Early life Childhood and family
Elon Reeve Musk was born on 28 June 1971 in Pretoria, South Africa. His mother is Mai Musk (née Haldeman), a model and dietitian, who was born in Saskatchewan, Canada, but raised in South Africa. His father is Errol Musk, a South African electromechanical engineer, pilot, navigator, consultant and property developer who was once half-owner of a Zambian emerald mine near Lake Tanganyika. Musk has a younger brother, Kimble (born 1972) and a younger sister, Tosca (born 1974). His maternal grandfather, Joshua Haldeman, was an American-Canadian, and Musk has British and Pennsylvania Dutch ancestry. The family was very wealthy in Elon's youth; Errol Musk once said, "We had so much money that sometimes we couldn't even lock our vaults". After his parents divorced in 1980, Musk lived mostly with his father in Pretoria and elsewhere. But they lived together, a choice they made two years after the divorce and later regretted. Musk is estranged from his father, whom he calls "a terrible man... almost every evil he has thought of, he has done." He has a half-sister and a half-brother. Around the age of 10, Musk developed an interest in computing and video games and acquired the Commodore VIC-20. He learned computer programming using manuals, and at age 12, he coded a BASIC-based video game called Blaster and sold it to PC & Office Technology magazine for about $500. An awkward and introverted child, Musk was bullied as a child and was once hospitalized after a group of boys threw him down the stairs. He attended Watercloof House Preparatory School and Bryanston High School before graduating from Pretoria Boys High School.
Education
Knowing that entering the United States from Canada would be easy, Musk applied for a Canadian passport through his Canadian-born mother. While awaiting documentation, he attended the University of Pretoria for five months; This allowed Musk to avoid compulsory service in the South African military. Musk arrived in Canada in June 1989, and lived with a second cousin in Saskatchewan for a year, working odd jobs at a farm and lumber-mill. In 1990, Musk entered Queen's University in Kingston, Ontario. Two years later, he transferred to the University of Pennsylvania; He graduated in 1995 with a Bachelor of Science degree in Economics and a Arts Degree in Physics.In 1994, Musk did two internships in Silicon Valley during the summer: at the energy storage startup Pinnacle Research Institute, which researched electrolytic ultracapacitors for energy storage, and at the Palo Alto-based startup Rocket Science Games. In 1995, Musk was accepted to the Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) program in materials science at Stanford University in California. Musk attempted to get a job at Netscape but his inquiries were not answered. He left Stanford after two days, deciding instead to join the Internet boom and launch an Internet startup.
PayPal and SpaceX
Musk attended Queen’s University in Kingston, Ontario, and in 1992 he transferred to the University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, where he received bachelor’s degrees in physics and economics in 1997. He enrolled in graduate school in physics at Stanford University in California, but he left after only two days because he felt that the Internet had much more potential to change society than work in physics. In 1995 he founded Zip2, a company that provided maps and business directories to online newspapers. In 1999 Zip2 was bought by the computer manufacturer Compaq for $307 million, and Musk then founded an online financial services company, X.com, which later became PayPal, which specialized in transferring money online. The online auction eBay bought PayPal in 2002 for $1.5 billion.Musk was long convinced that for life to survive, humanity has to become a multiplanet species. However, he was dissatisfied with the great expense of rocket launchers. In 2002 he founded Space Exploration Technologies (SpaceX) to make more affordable rockets. Its first two rockets were the Falcon 1 (first launched in 2006) and the larger Falcon 9 (first launched in 2010), which were designed to cost much less than competing rockets. A third rocket, the Falcon Heavy (first launched in 2018), was designed to carry 117,000 pounds (53,000 kg) to orbit, nearly twice as much as its largest competitor, the Boeing Company’s Delta IV Heavy, for one-third the cost. SpaceX has announced the successor to the Falcon 9 and the Falcon Heavy: the Super Heavy–Starship system. The Super Heavy first stage would be capable of lifting 100,000 kg (220,000 pounds) to low Earth orbit. The payload would be the Starship, a spacecraft designed for providing fast transportation between cities on Earth and building bases on the Moon and Mars. SpaceX also developed the Dragon spacecraft, which carries supplies to the International Space Station (ISS). Dragon can carry as many as seven astronauts, and it had a crewed flight carrying astronauts Doug Hurley and Robert Behnken to the ISS in 2020. Musk sought to reduce the expense of spaceflight by developing a fully reusable rocket that could lift off and return to the pad it launched from. Beginning in 2012, SpaceX’s Grasshopper rocket made several short flights to test such technology. In addition to being CEO of SpaceX, Musk was also chief designer in building the Falcon rockets, Dragon, and Grasshopper.
Tesla
Musk had long been interested in the possibilities of electric cars, and in 2004 he became one of the major funders of Tesla Motors (later renamed Tesla), an electric car company founded by entrepreneurs Martin Eberhard and Marc Tarpenning. In 2006 Tesla introduced its first car, the Roadster, which could travel 245 miles (394 km) on a single charge. Unlike most previous electric vehicles, which Musk thought were stodgy and uninteresting, it was a sports car that could go from 0 to 60 miles (97 km) per hour in less than four seconds. In 2010 the company’s initial public offering raised about $226 million. Two years later Tesla introduced the Model S sedan, which was acclaimed by automotive critics for its performance and design. The company won further praise for its Model X luxury SUV, which went on the market in 2015. The Model 3, a less-expensive vehicle, went into production in 2017.Musk expressed reservations about Tesla being publicly traded, and in August 2018 he made a series of tweets about taking the company private, noting that he had “secured funding.” The following month the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) sued Musk for securities fraud, alleging that the tweets were “false and misleading.” Shortly thereafter Tesla’s board rejected the SEC’s proposed settlement, reportedly because Musk had threatened to resign. However, the news sent Tesla stock plummeting, and a harsher deal was ultimately accepted. Its terms included Musk stepping down as chairman for three years, though he was allowed to continue as CEO.Dissatisfied with the projected cost ($68 billion) of a high-speed rail system in California, Musk in 2013 proposed an alternate faster system, the Hyperloop, a pneumatic tube in which a pod carrying 28 passengers would travel the 350 miles (560 km) between Los Angeles and San Francisco in 35 minutes at a top speed of 760 miles (1,220 km) per hour, nearly the speed of sound. Musk claimed that the Hyperloop would cost only $6 billion and that, with the pods departing every two minutes on average, the system could accommodate the six million people who travel that route every year. However, he stated that, between running SpaceX and Tesla, he could not devote time to the Hyperloop’s development.
Wealth
Musk made $165 million when PayPal was sold to eBay in 2002. He was first listed on the Forbes Billionaires List in 2012, with a net worth of $2 billion. At the start of 2020, Musk had a net worth of $27 billion. Throughout that year, his net worth increased by $150 billion, largely driven by his ownership of around 20% of Tesla stock. During this, Musk's net worth was often volatile. For example, it dropped $16.3 billion in September, the largest single-day plunge in the history of the Bloomberg Billionaires Index. In November of that year, Musk passed Facebook co-founder Mark Zuckerberg to become the third-richest person in the world; a week later he passed Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates to become the second-richest.In January 2021, Musk, with a net worth of $185 billion, surpassed Amazon founder Jeff Bezos to become the richest person in the world. Bezos reclaimed the top spot the following month. On September 27, 2021, Forbes announced that Musk had a net worth of over $200 billion, and was the richest person in the world, after Tesla stock surged. In November 2021, Musk became the first person with a net worth over $300 billion. Around three-quarters of Musk's wealth derives from Tesla. Musk does not receive a salary from Tesla; he agreed in 2018 to a compensation plan with the board that ties his personal earnings to Tesla's valuation and revenue. The deal stipulated that Musk only receives the compensation if Tesla reaches certain market values. It was the largest such deal ever done between a CEO and board.In the first award, given in May 2020, he was eligible to purchase 1.69 million TSLA shares (about 1% of the company) at below-market prices, which was worth about $800 million. Musk has repeatedly described himself as "cash poor",and has "professed to have little interest in the material trappings of wealth".In 2012, Musk signed The Giving Pledge and, in May 2020, Musk pledged to "sell almost all physical possessions". In 2021, Musk defended his wealth by saying he is "accumulating resources to help make life multiplanetary extend the light of consciousness to the stars". In the early 2000s, Musk was a private pilot, his favorite aircraft then being the L-39 Albatros, though he decided to stop piloting by 2008. He uses a private jet owned by SpaceX and acquired a second jet in August 2020.[ The jet's heavy use of fossil fuels—it flew over 150,000 miles in 2018—has received criticism.According to ProPublica, Musk paid no federal income taxes in 2018.
Personal life
Musk met his first wife, Canadian author Justine Wilson, while attending Queen's University, and they married in 2000. Musk contracted malaria in 2000 while on vacation in South Africa, and almost died. In 2002, their first child, son Nevada Alexander Musk, died of sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS) at the age of 10 weeks. After his death, the couple decided to use IVF to continue their family. Twins Xavier and Griffin were born in April 2004, followed by triplets Kai, Saxon, and Damian in 2006. The couple divorced in 2008 and share custody of their five sons. In 2008, Musk began dating English actress Talulah Riley, and in 2010, the couple married. In 2012, Musk announced a divorce from Riley.In 2013, Musk and Riley remarried. In December 2014, Musk filed for a second divorce from Riley; however, the action was withdrawn.A second divorce was finalized in 2016. Musk then dated Amber Heard for several months in 2017; he had reportedly been pursuing her since 2012. Musk was later accused by Johnny Depp of having an affair with Heard while she was still married to Depp. Musk and Heard both denied the affair. In May 2018, Musk and Canadian musician Grimes revealed that they were dating. Grimes gave birth to their son in May 2020.According to Musk and Grimes, his name was "X Æ A-12"; however, the name would have violated California regulations as it contained characters that are not in the modern English alphabet, and was then changed to "X Æ A-Xii". This drew more confusion, as Æ is not a letter in the modern English alphabet. The child was eventually named "X AE A-XII" Musk, with "X" as a first name, "AE A-XII" as a middle name, and "Musk" as surname.Musk confirmed reports that the couple are "semi-separated" in September 2021; in an interview with Time in December 2021, he said he was single. From the early 2000s until late 2020, Musk resided in California where both Tesla and SpaceX were founded and where their headquarters are still located. In 2020, Musk moved to Texas, stating that California had become "complacent" with its economic success. During his hosting of Saturday Night Live in May 2021, Musk stated that he has Asperger syndrome.
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