Elon Reeve Musk, better known as often Elon Musk, is a business magnate, investor, and philanthropist. He is the founder, CEO, and Chief Engineer at SpaceX; angel investor, CEO, and Product Architect of Tesla, Inc.; founder of The Boring Company; and co-founder of Neuralink and OpenAI.
A strong believer in the principle of making the world a better place through entrepreneurial problem solving, and with a skyrocketing net worth, Elon Musk is the wealthiest person in the world according to both the Bloomberg Billionaires Index and the Forbes real-time billionaires list.
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Quick Facts of Elon Musk
| Elon Musk Net Worth: | $264.6 billion |
| Elon Musk Salary: | $0 |
| Nationality: | South Africa |
| Elon Musk Height: | 6 ft 2 in (1.88 m) |
| How old is Elon Musk? | 52 years old |
| Elon Musk Date of Birth: | 28 June, 1971 |
| Gender: | Male |
| Profession: | Aerospace Engineer, Engineer, Entrepreneur, Investor, Designer, Businessperson, Inventor, Film Producer |
Elon Musk Age, Education
Elon Musk is 52 years old, born on June 28, 1971, in Pretoria, South Africa. Elon was a voracious reader in his childhood who developed an interest in computer programming at the age of ten, leading to him writing and selling his first code for a BASIC-based video game to a computing magazine for approximately $500.
Elon was bullied a lot as a kid, but he would finish his high school education in the country. On the month of his eighteenth birthday, Elon relocated to Canada, having gained Canadian Citizenship through his Canadian-born mother.
Musk graduated with a Bachelor of Science in Physics and Economics, from the University of Pennsylvania’s College of Arts and Science, and its Wharton School of Business. He moved to California to pursue a Ph.D. in applied physics and materials science but eventually left Stanford University two days later to focus on his entrepreneurial aspirations.
Musk who dropped out of school at the highest level of education (while doing his Ph.D.) in 1995, moved on to pursue his entrepreneurial career. Since then, since then his story has been filled with one entrepreneurial success after another. Elon’s dreams have seen him contribute to many industries. These include everything from online payment systems, and electric cars, to space exploration, unconventional construction and transportation systems, artificial intelligence, and yes, vanity toys.
Elon Musk Height & Weight
He stands at an impressive height of 1.88m which is approximately two inches above six feet. He maintains a healthy weight of about 82 kg (181 lbs), has hazel-colored eyes, and has light brown hair.
His early career: Zip2, and PayPal
In 1995, Musk and his brother, Kimbal raised money from investors to start their web software company called, Zip2. They developed an online city guide for various publishing powerhouses like The New York Times and the Chicago Tribune.
The company was acquired in 1999 by Compaq for a total of $341 million in cash and stock options. Musk who owned a 7 percent stake in the company received $22 million from the sale.
In March 1999, he took $10 million of the money he got from the Zip2 sale and launched a financial services and email payment company, X.com.
The next year, he merged with Confinity, and the new entity focused on Confinity’s money transfer service, PayPal. In 2001, the company changed its name to PayPal.
The company was sold for $1.5 billion in 2002 to eBay. Musk received $165 million for his 11.7 percent stake in the company.
Elon’s Space exploration efforts and Tesla, Inc.
In 2001, Musk again dreamt up a project he called Mars Oasis, in an attempt to revive the public interest in space exploration. The project never saw the light of the day due to difficulties he encountered in acquiring refurbished intercontinental ballistic missiles in Russia.
This led to him deciding to establish his own company to build affordable missiles he needed for his Mars exploration. Again, dipping into his coffers, he launched his space exploration technologies company, Space X, in May 2002, in California.
In the years following Space X’s achievements within its industry brought them contracts from the likes of NASA in 2006, and another $1.6 billion commercial resupply services program in 2008.
In February 2018, they became the first private company ever to launch an object into orbit around the sun. As of November 2017, the company had an estimated 7000 people on its payroll.
In February 2004, Elon led the Series A funding of a company called Tesla Motors at the time. He joined the board of directors of the company and eventually took over as CEO and product architect in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis.
Renamed Tesla, Inc., the company primarily focuses on the manufacture of electric vehicles such as their Tesla Roadster, Model X, and Model S vehicles.
They also build electronic powertrain systems for companies like Toyota and Mercedes’ parent company, Daimler for use in the manufacture of their electric vehicles.
In 2019, Tesla has revealed their Cybertruck, which is an electric pickup truck that will be launched in the market by the end of the year 2021 and the production will start in early 2023.
Tesla exploded under the visionary leadership of Elon Musk, who was taking home an annual salary of $37, 000. Tesla moved into energy storage and the manufacturing of solar-powered systems with the acquisition of SolarCity, a company co-founded by two of Musk’s cousins in 2006. As of December 2017, Tesla, Inc. provides employment for over 37,000 employees.
Other endeavors
Since Space X and Tesla, Elon has long expanded his entrepreneurial interests, going into transportation and artificial intelligence.
He founded Hyperloop on August 12, 2013, and The Boring Company on December 17, 2016. Both companies are related in their ultimate objective, which is to make transportation systems more affordable, efficient, and reliable.
While Hyperloop focuses on building a high-speed transportation system with next-gen technology, The Boring Company – which was inspired when Musk was stuck in traffic – is essentially an infrastructure and construction company aimed at creating an elaborate tunnel network throughout the country to massively decongest traffic above ground.
Elon Musk’s two artificial intelligence startups are Neuralink and Open AI. According to the billionaire entrepreneur, these two establishments are complimentary.
Neuralink is a neurotechnology company that aims at integrating artificial intelligence into the human brain. According to Musk, this will amplify all the brain’s functions to help it keep up in an age of rapidly advancing intelligence.
Open AI, on the other hand, is a non-profit that serves sort of like a check. Its objective is to constantly explore the dangers of artificial intelligence and design safety measures to ensure that the advancement of AI doesn’t eventually become counter-productive to our humanity.
In 2018, Musk took an unconventional turn in the expansion of his business empire. He announced that he would be starting a new comedic media venture called Thud.
The billionaire is politically active and has often voiced his opinions on different political issues. In December 2016, he came on board as a member of two of then-President-elect Donald Trump’s presidential advisory committees.
He would resign from both seven months into Trump’s presidency after he fell out with the President in terms of policy direction.
Elon Musk Family: Mother, Father, Brother, Sister, Wife, Girlfriend, and Children
As stated earlier, Elon was born in South Africa. He migrated from South Africa to Canada and then later, he finally moved to the USA. Now lets discuss Elon Musk Family.
Elon Musk father, Errol Musk, was a pilot, sailor, and electromechanical engineer. Elon Musk mother, Maye Musk, was a dietician and a model, who was originally from Canada.
Elon had two younger biological siblings, Kimbal Musk and Tosca Musk. Kimbal has worked with Elon at various times in his entrepreneurial journey. He is also a member of the board of one of Elon’s numerous companies. Kimbal owns a chain of restaurants. Tosca is a filmmaker and producer. She has released a few movies under her company, Musk Entertainment.
Elon Musk has had as many relationships as he has business ventures. So far, the man has been in five relationships, with four different people. Elon met Justine Wilson, a Canadian author at the Queen’s University campus in Ontario where they were both students. The pair started dating and married in 2000.
Justine would later have five sons for Musk – twins in 2004, and triplets in 2006 – through in vitro fertilization. They had lost their first child before these five children came along. The couple divorced in 2008 and share custody of the kids.
Musk started seeing Talulah Riley, an English actress in 2008. They wedded in 2010 and divorced in early 2012. They got back together in July 2013 and divorced for a second time in late 2016.
Next came American actress Amber Heard in 2016, however, their heavy career schedules meant they had to split after one year.
Currently, he is in a relationship with Grimes. They started dating in 2018 and they are blessed with a son named “X Æ A-Xii” whom they call “X” in short who was born on May 4, 2020.
Elon Musk Net Worth 2024
Elon Musk has a net worth of $232.5 billion. As at the time writing the article, May 2022, Elon is currently the richest person in the world with Bernard Arnault & family, Jeff Bezos and Bill Gate taking second, third and fourth positions respectively.
Elon Musk acquiring Twitter
In April 2022, Elon Musk acquired Twitter after a weekslong saga during which he first became the company’s largest shareholder, then offered to buy it outright. He secured the final deal to buy the social network for $54.20 a share — valuing the firm at roughly $44 billion.
Social Media: Instagram, Twitter
He is very active on Twitter but not on Instagram and has 80 million followers on his Twitter account currently.
A few Elon Musk Quotes
- “If you get up in the morning and think the future is going to be better, it is a bright day. Otherwise, it’s not.”
- “There have to be reasons that you get up in the morning and you want to live. Why do you want to live? What’s the point? What inspires you? What do you love about the future? If the future does not include being out there among the stars and being a multi-planet species, I find that incredibly depressing.“
- “Some people don’t like change, but you need to embrace change if the alternative is a disaster.”
- “That is no excuse. I am extremely disappointed. You need to figure out where your priorities are. We’re changing the world and changing history, and you either commit or you don’t.”
- “I would like to allocate more time to dating, though. I need to find a girlfriend. That’s why I need to carve out just a little more time. I think maybe even another five to 10 — how much time does a woman want a week? Maybe 10 hours? That’s kind of the minimum? I don’t know.”
- “They got my best [expletive] friend to lure me out of hiding so they could beat me up. And that [expletive] hurt. 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.”
he does not weigh 181. not even close. not at 6’2″. maybe back around 2008ish or so.