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Elon Musk
Elon Reeve Musk (/ˈiːlɒn/ EE-lon; born June 28, 1971) is a business magnate and investor. He is the founder, CEO, and chief engineer of SpaceX; angel investor, CEO and product architect of Tesla, Inc.; owner and CTO of Twitter; founder of the Boring Company; co-founder of Neuralink and OpenAI; and president of the philanthropic Musk Foundation. Musk is the wealthiest person in the world with an estimated net worth, as of July 12, 2023, of around US$239 billion according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index and $248.8 billion according to Forbes's Real Time Billionaires list, primarily from his ownership stakes in Tesla and SpaceX.
In 2002, eBay acquired PayPal for $1.5 billion, and that same year, with $100 million of the money he made, Musk founded SpaceX, a spaceflight services company. In 2004, he was an early investor in the electric vehicle manufacturer Tesla Motors, Inc. (now Tesla, Inc.). He became its chairman and product architect, assuming the position of CEO in 2008. In 2006, he helped create SolarCity, a solar energy company that was acquired by Tesla in 2016 and became Tesla Energy. In 2013, Musk proposed a hyperloop high-speed vactrain transportation system. In 2015, he co-founded OpenAI, a nonprofit artificial intelligence research company. The following year, he co-founded Neuralink—a neurotechnology company developing brain–computer interfaces—and the Boring Company, a tunnel construction company. In 2022, his acquisition of Twitter for $44 billion was completed. In 2023, Musk founded xAI, an artificial intelligence company.
In early 2001, Musk became involved with the nonprofit Mars Society and discussed funding plans to place a growth-chamber for plants on Mars.[73] In October of the same year, he traveled to Moscow with Jim Cantrell and Adeo Ressi to buy refurbished intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs) that could send the greenhouse payloads into space. He met with the companies NPO Lavochkin and Kosmotras; however, Musk was seen as a novice[74] and the group returned to the United States empty-handed. In February 2002, the group returned to Russia with Mike Griffin (president of In-Q-Tel) to look for three ICBMs. They had another meeting with Kosmotras and were offered one rocket for $8 million, which Musk rejected. He instead decided to start a company that could build affordable rockets.[74] With $100 million of his own money,[75] Musk founded SpaceX in May 2002 and became the company's CEO and Chief Engineer.[76][77]
SpaceX attempted its first launch of the Falcon 1 rocket in 2006.[78] Though the rocket failed to reach Earth orbit, it was awarded a Commercial Orbital Transportation Services program contract from NASA Administrator (and former SpaceX consultant[79]) Mike Griffin later that year.[80][81] After two more failed attempts that nearly caused Musk and his companies to go bankrupt,[78] SpaceX succeeded in launching the Falcon 1 into orbit in 2008.[82] Later that year, SpaceX received a $1.6 billion Commercial Resupply Services contract from NASA for 12 flights of its Falcon 9 rocket and Dragon spacecraft to the International Space Station, replacing the Space Shuttle after its 2011 retirement.[83] In 2012, the Dragon vehicle docked with the ISS, a first for a commercial spacecraft.[84]
Working towards its goal of reusable rockets, in 2015 SpaceX successfully landed the first stage of a Falcon 9 on an inland platform.[85] Later landings were achieved on autonomous spaceport drone ships, an ocean-based recovery platform.[86] In 2018, SpaceX launched the Falcon Heavy; the inaugural mission carried Musk's personal Tesla Roadster as a dummy payload.[87][88] Since 2019,[89] SpaceX has been developing Starship, a fully-reusable, super-heavy-lift launch vehicle intended to replace the Falcon 9 and the Falcon Heavy.[90] In 2020, SpaceX launched its first crewed flight, the Demo-2, becoming the first private company to place astronauts into orbit and dock a crewed spacecraft with the ISS.
In 2015, SpaceX began development of the Starlink constellation of low-Earth-orbit satellites to provide satellite Internet access,[92] with the first two prototype satellites launched in February 2018. A second set of test satellites, and the first large deployment of a piece of the constellation, occurred in May 2019, when the first 60 operational satellites were launched.[93] The total cost of the decade-long project to design, build, and deploy the constellation is estimated by SpaceX to be about $10 billion.
Tesla
Tesla, Inc.—originally Tesla Motors—was incorporated in July 2003 by Martin Eberhard and Marc Tarpenning, who financed the company until the Series A round of funding. Both men played active roles in the company's early development prior to Musk's involvement.[107] Musk led the Series A round of investment in February 2004; he invested $6.5 million, became the majority shareholder, and joined Tesla's board of directors as chairman.[108] Musk took an active role within the company and oversaw Roadster product design but was not deeply involved in day-to-day business operations.[109]
SolarCity and Tesla Energy
Musk provided the initial concept and financial capital for SolarCity, which his cousins Lyndon and Peter Rive founded in 2006.[154] By 2013, SolarCity was the second largest provider of solar power systems in the United States.[155] In 2014, Musk promoted the idea of SolarCity building an advanced production facility in Buffalo, New York, triple the size of the largest solar plant in the United States.[156] Construction of the factory started in 2014 and was completed in 2017. It operated as a joint venture with Panasonic until early 2020.[157][158]
Tesla acquired SolarCity for over $2 billion in 2016 and merged it with its battery unit to create Tesla Energy. The deal's announcement resulted in a more than 10% drop in Tesla's stock price. At the time, SolarCity was facing liquidity issues.[159] Multiple shareholder groups filed a lawsuit against Musk and Tesla's directors, claiming that the purchase of SolarCity was done solely to benefit Musk and came at the expense of Tesla and its shareholders.[160][161] Tesla directors settled the lawsuit in January 2020, leaving Musk the sole remaining defendant.[162][163] Two years later, the court ruled in Musk's favor.[164]
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Neuralink
In 2016, Musk co-founded Neuralink, a neurotechnology startup company, with an investment of $100 million.[165][166] Neuralink aims to integrate the human brain with artificial intelligence (AI) by creating devices that are embedded in the brain to facilitate its merging with machines. Such technology could enhance memory or allow the devices to communicate with software.[166][167] The company also hopes to develop devices with which to treat neurological conditions such as Alzheimer's disease, dementia, and spinal cord injuries.[16
The Boring Company
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In 2017, Musk founded the Boring Company to construct tunnels, and revealed plans for specialized, underground, high-occupancy vehicles that could travel up to 150 miles per hour (240 km/h) and thus circumvent above-ground traffic in major cities.[177][178] Early in 2017, the company began discussions with regulatory bodies and initiated construction of a 30-foot (9.1 m) wide, 50-foot (15 m) long, and 15-foot (4.6 m) deep "test trench" on the premises of SpaceX's offices, as that required no permits.[179] The Los Angeles tunnel, less than two miles (3.2 km) in length, debuted to journalists in 2018. It used Tesla Model Xs and was reported to be a rough ride while traveling at suboptimal speeds.[180]
Two tunnel projects announced in 2018, in Chicago and West Los Angeles, have been canceled.[181][182] However, a tunnel beneath the Las Vegas Convention Center was completed in early 2021.[183] Local officials have approved further expansions of the tunnel system.[184] In 2021, tunnel construction was approved for Fort Lauderdale, Florida.[185]
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Musk expressed interest in buying Twitter as early as 2017,[187] and had previously questioned the platform's commitment to freedom of speech.[188][189] In January 2022, Musk started purchasing Twitter shares, reaching a 9.2% stake by April,[190] making him the largest shareholder.[191][e] When this was publicly disclosed, Twitter shares experienced the largest intraday price surge since the company's 2013 IPO.[193] On April 4, Musk agreed to a deal that would appoint him to Twitter's board of directors and prohibit him from acquiring more than 14.9% of the company.[194][195] However, on April 13, Musk made a $43 billion offer to buy Twitter, launching a takeover bid to buy 100% of Twitter's stock at $54.20 per share.[191][196] In response, Twitter's board adopted a "poison pill" shareholder rights plan to make it more expensive for any single investor to own more than 15% of the company without board approval.[197] Nevertheless, by the end of the month Musk had successfully concluded his bid for approximately $44 billion.[198] This included about $12.5 billion in loans against his Tesla stock and $21 billion in equity financing.[199][200]
Tesla's stock market value sank by over $100 billion the next day in reaction to the deal, causing Musk to lose around $30 billion of his net worth.[201][202] He subsequently tweeted criticism of Twitter executive Vijaya Gadde's policies to his 86 million followers, which led to some of them engaging in sexist and racist harassment against her.[203] Exactly a month after announcing the takeover, Musk stated that the deal was "on hold" following a report that 5% of Twitter's daily active users were spam accounts,[204] causing Twitter shares to drop more than 10 percent.[205] Although he initially affirmed his commitment to the acquisition,[206] he sent notification of his termination of the deal in July; Twitter's Board of Directors responded that they were committed to holding him to the transaction.[207] On July 12, 2022, Twitter formally sued Musk in the Chancery Court of Delaware for breaching a legally binding agreement to purchase Twitter.[208] In October 2022, Musk reversed again, offering to purchase Twitter at $54.20 per share.[209] The acquisition was officially completed on October 27.[210]
Immediately after the acquisition, Musk fired several top Twitter executives including CEO Parag Agrawal;[210][211] Musk became the CEO instead.[212] He instituted a $7.99 monthly subscription for a "blue check",[213][214][215] and laid off a significant portion of the company's staff.[216][217] Musk lessened content moderation,[218] and in December, Musk released internal documents relating to Twitter's moderation of Hunter Biden's laptop controversy in the leadup to the 2020 presidential election.[219] The Southern Poverty Law Center noted that Twitter has verified numerous extremists,[220] and a study of millions of tweets following the acquisition indicated that hate speech on the platform has become "more visible" under Musk's leadership.[221]
Within the first weeks of ownership, Musk made a series of decisions and changes that he quickly reversed, including the paid blue checkmark,[222] creating an "official" label[223] and forbidding linking to one's profiles on other social media platforms.[224] Under Musk's management, Twitter experienced several large scale outages.[225]
xAI
On July 12, 2023, Elon Musk launched an AI company called xAI, which aims to develop a generative AI program that competes with existing offerings like ChatGPT. The company has hired engineers from Google and OpenAI.[232]\
OpenAI
In 2015, Musk co-founded OpenAI, a not-for-profit artificial intelligence (AI) research company aiming to develop artificial general intelligence intended to be safe and beneficial to humanity.[268] A particular focus of the company is to democratize artificial superintelligence systems, against governments and corporations.[22] Musk pledged $1 billion of funding to OpenAI.[269] In 2023, Musk tweeted that he had ended up giving a total of $100 million to OpenAI. TechCrunch later reported that, according to its own investigation of public records, "only $15 million" of OpenAI's funding could be definitively traced to Musk. Musk subsequently stated that he had donated about $50 million.[270]
In 2018, Musk left the OpenAI board to avoid possible future conflicts with his role as CEO of Tesla as the latter company increasingly became involved in AI through Tesla Autopilot.[271] Since then, OpenAI has made significant advances in machine learning, producing neural networks such as GPT-3 (producing human-like text),[272] and DALL-E (generating digital images from natural language descriptions).[273]
Net worth
Musk made $175.8 million when PayPal was sold to eBay in 2002.[308] He was first listed on the Forbes Billionaires List in 2012, with a net worth of $2 billion.[309]
At the start of 2020, Musk had a net worth of $27 billion.[310] By the end of the year his net worth had increased by $150 billion, mostly driven by his ownership of around 20% of Tesla stock.[311] During this period, Musk's net worth was often volatile. For example, it dropped $16.3 billion in September, the largest single-day plunge in Bloomberg Billionaires Index's history.[312] 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.[313]
In January 2021, Musk, with a net worth of $185 billion, surpassed Amazon founder Jeff Bezos to become the richest person in the world.[314] Bezos reclaimed the top spot the following month.[315] On September 27, 2021, after Tesla stock surged, Forbes announced that Musk had a net worth of over $200 billion, and was the richest person in the world.[316] In November 2021, Musk became the first person to have a net worth of more than $300 billion.[317]
On December 30, 2022, it was reported that Musk had lost $200 billion from his net worth due to declining stock values in Tesla, becoming the first person in history to lose such a large sum of money.[318][319] In January 2023, Musk was recognized by Guinness World Records for experiencing the "largest loss of personal fortune in history" with regards to his financial losses since November 2021, which Guinness quoted a Forbes estimate of $182 billion.[320]
Sources of wealth
Around 75% of Musk's wealth derived from Tesla stock in November 2020,[313] a proportion that fell to about 37% as of December 2022,[f] after selling nearly $40 billion in company shares since late 2021.[321] Musk does not receive a salary from Tesla; he agreed with the board in 2018 to a compensation plan that ties his personal earnings to Tesla's valuation and revenue.[311] The deal stipulated that Musk only receives the compensation if Tesla reaches certain market values.[322] It was the largest such deal ever done between a CEO and a company board.[323] In the first award, given in May 2020, he was eligible to purchase 1.69 million Tesla shares (about 1% of the company) at below-market prices, which was worth about $800 million.[323][322]
Musk paid $455 million in taxes on $1.52 billion of income between 2014 and 2018.[324] According to ProPublica, Musk paid no federal income taxes in 2018.[325] He claimed his 2021 tax bill was estimated at $12 billion based on his sale of $14 billion worth of Tesla stock.[324]
Musk has repeatedly described himself as "cash poor",[326][327] and has "professed to have little interest in the material trappings of wealth".[326] In May 2020, he pledged to sell almost all physical possessions.[327] Musk has defended his wealth by saying he is accumulating resources for humanity's outward expansion to space.[328]
Personal life
From the early 2000s until late 2020, Musk resided in California, where both Tesla and SpaceX were founded.[448] In 2020, he moved to Texas, saying that California had become "complacent" about its economic success.[448][449] While hosting Saturday Night Live in May 2021, Musk said that he has Asperger syndrome.[450] Musk is also a practitioner of Brazilian jiu-jitsu.[451]
Musk met his first wife, Canadian author Justine Wilson, while attending Queen's University in Ontario, Canada; and they married in 2000.[452] In 2002, their first child died of sudden infant death syndrome at the age of 10 weeks.[453] After his death, the couple decided to use IVF to continue their family.[454] They had twins in 2004 followed by triplets in 2006.[454] The couple divorced in 2008 and shared custody of their children.[455][456] In 2022, one of the twins officially changed her name to reflect her gender identity as a trans woman, and to use Wilson as her last name because she no longer wished to be associated with Musk.[457] Musk blamed the estrangement of his daughter on what the Financial Times characterized as "the supposed takeover of elite schools and universities by neo-Marxists."[458]
In 2008, Musk began dating English actress Talulah Riley.[459] They married two years later at Dornoch Cathedral in Scotland.[460][461] In 2012, the couple divorced, before remarrying the following year.[462] After briefly filing for divorce in 2014,[462] Musk finalized a second divorce from Riley in 2016.[463] Musk then dated Amber Heard for several months in 2017;[464] he had reportedly been pursuing her since 2012.[465] Johnny Depp later accused Musk of having an affair with Heard while she was still married to Depp.[466][467] Musk and Heard both denied the affair.[466]
In 2018, Musk and Canadian musician Grimes revealed that they were dating.[468] Grimes gave birth to their son in May 2020.[469][470] According to Musk and Grimes, his name was "X Æ A-12" (/ɛks æʃ eɪ ˈtwɛlv/); however, the name would have violated California regulations as it contained characters that are not in the modern English alphabet,[471][472] and was then changed to "X Æ A-Xii". This drew more confusion, as Æ is not a letter in the modern English alphabet.[473] 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.[474] In December 2021, Grimes and Musk had a second child, a daughter named Exa Dark Sideræl Musk (nicknamed "Y"), born via surrogacy.[1] Despite the pregnancy, Musk confirmed reports that the couple were "semi-separated" in September 2021; in an interview with Time in December 2021, he said he was single.[475][476] In March 2022, Grimes said of her relationship with Musk: "I would probably refer to him as my boyfriend, but we're very fluid."[1] Later that month, Grimes tweeted that she and Musk had broken up again but remained on good terms.[477]
In July 2022, Insider published court documents revealing that Musk had had twins with Shivon Zilis, director of operations and special projects at Neuralink, in November 2021.[3] They were born weeks before Musk and Grimes had their second child via surrogate in December. The news "raise[d] questions about workplace ethics", given that Zilis directly reported to Musk.[478] Also in July 2022, The Wall Street Journal reported that Musk allegedly had an affair with Nicole Shanahan, the wife of Google co-founder Sergey Brin, in 2021, leading to their divorce the following year.[479] Musk denied the report.[480]
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