Elon Musk is an engineer and technology entrepreneur and is the founder and CEO of Space X; the founder of The Boring Company; the co-founder and CEO of Tesla, Inc.; the co-founder and CEO of Neuralink; the co-founder of OpenAI; and the co-founder of PayPal. Let’s explore the innovative genius of Elon Musk further.
Early Life and Education
Musk was born on 28 June 1971 in Pretoria, South Africa, to Maye Musk of Canada and Errol Musk, a South African electromechanical engineer, sailor, and pilot.
By the age of 10, Elon had taught himself computer programming and in 1989, at the age of 17, Elon moved to Canada to attend Queen’s University and left in 1992 to study physics and business at the University of Pennsylvania.
Getting Started in the Business World
Elon and younger brother Kimbal founded Zip2, a web software company, with the help of a small group of angel investors in 1995. Zip2 was sold to Compaq in 1999 and Elon received $22 million for his 7% stake in the business, $10 million of which he used to co-found the online financial services and email payment company, X.com.
Then in 2000, X.com merged with Confinity and the company was renamed to PayPal in 2001. PayPal was acquired by eBay in 2002 and Musk received $165 million from the sale as the company’s largest shareholder.
SpaceX
In 2002, Elon founded Space Exploration Technologies, or SpaceX, using $100 million of his early fortune – that’s a lot of online slots Canada! Based in Hawthorne, California, SpaceX develops and manufactures space launch vehicles and Elon is the company’s CEO and CTO.
With an intense focus on the advancement of rocket technology, SpaceX launched the Falcon 1 rocket in 2008, which was the first privately funded liquid-fuelled vehicle to put a satellite into Earth orbit.
Tesla
In 2004, Elon joined the already existing board of directors at Telsa as its chairman and in 2007, following the financial crisis and a series of conflicts, Elon assumed the role of CEO and product architect of Tesla.
The year 2008 saw the release of the company’s first electric sports car, the Tesla Roadster, which sold 2,500 vehicles in over 30 countries. In addition to selling their own cars, Tesla also sells electric powertrain systems to Toyota for the RAV4 EV and to Daimler for various Mercedes Benz vehicles.
OpenAI
The creation of OpenAI, a non-profit artificial intelligence (AI) research company, was announced by Elon in 2015 and the company’s objective it to develop AI in a way that is beneficial and safe to humanity.
With the hope of making AI available to everyone, OpenAI aims to counteract large corporations and governments who may use AI to gain power and profit.
Neuralink
Musk co-founded Neuralink, a neurotechnology start-up dedicated to integrating the human brain with AI, in 2016.
Centred on creating devices which can be implanted into the human brain, Neuralink hopes to eventually help humans merge with software.
With a net worth of over $20 billion, it’s clear that Elon’s numerous risks have paid off!