He was born Elon Reeve Musk on June 28, 1971, in Pretoria, Transvaal, South Africa. He is a native South African, and he also holds citizenship in Canada and the United States. His father, Errol Musk, is a South African electromechanical engineer, pilot, sailor, consultant, and property developer. His mother, Maye Haldeman Musk, is a dietician and model born in Saskatchewan, Canada. Elon has two other younger siblings, a brother, Kimbal (1972), and a sister, Tosca (1974).
He studied at Queen’s University in Ontario in 1990. He then moved to the University of Pennsylvania in 1992, supporting himself through college. With over $100k in student debt, he graduated with a double major in physics and economics at Penn’s Wharton School of Business. How did debt-straddled Elon turn his finances around to earn billions? Musk has said his success came from taking risks, and this is where he took his first big one.
– Zip2 (1995) This start-up provided online guides of cities, including maps, and worked as a directory for newspapers. – X.com (1999) After merging with Confinity, X.com became Paypal, the well-known digital payments platform used by merchants and consumers globally. – SpaceX (2002) This company designs and manufactures reusable rockets to facilitate space travel and exploration. – Tesla, Inc. (2004) Initially an electric car company, Tesla, Inc. has outgrown automobile giants like Toyota, Honda, and Ford, that have dominated the market for decades. Now, the company also manufactures solar power systems and energy storage options.
– SolarCity (2006/2016) As a co-founder, Musk initially provided the concept and financial backing to his cousin’s business venture, SolarCity. It became the second largest provider of solar power systems in the United States. Later, Tesla, Inc. bought the company and merged it with its own battery energy storage products division to form Tesla Energy. – Neuralink (2016) One of Musk’s many companies with a futuristic goal, Neuralink aims to build a device that can be implanted in the brain and convert our thoughts into actions—helping people with disabilities. – The Boring Company (2016) Formed to construct tunnels, this company built one underneath the SpaceX office in 2017 and another beneath the Las Vegas Convention Center in 2021.
After becoming the CEO of Tesla, Inc. and SpaceX, Musk wasn’t ashamed to show the world his vision for the future. Some poked fun at his far-flung concepts of space travel and AI, but that did not perturb him. His ventures proved to be very profitable. In recent years, the shares of Tesla, Inc. grew from $61 in 2019 to almost $750 currently. As they did, Elon Musk became the world’s richest man, edging out Amazon’s Jeff Bezos, Microsoft’s Bill Gates, and Meta’s Mark Zuckerberg. He has held on to his crown up until now with $273 billion in estimated net worth.