Elon Musk
Elon Musk is a South African-born entrepreneur and business magnate who is best known as the CEO of SpaceX and Tesla, Inc. Born on June 28, 1971, in Pretoria, South Africa, Musk moved to Canada in 1989, where he attended Queen's University in Kingston, Ontario, then he moved to the United States in 1995 to attend the University of Pennsylvania, where he earned degrees in physics and economics
After graduating, Musk co-founded Zip2, a web software company that provided business directories and maps to newspapers. He sold Zip2 in 1999 for almost $300 million, which helped fund his next venture, X.com, an online payment company. X.com eventually became PayPal, which was acquired by eBay for $1.5 billion in 2002.
In 2002, Musk founded SpaceX with the goal of reducing the cost of space exploration and eventually colonizing Mars. The company has since become a major player in the aerospace industry, launching numerous successful missions to the International Space Station and developing reusable rockets and spacecraft.
In 2004, Musk became chairman of Tesla, Inc., an electric car company that he helped fund. He eventually took over as CEO and has since transformed the company into one of the most valuable car manufacturers in the world, with a focus on sustainable energy and autonomous driving technology.
Musk has also been involved in numerous other ventures, including SolarCity (a solar power company that he helped found), OpenAI (an artificial intelligence research company), and The Boring Company (which aims to reduce traffic congestion through underground tunnels).
In 2022, Musk made headlines when he expressed interest in buying Twitter and started purchasing Twitter shares, eventually becoming the largest shareholder with a 9.2% stake by April. He then agreed to a deal that would appoint him to Twitter's board of directors and prohibit him from acquiring more than 14.9% of the company. However, on April 13, he made a $43 billion offer to buy Twitter, launching a takeover bid to buy 100% of Twitter's stock at $54.20 per share. By the end of the month, he had successfully concluded the bid for approximately $44 billion, which caused Tesla's stock market value to sink by over $100 billion.
In addition to his business ventures, Musk is known for his outspoken personality and controversial statements on social media. He has been named to Time magazine's list of the 100 most influential people in the world multiple times and has won numerous awards for his entrepreneurship and innovation.
As of 2023, Elon Musk has an estimated net worth of approximately $196 billion, primarily due to his ownership stakes in Tesla and SpaceX. He is currently ranked as the second-wealthiest person in the world according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index and Forbes's real-time billionaires list.
