a submarine after Bond and his beautiful female companion zoom off a pier to escape the enemy. Known as "Wet Nellie," the stunt car languished for years in a storage unit before being sold to an anonymous buyer at a London auction in 2013. After the buyer was revealed to be Musk, he released a statement in which he expressed disappointment that the car did not actually turn into a real submarine, adding, "What I'm going to do is upgrade it with a Tesla electric powertrain and try to make it transform for real."

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8 major takeaways from the explosive new book about Elon Musk that lifts the lid on the world's richest person

• Walter Isaacson's biography on Elon Musk hit shelves last Tuesday.
• The author trailed the Musk for about three years and provides a peek into the billionaire's mind.
• The book details everything from Musk's relationship with his father to his "hardcore" work ethic and "demon mode."

Elon Musk has dominated headlines for years, but a new book proves there is still plenty to learn about the world's richest man.

After shadowing Musk for three years, Walter Isaacson provided a peek behind the curtain into the life of one of the most powerful men in the world in his biography on the Tesla CEO.

The book hit shelves on September 12 and it had some eye-popping details about the billionaire — from big reveals on his relationship with Ukraine and the birth of his eleventh child to details on Musk's hardcore work ethic and emotional swings.

Here are eight things we learned from the biography.

Musk's moods vary a lot, and those close to him fear his 'demon mode.'

The book explains how Musk's moods can swing wildly .

"He has numerous minds and many fairly distinct personalities," Grimes told Isaacson. "He moves between them at a very rapid pace. You just feel the air in the room change, and suddenly the whole situation is just transferred over to his other state."

Isaacson said that throughout his time with Musk, he'd also witnessed the billionaire's emotional volatility, saying he'd switch between "light and dark, intense and goofy, detached and emotional."

"When we hang out, I make sure I'm with the right Elon," Grimes said. "There are guys in that head who don't like me, and I don't like them." These vary from the version of him "who's down for Burning Man and will sleep on a couch, eat canned soup, and be chill" and his so-called "demon mode" — "when he goes dark and retreats inside the storm in his brain."

During these periods, Musk is likely to unleash his rage on employees or order up a work surge, according to Isaacson. Grimes said despite the darkness associated with "demon mode," it's also the mode where he "gets shit done."

Elon Musk's relationship with his father massively affected his personality and outlook on the world.

One character who appears frequently throughout the book is Elon Musk's father, Errol Musk.

The biography is peppered with descriptions of incidents where Elon Musk claims his father bullied and demeaned him ( something Errol Musk has denied ), as well as comments from Elon Musk's former girlfriends and wives about how Errol Musk ultimately influenced his son's personality and outlook on the world.

After his parents divorced, Elon Musk originally lived with his mother before spending about seven years living with his father in Pretoria from the age of 10.

"It turned out to be a really bad idea," Elon Musk told Isaacson. "I didn't yet how how horrible he was."

His younger brother Kimbal Musk told Isaacson that their father had "zero compassion" and often "went ballistic."

"It was mental torture," Elon Musk told Isaacson. "He sure knew how to make anything terrible."

Elon Musk's mother, Maye Musk , said there was a fear her son "might become his father."

Both Elon and Kimbal Musk no longer speak to their father, Isaacson wrote.

But the years that he spent with his father have somewhat shaped Elon Musk's personality, according to the book. 

"I think he got conditioned in childhood that life is pain," Grimes, Elon Musk's former girlfriend, told Isaacson. She also noted that because of how his father brought him up, Musk sometimes lets himself be treated badly and "associates love with being mean or abusive."  

Justine Musk , Elon Musk's first wife, told Isaacson said that during their arguments, Elon would belittle and insult her, calling her a "moron," an "idiot," or "stupid and crazy."

"When I spent some time with Errol, I realized that's where he'd gotten the vocabulary," Justine Musk told Isaacson. 

Ex-wife Talulah Riley also told Isaacson that Errol Musk's treatment of his son "had a profound effect on how he operates."

"Inside the man, he's still there as a child, a child standing in front of his dad ," she said.

Musk's 'hardcore' work ethic has always been a part of him.

Musk is well known for his "hardcore" work mindset , which in some cases involved sleeping and eating in the office. His late-night habits seem to stem from his childhood, when he would stay up until 6 a.m. reading, Isaacson wrote.

While he worked at Zip2, his first business, Musk and his brother slept in the office, showered at the YMCA, and mainly ate at Jack in the Box, the book said. One early Zip2 employee told Isaacson that he even had to tell Musk to go home and shower before customer meetings.

"At Zip2 and every subsequent company, he drove himself relentlessly all day and through much of the night, without vacations, and he expected others to do the same," Isaacson wrote. "His only indulgence was allowing breaks for intense video-game binges."

Musk has applied the same intensity to other aspects of his life, too, including learning to fly planes. "I tend to do things very intensely," he told Isaacson.

Musk expects his employees to display the same workaholic nature. At banking company X.com, which later became PayPal following a merger, he told staff that the site would launch to the public on Thanksgiving weekend and "prowled the office each day, including Thanksgiving, in a nervous and nervous-making frenzy and slept under his desk most nights," Isaacson wrote.

After buying Twitter more than two decades later, he told its staff to commit to an "extremely hardcore" work schedule with "long hours at a high intensity" if they wanted to keep their jobs.

He's been difficult to work with from the start.

Horror stories about working with Elon Musk are hardly a new phenomenon — from quickly laying off over half of Twitter's workforce to forcing some Tesla workers to work through Thanksgiving — working at one of his companies has become the stuff of urban legends. And it turns out tensions were often near a boiling point, even at Musk's first startup.

Musk's brother once "tore off a hunk of flesh" from Musk's hand while the brothers wrestled on the floor in Zip2 's office back in the 90s, according to Isaacson. The biographer said the two men would wrestle during periods of "intense stress."

Similarly, Musk's college dorm-mate quit working at Zip2 just six weeks after starting at the company because he couldn't handle working with Musk, according to the book.

"I knew I could either be working with him or be his friend, but not both," Musk's longtime friend and former dorm-mate, Navaid Farooq, told Isaacson.

Musk later explained the reasoning behind his intensity after he chewed out a SpaceX worker who had lost his child the week prior.

"I give people hardcore feedback, mostly accurate, and I try not to to do it in a way that's ad hominem," Musk told Isaacson. "I try to criticize the action, not the person. We all make mistakes. What matters is whether a person has a good feedback loop, can seek criticism from others, and can improve. Physics does not care about feelings. It cares about whether you got the rocket right."

Musk reacts physically to stress but it also motivates him. He can't handle peace.

During stressful periods at work and in his personal life, Musk would stay awake at night and vomit, Isaacson wrote.

The biographer said that at one point Musk's stomach pain had a doctor checking for appendicitis. 

In 2008 when Tesla was facing the potential of bankruptcy, Musk's wife at the time, Talulah Riley, told Isaacson she worried the stress would cause Musk to have a heart attack.

"He was having night terrors and just screaming in his sleep and clawing at me," she said. "It would go to his gut, and he would be screaming and retching. I would stand by the toilet and hold his head."

Musk's ex-girlfriend Grimes says she recalls similarly sleepless nights during her relationship with the billionaire.

Musk appears to seek out these periods of high stress, according to some. 

"You don't have to be in a state of war at all times," Shivon Zilis, the mother of two of Musk's children and a director at Neuralink, told Musk when he was gearing up to buy Twitter. "Or is it that you find greater comfort when you're in periods of war?" 

Musk told Zilis it's one of his "default settings."

"I guess I've always wanted to push my chips back on the table or play the next level of the game."

Though, Musk has admitted to Isaacson his intensity has taken a toll on him physically.

"From 2007 onwards, until maybe last year, it's been nonstop pain. There's a gun to your head, make Tesla work, pull a rabbit out of your hat, then pull another rabbit out of the hat," Musk told Isaacson in 2021.

"You can't be in a constant fight for survival, always in adrenaline mode, and not have it hurt you. But there's something else I've found this year. It's that fighting to survive keeps you going for quite a while. When you are no longer in a survive-or-die mode, it's not that easy to get motivated every day," he added.

Musk can be a difficult person to date.

Isaacson interviewed many of the women Musk used to date or be married to. It becomes clear that Musk can be a difficult person to date because of a range of factors, including his laser focus on his businesses and his lack of empathy and social awareness.

"Elon and I were used to having big arguments in public," Justine Musk told Isaacson. "I don't think you can be in a relationship with Elon and not argue."

Musk postponed his honeymoon with Justine by months so that he could sort out X.com's merger with PayPal , and they had to cut it short amid turmoil at the company.

Justine told Isaacson that Elon Musk told her to dye her hair blonder and that she felt like she was being turned into a "trophy wife."

"I met him when he didn't have much at all," she told Isaacson. "The accumulation of wealth and fame changed the dynamic."

"The strong will and emotional distance that makes him difficult as a husband may be reasons for his success in running a business," she added.

Meanwhile, his emotional volatility and inability to understand other people's emotions at times can be hard to deal with, Grimes told Isaacson.

Isaacson wrote that Musk sent a picture of his then-girlfriend Grimes having a C-section when she had X to their friends and family, including her father and brothers. Grimes said he was "clueless" about why she'd be upset about it.

But he has a tender side too.

Though the book describes Musk's volatile relationships with many people, including relatives, friends, partners, and business associates, it also details how he can be tender at times. In particular, Isaacson paints a picture of Musk as a doting father to X AE A-XII, also known as "baby X," his first child with Grimes .

Isaacson wrote that X "had an otherworldly sweetness that calmed and beguiled Musk, who craved his presence. He took X everywhere."

Musk also moved in with his father aged 10 because he didn't want him to be lonely, Isaacson wrote. Musk's cousin Peter Rive told Isaacson that playing "Dungeons and Dragons" together as a child brought out the "incredibly patient" and "beautiful" parts of Musk's personality.

When a close friend of Musk's ex-wife Talulah Riley died in 2021, he flew over to England to be with her, "and he just made me laugh instead of cry," she told Isaacson.

Musk's politics are beginning to echo his father's.

While Musk has cut off communication with his father, Errol Musk, Isaacson said the billionaire's political stance is beginning to mimic his father's.

Isaacson said Errol's sons were sometimes off-put by their father's political rants. For example in 2022, Errol sent Musk an email in which he called the COVID-19 pandemic "a lie" and dubbed President Joe Biden a '"freak, criminal, pedophile president' who was out to destroy everything that the US stood for, 'including you,'" Isaacson wrote.

The biographer said Musk had begun to show a similar propensity which was in part triggered by his daughter Vivian Jenna Wilson 's decision to cut ties with him. Isaacson said that Musk blamed the disconnect on the "woke mind virus."

Over the past few years Musk has gone from from supporting the Democratic party to publicly dissing President Joe Biden, reposting anti-transgender content on X, and promoting conspiracy theories.

"Musk's tweet showed his growing tendency (like his father) to read wacky fake-news sites purveying conspiracy theories, a problem that Twitter had writ at large," Isaacson wrote of Musk's decision to post about a conspiracy theory related to the attack on Nancy Pelosi's husband.

And, like his father, Musk's politics have been met with distaste from much of his family.

"It's not okay," Kimbal Musk told his brother after he tweeted "My pronouns are Prosecute/Fauci." "It's not funny. You can't do that shit."

The biography is in stores now.

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Introduction

(born 1971). South African-born American entrepreneur Elon Musk cofounded the online money-transfer firm PayPal. In the early 21st century he turned his attention to the manufacture of space vehicles. Musk was also one of the first significant investors in and chief executive officer (CEO) of the electric car manufacturer Tesla Motors. In 2022 he acquired the social media service Twitter .

Early Life and Education

Musk was born on June 28, 1971, in Pretoria, South Africa, to a South African father and a Canadian mother. He became interested in computers at an early age. When he was 12 years old he created a video game and sold it to a computer magazine. In 1988 Musk left South Africa because he was unwilling to support apartheid through mandatory military service and because he sought the greater economic opportunities available in the United States.

Musk attended Queen’s University in Kingston, Ontario, Canada, and in 1992 he transferred to the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia. There he received bachelor’s degrees in physics and economics. In 1995 he moved to California to attend graduate school in physics at Stanford University. However, he left after only two days, believing that the Internet had much more potential to change society than work in physics.

PayPal and SpaceX

Later in 1995 Musk founded Zip2, a company that provided maps and business directories to online newspapers. In 1999 the computer manufacturer Compaq bought Zip2 for millions of dollars. Musk then founded an online financial services company, X.com, which later became PayPal. The online auction eBay bought PayPal in 2002 for more than $1 billion.

Long interested in space exploration , Musk in 2002 founded Space Exploration Technologies (SpaceX) to make more affordable and fully reusable rockets. Its first two rockets were the Falcon 1 (first launched in 2006) and the larger Falcon 9 (first launched in 2010). They were designed to cost much less than competing rockets. A third rocket, the Falcon Heavy, was first launched in 2018. It was designed to carry nearly twice as much to orbit as its largest competitor for one-third the cost. The successor to the Falcon rockets was the Super Heavy–Starship system. The rocket was designed to lift the heavier Starship spacecraft into orbit. The first test flights of the system were launched in 2020. SpaceX also developed the Dragon spacecraft, which carry supplies and astronauts to the International Space Station . In addition to being CEO of SpaceX, Musk was also chief designer of the rockets and spacecraft.

Tesla and Hyperloop

In 2004 Musk became one of the major funders and chairman of Tesla Motors (later renamed Tesla), an electric car company. In 2006 Tesla introduced its first car, the Roadster, which could travel 245 miles (394 kilometers) on a single charge. Unlike most previous electric vehicles, it was a sports car that could go from 0 to 60 miles (97 kilometers) per hour in less than four seconds. In 2008 Musk took over as chief executive officer. Four years later Tesla introduced a sedan, which was acclaimed by automotive critics for its performance and design. The company won further praise for its luxury sports utility vehicle (SUV), which went on the market in 2015. The Model 3, a less-expensive vehicle, went into production in 2017.

In 2013 Musk proposed a high-speed rail system for California called the Hyperloop. It would use podlike vehicles to carry people through a system of tubes. The Hyperloop would complete the 350-mile (560-kilometer) trip between Los Angeles and San Francisco in 35 minutes at a top speed of 760 miles (1,220 kilometers) per hour, nearly the speed of sound. In 2016 Musk founded a tunnel-digging company called the Boring Company. It investigated ways to lower the cost and speed up the process of digging tunnels to accommodate the Hyperloop.

Musk joined the social media service Twitter in 2009. He became one of the most popular accounts on the site, gaining millions of followers. In 2018 the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission sued Musk for fraud after he sent misleading tweets claiming that he had secured funding to take Tesla private. He was ultimately forced to step down as Tesla’s chairman for three years, though he was allowed to continue as CEO. In addition, both Musk and Tesla received millions of dollars in fines.

Musk was critical of Twitter’s policies regarding free speech on the site. In April 2022 it was revealed that he bought more than 9 percent of the company. Soon after, Twitter announced that he would join the company’s board. However, Musk decided against that and instead made a bid to buy the entire company for $44 billion. Twitter’s board accepted the deal, which would make Musk sole owner of the company. Musk said he planned to add new features and to eliminate bot, or fake, accounts. Bot accounts are automatically generated and can spread misinformation and enable fraud. In July Musk announced that he was withdrawing his bid. He claimed that Twitter had not provided sufficient information about the site’s bot accounts. Twitter sued Musk to force him to buy the company. In September Twitter’s shareholders voted to accept Musk’s offer. Musk ultimately proceeded with the deal, which was completed in October.

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Billionaire Elon Musk's New Space Business Is Mind-Blowingly Profitable

• Earlier this year, Payload Research estimated that SpaceX Starlink will generate revenue of $6.8 billion this year.
• Quilty Analytics just hit the same ballpark, guesstimating Starlink revenue will rise to $6.6 billion -- with $600 million in free cash flow.
• Starlink's profits are growing rapidly as it approaches a size that could enable it to IPO.
• Motley Fool Issues Rare “All In” Buy Alert

NASDAQ: CMCSA

Before investing in a Starlink IPO, you need to know how much money the company is making.

Two months ago, Bloomberg put SpaceX in its gunsights : Contrary to CEO Elon Musk's boasts, argued the news agency, claims that the company's Starlink satellite internet subsidiary is already profitable seem "suspect." Citing "persons familiar" with SpaceX's finances, Bloomberg argued that SpaceX is losing "hundreds" of dollars on every Starlink ground terminal it sells.

Bloomberg might even be right about that one part of Starlink's business, but it doesn't matter.

Razors and blades... and profits

Every ground terminal Starlink sells is analogous to a razor -- a piece of equipment that needs to be put in a customer's hands to then sell them blades (or satellite internet service, in the Starlink context) for years after making that first, unprofitable sale.

As it turns out, Starlink's internet service is very profitable indeed .

In its 2024 forecast, Payload Research estimated that Starlink will record revenue of $6.8 billion this year, most of which will come from internet subscriptions. Internal SpaceX documents show that the company hopes to earn 60% operating profit margins on this revenue -- which sounds like a lot because it is. Still, ground-based ISPs such as Comcast ( CMCSA -0.35% ) and Verizon ( VZ -0.53% ) routinely earn operating profit margins of anywhere from 20% to 40% by offering similar services, according to data from S&P Global Market Intelligence . SpaceX, facing less competition in the field of space-based internet service, can probably do better than that.

But even if it doesn't, even an operating profit margin of just 20% to 40% would be none too shabby.

From none too shabby to "nothing short of mind-blowing"

Profits, of course, come in all shapes and sizes, from gross to operating to net, as one travels down the income statement and deals with the intricacies of generally accepted accounting principles. As an investor, I personally prefer to value my companies on the cash they generate after paying for all their capital investments, which we call free cash flow .

From that perspective, one space investor is now on the record describing SpaceX's profits as "nothing short of mind-blowing."

Quoted on Ars Technica last month, research firm Quilty Analytics largely agreed with Payload Research on how much revenue Starlink will generate this year -- about $6.6 billion, up from basically zero four years ago. After deducting capital expenditures, Quilty estimated that SpaceX Starlink will generate on the order of $600 million in positive free cash flow this year.

Again, up from zero four years ago. Mind-blowing indeed.

What it means for investors

If you're a Starlink user, you may not be too thrilled to learn that your money is what Starlink is using to generate all these profits for SpaceX. But if you're a space investor like me and looking forward to the day when SpaceX announces an initial public offering of Starlink -- as Elon Musk has promised to do -- then you might be curious to learn what these numbers mean for Starlink as an investment.

$600 million in free cash flow on $6.6 billion (or $6.8 billion) in annual revenue works out to roughly a 9% free cash flow margin on the Starlink business. To put that in context, Verizon generated $20.1 billion in positive free cash flow over the past year. On $134 billion in revenue, that worked out to a 15% free cash flow margin. Comcast's less profitable, but even its $16.7 billion in FCF on $153.3 billion in revenue yielded an 11% free cash flow margin.

At first glance, these numbers may seem surprising. After all, Elon Musk is supposed to be "magic" for corporate profits -- but these numbers strongly suggest that his Starlink subsidiary is, in fact, significantly less profitable than established competitors like Comcast and Verizon. Still, remember that just four years ago, there wasn't even a Starlink around to compete with these earthbound ISPs.

At $6.6 billion (or $6.8 billion) in revenue, Starlink may still be a long way away from the 60% profit margins on $30 billion in annual revenue that Musk is targeting. However, the bigger Starlink gets, and the more its efficiencies of scale increase, the more profitable this SpaceX subsidiary will become.

I'm still as optimistic as ever about the coming Starlink IPO.

Rich Smith has no position in any of the stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool recommends Comcast and Verizon Communications. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy .

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Elon Musk is unfathomably rich. Here’s where his money is stashed.

Elon Musk’s wealth grew this week as Tesla’s stock price climbed after the company voted to reapprove the billionaire’s $50 billion pay package. The move comes just months after a Delaware court invalidated his compensation package and ordered him to return significant stock options he had been awarded over the past five years.

Musk derives most of his $203 billion net worth, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index , from his stakes in various companies.

Here’s where the entrepreneur holds his wealth.

Judge orders Tesla to undo Elon Musk’s $56 billion pay package

• Musk’s role: CEO, co-founder
• Musk’s stake: 13 percent
• Musk’s stake value: $73 billion in shares, $47 billion in options

Musk holds Tesla shares and options totaling about $120 billion — the majority of his wealth.

Musk’s compensation package that was reapproved this week — the largest ever at a U.S. public company — was the crux of the Delaware Chancery Court lawsuit after a shareholder sued. A judge ruled the package unfair, saying that Musk had cozy relationships with two of the board members who constructed the deal and that he controlled too much of the process.

In response, Tesla held another vote with shareholders to reapprove the pay package. It passed by a wide margin this week.

Musk has repeatedly asserted his commitment to Tesla, where he has served as CEO since 2008. The company has been called the crown jewel of Musk’s portfolio.

How the deal that made Musk the world’s richest person could unravel

Tesla made electric cars mainstream, and it has global ambitions. After starting with a sporty convertible, the Roadster, Tesla has gradually expanded to sedans.

Its Autopilot technology is one of the most widespread driver-assistance systems on the market, available in millions of cars on the road. However, Tesla recently issued a recall to implement additional safeguards to the feature through a software update. The features have ignited controversy and have been involved in numerous fatal car crashes, according to Post investigations.

• Musk’s role : CEO, founder
• Musk’s stake : 42 percent
• Musk’s stake value : $71.2 billion

Musk’s ambitions aren’t limited to Earth — he wants humans to land on Mars. Musk founded SpaceX, a private firm that builds rockets and satellites, in 2002. The company has worked with NASA to conduct space launches and make trips to the International Space Station as it has pioneered reusable rockets.

SpaceX intends to return astronauts to the moon — working on NASA’s first human mission to the moon’s south pole, slated for 2026.

Musk has characterized SpaceX as an extension of his mission at Tesla. “We must safeguard the future of life by transitioning to sustainable energy on Earth & becoming multiplanetary via Mars,” he wrote in a post on X. “It’s not clear how much time we have to do these things, but sooner is definitely better.”

X, formerly Twitter

• Musk’s role: Owner
• Musk stake: 79 percent
• Musk’s stake value: $7.1 billion

Musk bought Twitter for about $44 billion in a controversial deal in 2022 and renamed the company X last year. Since the acquisition, the billionaire has laid off a majority of the company’s staff and hired a new CEO, Linda Yaccarino.

X has struggled with waning advertiser confidence, as brands grow wary of Musk’s contentious public comments. Investors have also expressed concern about the company’s finances. X is now estimated to be worth less than half of what Twitter was valued at the time of the takeover.

But Musk has said that user numbers on X are growing and has dismissed concerns about waning interest in the site.

The Boring Company

• Musk’s role: Founder
• Musk’s stake: $3.3 billion

Musk is also extending his empire underground. Born in 2016 from Musk’s exasperation with a traffic jam, the Boring Co. is his proposed solution to congestion: “personalized mass transit,” via tunnels.

The company aims to build a network of high-speed tunnels near some of America’s most gridlocked cities. In 2017, Musk posted on X that he had “verbal govt approval” for a Hyperloop that would connect D.C. to New York and could be traveled in 29 minutes.

No such project has taken shape.

The company’s biggest project to date is the 1.7-mile loop below the Las Vegas Convention Center, which has been used by more than 1.5 million passengers since it opened in 2021, according to the company’s website, “with a demonstrated peak capacity of over 4,500 passengers per hour, and over 32,000 passengers per day.”

The Boring Co. has yet to prove its theory that tunneling can solve traffic problems on a larger scale. Critics point out that rather than increasing mobility, the strategic relocation of cars underground would simply remove the traffic from view.

Musk is insistent, however: “It’s either traffic forever or tunnels,” he once posted.

Julian Mark and Aaron Schaffer contributed to this report

About this story

All calculations of Musk’s wealth, his company stakes and their values are sourced from the Bloomberg Billionaires Index after market close on June 14. Editing by Karly Domb Sadof and Kate Rabinowitz.

Elon Musk, America’s richest immigrant, is angry about immigration. Can he influence the election?

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Elon Musk and his brother Kimbal were speaking to a crowd of business leaders in 2013 about creating their first company when the conversation seemed to go off script. Originally from South Africa, Kimbal said the brothers lacked lawful immigration status when they began the business in the U.S.

“In fact, when they did fund us, they realized that we were illegal immigrants,” Kimbal said, according to a recording of the interview from the Milken Institute Global Conference.

“I’d say it was a gray area,” Elon replied with a laugh.

Eleven years later, Elon was back at the Milken Institute last month in Beverly Hills, talking once again about immigration. This time, he described the southern border as a scene out of the zombie apocalypse and said the legal immigration process is long and “Kafkaesque.”

“I’m a big believer in immigration, but to have unvetted immigration at large scale is a recipe for disaster,” Musk said at the conference. “So I’m in favor of greatly expediting legal immigration but having a secure southern border.”

San Diego is now the top border region for migrant arrivals

For first time in 25 years, San Diego is the top spot in the nation for migrant border crossings, surpassing Tucson.

April 25, 2024

Musk, the most financially successful immigrant in the U.S. and the third-richest person in the world, has frequently repeated his view that it is difficult to immigrate to the U.S. legally but “trivial and fast” to enter illegally. What he leaves out: Seeking asylum is a legal right under national and international law, regardless of how a person arrives on U.S. soil.

But as the election year ramps up and Republicans make border security a major theme of their campaigns, Musk’s comments about immigration have grown increasingly extreme. The chief executive of SpaceX and Tesla, who purchased the social media platform X (formerly Twitter) in 2022, has sometimes used his giant microphone to elevate racist conspiracies and spread misinformation about immigration law.

Musk’s business manager did not respond to a request for comment, nor did representatives for SpaceX and Tesla. X does not have a department that responds to news media inquiries.

While Musk’s views are clear, what’s murkier is his influence. Some see him as an influential opinion maker with the power to shape policy and sway voters, while others dismiss him as a social media bomb thrower mainly heard within a conservative echo chamber.

“If you haven’t heard it already, I’m sure you’re going to see members of Congress citing Elon Musk and pointing to his tweets, and that’s a scary concept,” said Rep. Nanette Diaz Barragán (D-San Pedro), who leads the Congressional Hispanic Caucus.

She says she believes Musk is influential with her Republican colleagues who are “always looking for new anti-immigrant talking points.”

Polling shows immigration is a top issue for voters. For the third month in a row, it was named by respondents to an open-ended April Gallup poll as the most important problem facing the U.S.

Border security could sway some California Democrats — and control of Congress

Since Trump got Republicans to bail on a bipartisan border deal, some Democrats have grown more outspoken in favor of stricter immigration policies and stronger border security.

March 21, 2024

The November election that’s shaping up as a rematch between President Biden and former President Trump will be the first presidential contest since Musk bought X — a site Trump had been banned from for inciting violence before Musk reinstated his account last year.

Musk used the platform to come to Trump’s defense last week after the former president was criminally convicted for falsifying records in a hush money scheme. “Great damage was done today to the public’s faith in the American legal system,” Musk wrote on X , calling Trump’s crime a “trivial matter.”

After meeting with Trump in March, Musk told former CNN anchor Don Lemon that he’s “leaning away” from Biden, but doesn’t plan to endorse Trump yet. He also said he won’t donate to any presidential campaign.

Campaign contribution records show Musk regularly donated to both Republicans and Democrats through 2020. That includes a handful of donations to California Gov. Gavin Newsom, who said his relationship with Musk dates back to his time as San Francisco mayor but that they’ve never discussed immigration.

“I think people have formed very strong opinions on this topic,” Newsom said. “I don’t know that he’s influencing that debate in a disproportionate way. Not one human being has ever said, ‘Hey, did you see Elon’s thing about immigration?’”

How Musk talks about immigration on X

Last year Musk visited the Eagle Pass, Texas, border , meeting with local politicians and law enforcement to get what he called an “unfiltered” view of the situation.

He also helped spread viral reports falsely claiming the Biden administration had “secretly” flown hundreds of thousands of migrants into the U.S. to reduce border arrivals.

“This administration is both importing voters and creating a national security threat from unvetted illegal immigrants,” Musk wrote March 5 on X . “It is highly probable that the groundwork is being laid for something far worse than 9/11.”

But the migrants in question fly commercial under a program created by the Biden administration , exercising the president’s authority to temporarily admit people for humanitarian reasons. The program allows up to 30,000 vetted people from Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua and Venezuela lawfully relocate to the U.S. each month and obtain work permits if they have a financial sponsor.

Contrary to Musk’s claim that the administration is looking for Democratic voters, those arriving under the program have no pathway to citizenship. The claim gives fuel to extremist ideologies such as great replacement theory , the racist conspiracy that there’s a plot to reduce the population of white people.

Earlier this year, Musk targeted a controversial bill in the California Legislature that would help immigrants with serious or violent felony convictions fight deportation using state funds. Assemblymember Reggie Jones-Sawyer (D-Los Angeles) pulled the bill after Republicans slammed it on social media, garnering the attention of Musk, who wrote about it on X : “When is enough enough?”

In February, shortly after a bipartisan group of senators released details of a border security bill that had gone through lengthy negotiations, Musk again echoed great replacement theory, writing on X : “The long-term goal of the so-called ‘Border Security’ bill is enabling illegals to vote! It will do the total opposite of securing the border.”

Sen. James Lankford (R-Okla.) shot back.

“No, it’s not focused on trying to be able to get more illegals to vote,” Lankford said on CNN. “That’s absurd.”

Musk’s immigration journey

There’s a particular irony in Musk attacking the program that allows limited arrivals for humanitarian reasons while simultaneously saying he favors legal immigration, said Ahilan Arulanantham, a lawyer, professor and co-director of the Center for Immigration Law and Policy at UCLA. The program offers would-be migrants a lawful pathway to reach the U.S. and reduced arrivals at the border from the beneficiary countries.

“That shows a very deep confusion about a fairly basic point about immigration law and the way the policy works,” Arulanantham said. Musk’s lack of criticism of a similar program for Ukrainians illustrates the undercurrent of racism accompanying attacks on the program for Latin American migrants, he added.

Musk amplifying false claims is counterproductive to rational immigration policy, Arulanantham said.

“Every voice adds to the pile, and the louder the voice, the marginally greater the addition to the pile,” Arulanantham said. “He is a very loud voice.”

Elon Musk visits Israel to meet top leaders as accusations of antisemitism on X grow

Elon Musk visited Israel, where he toured a kibbutz that was attacked last month by Hamas militants and met with top leaders.

Nov. 27, 2023

David Kaye, a UC Irvine law professor who studies platform moderation, said Musk’s promotion of misleading or false statements, including those about immigrants, is concerning because he can influence conversations on X in a way no one else can.

“There’s already a pretty robust kind of alarmist approach to immigration, so Musk might only add a little bit of fuel to a pretty big fire,” Kaye said. “But the fact is he’s got a ton of followers. To the extent he promotes disinformation, I think that’s a cause for concern for the United States having fair and fact-driven debates over immigration.”

Musk’s own immigration story is described in the biography “Elon Musk” by Walter Isaacson. Musk left South Africa in 1989 for Canada, where his mother had relatives, Isaacson wrote. While in college he transferred to the University of Pennsylvania and, after graduating, enrolled at Stanford but immediately requested a deferral.

He and his brother Kimbal had invented an interactive network directory service, like a precursor to Google Maps.

Just before pitching the idea to a venture company, Kimbal was stopped by U.S. border officials at the airport on his way back from a trip to Toronto “who looked in his luggage and saw the pitch deck, business cards and other documents for the company. Because he did not have a U.S. work visa, they wouldn’t let him board the plane,” Isaacson writes in the book. So a friend picked him up and drove him into the U.S. after telling another border agent that they were seeing the David Letterman show.

After finalizing the investment, the firm found immigration lawyers to help the Musk brothers get work visas, according to Isaacson.

Once Musk married his first wife, he became eligible for U.S. citizenship, and took the oath in 2002 at the Los Angeles County Fairgrounds.

Video: ‘Elon Musk’ biographer explains the book’s complicated motivations

Author Walter Isaacson joined the L.A. Times Book Club to discuss the stories and controversy behind his bestselling “Elon Musk” biography.

Oct. 2, 2023

Musk’s recent commentary on immigration and other political issues appears to be a reversal from his views a decade ago, said Nu Wexler, who has worked in policy communications at tech companies and for congressional Democrats.

Wexler recalled when Musk left Fwd.us , the political action organization spearheaded by Meta Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg in 2013 to advocate for immigration reform. Musk left because Fwd.us backed conservative lawmakers who wanted immigration reform but supported oil drilling and other policies that went against Musk’s environmental priorities.

“I agreed to support Fwd.us because there is a genuine need to reform immigration. However, this should not be done at the expense of other important causes,” Musk told the news site AllThingsD at the time.

When Zuckerberg created Fwd.us, it made smart business sense for tech executives to make the business case for immigration reform, Wexler said. Now, immigration is a more divisive issue and executives on the left are less willing to dive into politics.

“At some point he decided that being the main character was helpful personal branding,” Wexler said of Musk. “I don’t know if he’s going to change minds on immigration, although he might be able to fire up the base.”

Alex Conant, a GOP consultant and partner at the public affairs firm Firehouse Strategies, said Musk’s influence could grow if Trump wins the election. If an immigration bill were to take shape at that point, Musk’s endorsement or rejection could shape the debate, he said.

“That’s the sort of scenario where all the sudden he might have some power,” he said.

There appears to be growing evidence for that possibility. Trump and Musk have discussed a possible advisory role for the billionaire, the Wall Street Journal reported last week . If Trump reclaims the White House, Musk could provide formal input on border security policies.

Times staff writer Taryn Luna contributed to this report.

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Andrea Castillo covers immigration. Before joining the Los Angeles Times, she covered immigrant, ethnic and LGBTQ+ communities for the Fresno Bee. She got her start at the Oregonian in Portland. A native of Seattle, she’s been making her way down the West Coast since her graduation from Washington State University.

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• Elon Musk could earn more at Tesla than other company bosses

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H ow much is Elon Musk, the mercurial multibillionaire, worth to Tesla, the carmaker he runs? In 2018 the company’s board put in place a plan to award Mr Musk shares over ten years worth $46bn, at their current price, provided the business cleared a series of hurdles. In January a Delaware judge struck down the package, calling it “unfathomable”, after a shareholder sued to have it rescinded. The company has asked its investors to reaffirm their support for the award ahead of an annual general meeting on June 13th. Mr Musk’s monster pay package is worth nearly 300 times what America’s best-paid chief executive, Hock Tan of Broadcom, a chipmaker, made last year. It is also equivalent to 8% of Tesla’s current market value—which is down by roughly a fifth over the past year. ■

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Explore more

This article appeared in the Business section of the print edition under the headline “The Musk pay premium”

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Elon Musk and his fellow CEOs are outpacing their workers with fastest pay growth in 14 years—but some still justify massive pay packages by ‘fairness’

Even as inflation gradually cools off, there is one price rise affecting corporate America that knows no end in sight—the ever-rising cost of paying top executives.

Despite more than a decade of controversy, median CEO compensation at the 500 largest S&P companies increased at its highest pace in at least 14 years in 2023 according to figures from Institutional Shareholder Services  cited  by the  Financial Times  on Sunday.  

The debate over high CEO pay in America has raged for years, as proponents argue the free market sets the level while critics claim it is untethered from reality given that U.S. executives’ peers in fellow industrialized nations earn a fraction of what they take home. 

Data from Equilar published  earlier this month  declared Jon Winkelreid from private equity firm TPG the best-paid executive in America, taking in nearly $200 million in total compensation, while the top five in its ranking all earned a minimum of $150 million each. Many Americans are no longer willing to countenance these kind of rewards, as wages adjusted for inflation  stagnated for decades before the recent bout of high inflation both pushed up wages and strained their finances. 

This controversy has taken on new dimensions amid Elon Musk’s campaign to “ restore Tesla’s stockholder democracy ” by ratifying his 2018 pay package. Comprised of stock options with deeply discounted strike price, it’s worth on balance nearly $8 billion per year. 

A decade ago the late vice chairman of Berkshire Hathaway , Charlie Munger, pushed back against the idea that massive pay was sometimes justified in order to sufficiently incentivize executives.

“Do you really think that a man who craves power and significance, likes decision-making and running a big company, has one of the important public ranks in America and makes $5 million a year—do you really think he would work a lot more effectively if you raise him to seven?” Munger told CNN  in 2014 . “I think the whole thing is insane.”

By comparison, Berkshire’s CEO, Warren Buffett, earned only $100,000 in annual salary over the past 40 years with total compensation barely reaching the half-million mark, SEC filings  analyzed  by  Business Insider  showed in December.

Board directors and high CEO pay

Munger argued the system had an inherent flaw: With high compensation for non-executive directors in exchange for their cushy and lucrative seats on corporate boards, these individuals were often happy to grant ever larger CEO compensation deals—“a daisy chain of reciprocity,” as he saw it.

One such person who could fit Munger’s characterization is Robyn Denholm, who attested in court to the “life-changing” wealth she accumulated as the chair of Tesla’s  oft-maligned board full of Musk’s friends and family. 

Over the past month, the Australian emerged from her role in the background to mount a veritable media blitz lobbying for CEO Elon Musk’s pay deal—dubbed the  largest in human history . 

In 2018, shareholders granted the board’s request to give Musk the right to purchase up to 304 million shares for a price of $23.34 each—which in theory would net him $47 billion were he to exercise the options and subsequently sell the stock at its current $178 price—if the company hit over a dozen targets ranging from market capitalization to revenue and earnings. Every single one was met, according to Tesla, amply rewarding shareholders—of which Musk is by far the biggest.

This package was declared null and void in January by a  Delaware court  due to the fact that Denholm and her fellow directors allowed Musk to set the terms himself. This lenient board governance, however, left the very real possibility that he effectively would not be rewarded at all for his past six years of labor. 

As chair responsible for the situation, Denholm argued it was only fair shareholders re-approve Musk’s pay in  last week’s crunch vote . “Put yourself in his shoes,” she  urged  earlier this month. “[It’s] really about fairness—fairness to our CEO.”

The asset management company T. Rowe Price—one of Tesla’s top 10 investors—followed a similar line in a statement before the vote: “It is not reasonable for investors to…consider all that value creation to have been delivered to us for no consideration.”

Whether it was their arguments or fear that Musk might resign without a clear succession plan, nearly three in four votes cast by  disinterested shareholders followed Denholm’s wishes and  approved  the plan again. 

Musk’s pay may be an outlier, but the trend towards massive CEO pay in the U.S. has been clear for years. The  latest annual figures  from trade union AFL-CIO revealed the average CEO at the 500 largest S&P companies hauled in $16.7 million in 2022. That means it would take workers 272 years to make what their chief executives earn annually. 

By comparison, an analysis of 328 European and U.K. blue chips by executive compensation consultants WTW, formerly Willis Towers Watson , showed that their CEOs’ pay  rose 7%  to almost €4 million last year—a sizable sum, but a small fraction of their U.S. peers’.

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Who is Elon’s younger brother Kimbal Musk, the Tesla director in a cowboy hat?

Tesla shareholders are set to decide on Elon Musk’s disputed $56 billion pay package, despite a prior court voiding. Amid votes for board members, including Musk’s brother Kimbal, known for his cowboy hat style and diverse ventures from SpaceX to culinary arts, his journey from South Africa to tech and food industries reveals a rich entrepreneurial spirit. As a key figure in Tesla’s governance, Kimbal Musk’s multifaceted career continues to influence both business and community initiatives.

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Here’s a link  to the 12 June Premium newsletter. If you like what you see subscribe here  for your afternoon wrap.

Tesla shareholders will vote on Thursday on whether to ratify CEO Elon Musk’s $56 billion pay package which was voided by a Delaware judge in January. Musk said late on Wednesday that shareholders were voting by wide margins to approve the pay package.

Also on the agenda is the re-election of directors, including Musk’s younger brother, Kimbal. Usually seen posing in a cowboy hat, Kimbal’s biography on the Tesla website says he is an entrepreneur, activist and chef.

Read more: 🔒 Elon Musk seeks Tesla shareholder approval for $56bn pay package

HERE ARE A FEW FACTS ABOUT HIM:

Born a year after Elon Musk, Kimbal grew up in South Africa with his brother before moving to Canada to pursue a business degree at Queen’s University. He turns 52 this year. His net worth was estimated at $700 million in 2021, according to Forbes. He owns nearly 2 million shares of Tesla, worth more than $350 million, according to the company’s proxy filing and the company’s share price on Wednesday.

Kimbal Musk was a director of SpaceX from 2002, when it was founded, to January 2022, according to a Tesla proxy filing. He served on Chipotle Mexican Grill’s board between 2013 and 2019. One of the early business collaborations between the brothers was internet enterprise software firm Zip2 Corp, which they co-founded in 1995. It was acquired by Compaq for a reported $307 million, according to the New York Times, and merged into Yahoo Maps in 1999. Kimbal had also invested in his brother’s online financial services firm X.com, which merged with PayPal.

A graduate of the French Culinary Institute in New York City, he cofounded in 2004 the Kitchen Restaurant Group which has restaurants across the United States. He is also the author of “The Kitchen Cookbook: Cooking for Your Community.”

In 2010, Kimbal became the executive director of Big Green, a nonprofit organization that creates learning gardens in schools across the U.S. In 2022, he launched a drone light shows company, Nova Sky Stories, with 9,000 light drones.

He cofounded an indoor farming platform, Square Roots, in 2016. In 2010 he broke his neck while skiing and was hospitalized for months. He called it a “near death experience,” according to media reports.

• 🔒 Musk explains redirection of Tesla AI chips to X Corp, raises concerns
• 🔒 Institutional investors flee Tesla amid growth concerns: What next for the electric car giant?
• Fallout of Musk’s Tesla pay defeat: Investors gain tools, CEO pay benchmark nullified –  Jeroen van Kwawegen

SOURCE: REUTERS

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