Elon Musk Biography
Elon Musk is an American business magnate and investor known as the founder, CEO, and chief engineer of SpaceX; angel investor, CEO, and product architect of Tesla, Inc.; & owner and CEO of Twitter, Inc. He is also the founder of The Boring Company; co-founder of Neuralink and OpenAI; and president of the philanthropic Musk Foundation.
Elon Musk Age
Musk is 52 years old as of 2023. He was born (real name- Elon Reeve Musk) on June 28, 1971, in Pretoria, Transvaal, South Africa. Musk celebrates his birthday on the 28th of June every year.
Elon Musk Height
Musk stands at an approximate height of 6 feet 0 inches.
Elon Musk Family
Elon Musk Dad / Elon Musk Mom
Musk was born and raised in Pretoria, one of South Africa’s capital cities, and brought up by his mother Maye Musk, and father Errol Musk. His mom is a model and dietitian and his dad is a South African electromechanical engineer, pilot, sailor, consultant, and property developer, who was a half-owner of a Zambian emerald mine near Lake Tanganyika.
His mother was born in Saskatchewan, Canada, and raised in South Africa. Musk has British and Pennsylvania Dutch ancestry. In 1980, Musk’s parents divorced and he chose to mostly live with his father. Musk regretted his decision and has become estranged from his father. He has a paternal half-sister and a half-brother.
During his youth, his family was wealthy and his father was elected to the Pretoria City Council as a representative of the anti-apartheid Progressive Party. His maternal grandfather, Joshua Haldeman, was an adventurous American-born Canadian. Haldeman took his family on record-breaking journeys to Africa and Australia in a single-engine Bellanca airplane.
Elon Musk Siblings
Musk has a younger sister, Tosca, and a younger brother, Kimbal. Musk and his siblings were cited as sharing their father’s dislike of apartheid.
Elon Musk Spouse / Elon Musk Wife
Musk seems not to be married at the moment. However, there are rumors that he is dating Natasha Bassett (Elvis star). They were first spotted together in February 2022 and rumors began that they were in a monogamous relationship. There will be an update as soon as any information about his dating is clear in the limelight.
Elon Musk Ex-Wives / Divorce
Musk has been in 2 marriages. He met his first wife, Canadian Justine Wilson, during his time attending Queen’s University in Ontario, Canada. The two tied the knot in 2000 and divorced in 2008. He began dating English actress Talulah Riley in 2008 and they married two years later at Dornoch Cathedral in Scotland. Unfortunately, they divorced in 2012. In 2013, they got back together and got married again, but in 2016 he finalized a second divorce from Riley after briefly filing for divorce in 2014.
Elon Musk Girlfriends / Dating
Musk has dated Amber Heard and Grimes (real name – Claire Elise Boucher). His relationship with the two ladies did not go well and they broke up.
Amber Heard Elon Musk
In 2017, he dated Amber Heard for several months and he had reportedly been pursuing her since 2012. This was after divorcing Talulah Riley. Johnny Depp later accused Musk of having an affair with Heard while she was still married to Depp. Musk and Heard both denied the affair.
Elon Musk Grimes (Claire Elise Boucher)
Musk and Canadian musician Grimes revealed that they were dating in 2018. In September 2021, Musk confirmed reports that the couple was “semi-separated.” This was during an interview with Time in December 2021 and he said that he was single.
Elon Musk Children/Kids / Elon Musk Daughter/Sons
Musk and his first wife Justine Wilson were blessed with 3 kids. Their first child died of sudden infant death syndrome at the age of 10 weeks in 2002. The couple decided to use IVF to continue their family after his death. In 2004, they welcomed twins followed by triplets in 2006. After their divorce, they shared custody of their children.
One of the twins officially changed her name in 2022 to reflect her gender identity, and to use Wilson as her last name because she no longer wished to be associated with Musk. In an October 2022 interview with FT.com, 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.
Musk and Grimes welcomed their son named X Æ A-12 and later changed to X AE A-XII Musk in May 2020. “X” is a first name, “AE A-XII” is a middle name, and “Musk” is a surname. Grimes and Musk had a second child, a daughter named Exa Dark Sideræl Musk (nicknamed “Y”) in December 2021. The daughter was born via surrogacy.
Elon Musk Net Worth
Musk has an estimated net worth ranging between $187 billion which he has earned from his successful career as a business magnate and investor. When PayPal was sold to eBay in 2002, he made $175.8 million. In 2012, Musk was listed on the Forbes Billionaires List with a net worth of $2 billion. Musk had a net worth of $27 billion at the start of 2020 and by the end of the year, his net worth had increased by $150 billion.
Musk’s net worth was often volatile during this time, in September it dropped $16.3 billion. Musk passed Facebook co-founder Mark Zuckerberg in November of that year and he became the third-richest person in the world. A week later, Musk became the second-richest person after passing Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates. Musk’s net worth continued to raise and in January 2021, he had a worth of $185 billion, surpassing Amazon founder Jeff Bezos to become the richest person in the world. In November 2021, Musk became the first person worth over $300 billion.
Musk lost $200 billion from his net worth due to declining stock values in Tesla and it was reported on December 30, 2022. He became the first person in history to lose such a large sum of money. Musk was recognized by Guinness World Records in January 2023 for experiencing the “largest loss of personal fortune in history” with regard to his financial losses since November 2021, which Guinness quoted as a Forbes estimate of $182 billion.
Elon Musk Education
Musk is a proud graduate of Waterkloof House Preparatory School, Bryanston High School, and Pretoria Boys High School. From there, he attended the University of Pretoria for five months. He also attended Queen’s University in Kingston, Ontario but two years later, he transferred to the University of Pennsylvania (UPenn), where he completed studies for a Bachelor of Arts degree in physics and a Bachelor of Science degree in economics from the Wharton School.
Elon Musk Career
Musk applied for a Canadian passport through his Canadian-born mother, expecting it to be easier and immigrate to the United States. In June 1989, he arrived in Canada and lived with a second cousin in Saskatchewan for a year, working odd jobs at a farm and lumber mill. He held two internships in Silicon Valley one at the Palo Alto–based startup Rocket Science Games and another one at the energy storage startup Pinnacle Research Institute, which investigated electrolytic ultracapacitors for energy storage.
In 1995, he was accepted to a Ph.D. program in materials science at Stanford University. However, Musk decided to join the Internet boom, instead dropping out two days after being accepted and applying for a job at Netscape, to which he reportedly never received a response. Ashlee Vance described Musk as an awkward and introverted child. At age ten, he developed an interest in computing and video games, teaching himself how to program from the VIC-20 user manual. At age twelve, he sold his BASIC-based game Blastar to PC and Office Technology magazine for approximately $500.
Elon Musk Tesla Inc.
Musk owns a multinational automotive and clean energy company called Tesla Inc., headquartered in Austin, Texas. The company designs and manufactures electric vehicles, solar panels and solar roof tiles, battery energy storage from home to grid-scale, and related products and services. Tesla Inc. is one of the world’s most valuable companies and the world’s most valuable automaker. Musk became the largest shareholder of the company in February 2004, via a $6.5 million investment.
According to Musk, the purpose of Tesla is to help expedite the move to sustainable transport and energy, obtained through electric vehicles and solar power. Tesla has been the subject of many lawsuits, increasing government scrutiny, journalistic criticism, and public controversies arising from statements and acts of CEO Elon Musk and from allegations of creative accounting, whistleblower retaliation, worker rights violations, and unresolved and dangerous technical problems with their products.
Elon Musk SpaceX
Musk is the owner and founder of a spacecraft manufacturer, launcher, and satellite communications corporation known as Space Exploration Technologies Corp., which is headquartered in Hawthorne, California. SpaceX was founded by Musk in 2002 with the aim of reducing space transportation costs to enable the colonization of Mars. Musk’s company manufactures the Falcon 9, Falcon Heavy, and Starship launch vehicles, several rocket engines, Cargo Dragon and Crew Dragon spacecraft, and Starlink communications satellites.
Elon Musk Zip2 / Elon Musk Internet
Musk was one of the founders of a company that provided and licensed online city guide software to newspapers, called Zip2. He founded the company in Palo Alto, California as Global Link Information Network in 1995, with his brother Kimbal Musk, and Greg Kouri. He however sold the company to Navteq.
Zip2 was founded with money raised from a small group of angel investors. Earlier, Elon Musk’s company provided local businesses with an Internet presence, and later, it started to assist newspapers in designing online city guides before being purchased by Compaq Computer in 1999. Global Link provided local businesses with an Internet presence by linking their services to searchers and providing directions.
Musk’s company “Zip2” had partnered with about 160 newspapers by 1998 to develop guides to cities, either locally or at full scale. According to chairman and co-founder Elon Musk, twenty of those newspapers led to full-scale city guides. The New York Times reported that Zip2 also provided newspapers with an online directory, calendar, and email alongside their core offering.
Elon Musk Neuralink Corporation
Musk and a founding team of seven scientists and engineers founded Neuralink, a neurotechnology startup company, with an investment of $100 million in 2016. Neuralink Corporation is a neurotechnology company that develops implantable brain–computer interfaces (BCIs). Musk says that the company 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.
Neuralink announced that it was working on a “sewing machine-like” device capable of implanting very thin (4 to 6 μm in width threads into the brain, and demonstrated a system that reads information from a lab rat via 1,500 electrodes. They had anticipated starting experiments with humans in 2020, but have since moved that projection to 2023.
Elon Musk The Boring Company
Musk founded the Boring Company in 2017 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. The Boring Company is an infrastructure and tunnel construction services company. After six years TBC has completed one out of six publicly announced projects. The only operational one is situated inside the Las Vegas convention center (LVCC) and operates on limited days for loop travel during conventions.
Elon Musk Asperger Syndrome
Although Elon Musk has never explicitly said that he’s autistic, he has admitted to having Asperger’s, a diagnosis that isn’t officially listed as a disorder. Instead, Asperger’s was replaced by autism spectrum disorder in the DSM series. Musk admitted to having Asperger’s while starring as a guest on the famed weekend comedy series Saturday Night Live, or SNL.
Some young people feel that Elon Musk’s professing to have autism encouraged other people with the disorder making them feel as if they too could succeed to a level that’s currently seen by the famed businessman.
Elon Musk Twitter
Musk expressed his interest in buying Twitter in 2017 and had previously questioned the platform’s commitment to freedom of speech. He began purchasing Twitter shares in January 2022 and by April he reached a 9.2% stake, making him the largest shareholder. 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. He made a series of short-lived decisions and changes that he quickly reversed within the first weeks of ownership. These include forbidding linking to one’s profiles on other social media platforms and introducing a paid blue checkmark, creating an “official” label.