Elon Reeve Musk is a business magnate and investor.
136 Facts About Elon Musk
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Elon Musk is the founder, CEO and chief engineer of SpaceX; angel investor, CEO and product architect of Tesla, Inc.
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Elon Musk was born in Pretoria, South Africa, and briefly attended at the University of Pretoria before moving to Canada at age 18, acquiring citizenship through his Canadian-born mother.
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Elon Musk moved to California in 1995 to attend Stanford University.
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Elon Musk became its chairman and product architect, assuming the position of CEO in 2008.
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Elon Musk has expressed views that have made him a polarizing figure.
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Elon Musk has been criticized for making unscientific and misleading statements, including spreading COVID-19 misinformation, and has been accused of antisemitism.
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Elon Musk stepped down as chairman of Tesla and paid a $20 million fine as part of a settlement agreement with the SEC.
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Elon Reeve Musk was born on June 28,1971, in Pretoria, one of South Africa's capital cities.
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Elon Musk's father, Errol Musk, is a South African electromechanical engineer, pilot, sailor, consultant, and property developer, who partly owned a Zambian emerald mine near Lake Tanganyika.
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Elon Musk has a younger brother, Kimbal, and a younger sister, Tosca.
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Elon Musk's father was elected to the Pretoria City Council as a representative of the anti-apartheid Progressive Party and has said that his children shared their father's dislike of apartheid.
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Elon Musk's maternal grandfather, Joshua Haldeman, was an adventurous American-born Canadian who took his family on record-breaking journeys to Africa and Australia in a single-engine Bellanca airplane.
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Elon Musk regretted his decision and has become estranged from his father.
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Elon Musk attended Waterkloof House Preparatory School, Bryanston High School, and Pretoria Boys High School, from which he graduated.
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Elon Musk applied for a Canadian passport through his Canadian-born mother, knowing that it would be easier to immigrate to the United States this way.
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Elon Musk arrived in Canada in June 1989 and lived with a second cousin in Saskatchewan for a year, working odd jobs at a farm and lumber mill.
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Elon Musk reportedly hosted large, ticketed house parties to help pay for tuition, and wrote a business plan for an electronic book-scanning service similar to Google Books.
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However, Elon Musk decided to join the Internet boom, instead dropping out two days after being accepted and applied for a job at Netscape, to which he reportedly never received a response.
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Elon Musk developed an Internet city guide with maps, directions, and yellow pages, and marketed it to newspapers.
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In 2022, Elon Musk discussed a goal of creating "X, the everything app".
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In early 2001, Elon Musk became involved with the nonprofit Mars Society and discussed funding plans to place a growth-chamber for plants on Mars.
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Elon Musk met with the companies NPO Lavochkin and Kosmotras; however, Musk was seen as a novice and the group returned to the United States empty-handed.
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Elon Musk instead decided to start a company that could build affordable rockets.
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However, Elon Musk refused to block Russian state media on Starlink, declaring himself "a free speech absolutist".
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Elon Musk took an active role within the company and oversaw Roadster product design but was not deeply involved in day-to-day business operations.
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Elon Musk assumed leadership of the company as CEO and product architect in 2008.
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In 2021, Elon Musk nominally changed his title to "Technoking" while retaining his position as CEO.
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Under Elon Musk, Tesla has constructed multiple lithium-ion battery and electric vehicle factories, named Gigafactories.
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In 2022, Elon Musk unveiled a robot developed by Tesla, Optimus.
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In 2018, Elon Musk was sued by the SEC for a tweet claiming that funding had been secured for potentially taking Tesla private.
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The lawsuit characterized the tweet as false, misleading, and damaging to investors, and sought to bar Elon Musk from serving as CEO of publicly traded companies.
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Two days later, Elon Musk settled with the SEC, without admitting or denying the SEC's allegations.
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Elon Musk has stated in interviews that he does not regret posting the tweet that triggered the SEC investigation.
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In 2020, a judge prevented a lawsuit from proceeding that claimed a tweet by Elon Musk regarding Tesla stock price violated the agreement.
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FOIA-released records showed that the SEC itself concluded Elon Musk has subsequently violated the agreement twice by tweeting regarding "Tesla's solar roof production volumes and its stock price".
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Elon Musk provided the initial concept and financial capital for SolarCity, which his cousins Lyndon and Peter Rive founded in 2006.
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In 2014, Elon 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.
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In 2019, Elon Musk announced work on a device akin to a sewing machine that could embed threads into a human brain.
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Elon Musk is listed as the sole author of an October 2019 paper that details some of Neuralink's research, although Elon Musk's being listed as such rankled the Neuralink team's researchers.
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At a 2020 live demonstration, Elon Musk described one of their early devices as "a Fitbit in your skull" that could soon cure paralysis, deafness, blindness, and other disabilities.
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Employees have complained that pressure from Elon Musk to accelerate development has led to botched experiments and unnecessary animal deaths.
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In 2017, Elon 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 and thus circumvent above-ground traffic in major cities.
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Elon Musk expressed interest in buying Twitter as early as 2017, and had previously questioned the platform's commitment to freedom of speech.
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In October 2022, Elon Musk reversed again, offering to purchase Twitter at $54.20 per share.
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Immediately after the acquisition, Elon Musk fired top Twitter executives like CEO Parag Agrawal, whom he replaced.
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Elon Musk instituted a $7.99 monthly subscription for a "blue check", and laid off a significant portion of the company's staff.
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Elon Musk lessened content moderation, and in December, Elon Musk released internal documents relating to Twitter's moderation of Hunter Biden's laptop in the leadup to the 2020 presidential election.
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Elon Musk then announced that he would resign as CEO "as soon as I find someone foolish enough to take the job".
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Elon Musk is often described as a micromanager and has called himself a "nano-manager".
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Elon Musk has forced employees to adopt the company's own jargon and launched ambitious, risky, and costly projects against his advisors' recommendations, such as removing front-facing radar from Tesla Autopilot.
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Elon Musk said he expects his employees to work for long hours, sometimes for 80 hours per week.
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Elon Musk has his new employees sign strict non-disclosure agreements and often fires in sprees, such as during the Model 3 "production hell" in 2018.
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In 2022, Elon Musk revealed plans to fire 10 percent of Tesla's workforce, due to his concerns about the economy.
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The Wall Street Journal reported that, after Elon Musk insisted on branding his vehicles as "self-driving", he faced criticism from his engineers for putting customer "lives at risk", with some employees resigning in consequence.
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Elon Musk is the president of the Elon Musk Foundation, whose stated purpose is to provide solar-power energy systems in disaster areas; support research, development, and advocacy ; and support science and engineering educational efforts.
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In 2012, Elon Musk took the Giving Pledge, thereby committing to give the majority of his wealth to charitable causes either during his lifetime or in his will.
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Elon Musk has endowed prizes at the X Prize Foundation, including $100million to reward improved carbon capture technology.
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Vox said "the Elon Musk Foundation is almost entertaining in its simplicity and yet is strikingly opaque", noting that its website was only 33 words in plain-text.
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Later that year, Elon Musk unveiled the concept, which he dubbed the hyperloop.
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The track was used in January 2017, and Elon Musk announced that the company started a tunnel project, with Hawthorne Municipal Airport as its destination.
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In July 2017, Elon Musk claimed that he had received "verbal government approval" to build a hyperloop from New York City to Washington, DC, with stops in both Philadelphia and Baltimore.
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Biographer Ashlee Vance has noted that Elon Musk hoped Hyperloop would "make the public and legislators rethink the high-speed train" proposal current in California at the time and "show people that more creative ideas were out there".
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In general, though, there's no part of me that believes Elon Musk was trying to kill public transport so people would stay in cars.
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In 2015, Elon Musk co-founded OpenAI, a not-for-profit artificial intelligence research company aiming to develop artificial general intelligence intended to be safe and beneficial to humanity.
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In 2018, Elon 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.
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In July 2018, Elon Musk arranged for his employees to build a mini-submarine to assist the rescue of children trapped in a flooded cavern in Thailand.
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Richard Stanton, leader of the international rescue diving team, urged Elon Musk to facilitate the construction of the vehicle as a back-up, in case flooding worsened.
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In March 2019, Elon Musk was later one of the 187 people who received various honors conferred by the King of Thailand for involvement in the rescue effort.
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Elon Musk asserted on Twitter that the device would have worked and referred to Unsworth as a "pedo guy".
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Elon Musk deleted the tweets, and apologized, and he deleted his responses to critical tweets from Cher Scarlett, a software engineer, which had caused his followers to harass her.
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In 2018, Elon Musk appeared on The Joe Rogan Experience podcast and discussed various topics for over two hours.
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In 2022, Elon Musk claimed that he and other Space-X employees were subjected to random drug tests for about a year following the incident.
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In 2003, Elon Musk said his favorite plane he owned was an L-39 Albatros.
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Elon Musk uses a private jet owned by Falcon Landing LLC, a SpaceX-linked company, and acquired a second jet in August 2020.
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The Twitter version of the account was blocked in December 2022, after Elon Musk claimed that his son had been harassed by a stalker after the account posted the airport at which his jet had landed.
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Elon Musk later took a Twitter poll on whether the journalists' accounts should be reinstated, which resulted in reinstating the accounts.
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On December 30,2022, it was reported that Elon 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.
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In January 2023, Elon Musk was recognised 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.
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The deal stipulated that Elon Musk only receives the compensation if Tesla reaches certain market values.
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Elon Musk has repeatedly described himself as "cash poor", and has "professed to have little interest in the material trappings of wealth".
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Elon Musk has defended his wealth by saying he is accumulating resources for humanity's outward expansion to space.
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Elon Musk's statements have provoked controversy, such as for mocking preferred gender pronouns, and comparing Canadian prime minister Justin Trudeau to Adolf Hitler.
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The New York Times describes his contributions to international relations as "chaotic", and critics of Elon Musk argue that there is a lack of separation between his opinions and his business interests.
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Elon Musk has been accused by the government of Israel and several media outlets of antisemitism due to him spreading George Soros conspiracy theories.
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Elon Musk has been described as believing in longtermism, emphasizing the needs of future populations.
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Accordingly, Elon Musk has stated that artificial intelligence poses the greatest existential threat to humanity.
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Elon Musk has warned of a "Terminator-like" AI apocalypse and suggested that the government should regulate its safe development.
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In 2015, Elon Musk was a cosignatory, along with Stephen Hawking and hundreds of others, of the Open Letter on Artificial Intelligence, which called for the ban of autonomous weapons.
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Elon Musk has described climate change as the greatest threat to humanity after AI, and has advocated for a carbon tax.
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Elon Musk was a critic of President Donald Trump's stance on climate change, and resigned from two presidential business advisory councils following Trump's 2017 decision to withdraw the United States from the Paris Agreement.
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Elon Musk has long promoted the colonization of Mars and argues that humanity should become a "multiplanetary species".
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Elon Musk has suggested the use of nuclear weapons to terraform Mars.
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Elon Musk envisioned establishing a direct democracy on Mars, with a system in which more votes would be required to create laws than remove them.
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The New York Times wrote that Elon Musk "expresses views that don't fit neatly into [the American] binary, left-right political framework".
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Historically, Elon Musk has donated to both Democrats and Republicans, many of whom are in states in which he has a vested interest.
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Elon Musk voted for Hillary Clinton in the 2016 US presidential election.
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Elon Musk said he voted for Joe Biden in the 2020 US presidential election.
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Elon Musk leaned towards supporting Republican Ron DeSantis in the 2024 US presidential election if DeSantis were a candidate.
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Elon Musk opposes a "billionaire's tax", and has argued on Twitter with more left-leaning Democratic politicians such as Bernie Sanders, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, and Elizabeth Warren.
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Elon Musk has raised questions about the Black Lives Matter protests, partially based on the fact that the phrase "Hands up, don't shoot" was made up.
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Elon Musk promoted a baseless theory relating to the attack of Speaker Nancy Pelosi's husband, but Elon Musk deleted his tweet.
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Elon Musk has praised China and has been described as having a close relationship with the Chinese government, allowing access to its markets for Tesla.
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In 2022, Elon Musk wrote an article for China Cyberspace, the official publication of Cyberspace Administration of China, which enforces Internet censorship in China.
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Elon Musk's writing the article was described as conflicting with his advocacy for free speech.
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Elon Musk later advocated for Taiwan to become a "special administrative zone" of China which drew cross-party criticism from Taiwanese lawmakers.
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In October 2022, Elon Musk posted a Twitter poll and "peace plan" to resolve the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
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Elon Musk was criticized for his public comments and conduct related to the COVID-19 pandemic.
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Elon Musk spread misinformation about the virus, including promoting a widely discredited paper on the benefits of chloroquine and claiming that COVID-19 death statistics were inflated.
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On March 19,2020, Elon Musk predicted that there would be "probably close to zero new cases in [the US] by end of April".
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Elon Musk claimed falsely that children "are essentially immune" to COVID-19.
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Elon Musk condemned COVID-19 lockdowns and initially refused to close the Tesla Fremont Factory in March 2020, defying the local shelter-in-place order.
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In December 2022, Elon Musk called for prosecution of former NIAID director Anthony Fauci.
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In March 2020, Elon Musk promised that Tesla would make ventilators for COVID-19 patients if there were a shortage.
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However, Elon Musk ended up buying and donating BiPAP and CPAP machines, which are non-invasive ventilators, rather than the much more expensive and sought-after invasive mechanical ventilator machines.
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In September 2020, Elon Musk stated that he would not get the COVID-19 vaccine, because he and his children were "not at risk for COVID".
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Two months later, Elon Musk contracted COVID-19 and suggested his COVID-19 rapid antigen test results were dubious, after which the phrase "Space Karen" trended on Twitter, in reference to Elon Musk.
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However, in December 2021, Elon Musk revealed that he and his eligible children had received the vaccine.
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In January 2023, Elon Musk stated that he experienced intense adverse reactions after his 2nd COVID-19 vaccine booster shot.
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Elon Musk said that the US government should not provide subsidies to companies, but impose a carbon tax to discourage poor behavior.
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In December 2022, Elon Musk sold $3.6 billion of his stock in Tesla, equal to 22 million shares in the company, despite pledging earlier in the year that he would not sell any additional shares.
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Elon Musk has promoted cryptocurrencies and supports them over traditional government-issued fiat currencies.
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Elon Musk's comments have been called "elitist" and have sparked widespread criticism from both transportation and urban planning experts, who have pointed out that public transportation in dense urban areas is more economical, more energy efficient, and requires much less space than private cars.
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Elon Musk met his first wife, Canadian Justine Wilson, while attending Queen's University in Ontario, Canada; and they married in 2000.
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Elon Musk then dated Amber Heard for several months in 2017; he had reportedly been pursuing her since 2012.
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Johnny Depp later accused Elon Musk of having an affair with Heard while she was still married to Depp.
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In July 2022, Insider published court documents revealing that Elon Musk had had twins with Shivon Zilis, director of operations and special projects at Neuralink, in November 2021.
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Also in July 2022, The Wall Street Journal reported that Elon 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.
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Elon Musk accused the article from Business Insider of being a "politically motivated hit piece".
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Elon Musk is often described as an eccentric who makes spontaneous and controversial statements, contrary to other billionaires who prefer reclusiveness to protect their businesses.
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Elon Musk had a cameo appearance in the 2010 sequel, Iron Man 2.
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Elon Musk contributed interviews to the documentaries Racing Extinction and the Werner Herzog-directed Lo and Behold.
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Elon Musk was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 2018.
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Elon Musk was listed among Time magazine's 100 Most Influential People in 2010,2013,2018, and 2021.
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Elon Musk was selected as Times "Person of the Year" for 2021.
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In 2022, Elon Musk was elected as a member of the National Academy of Engineering.