Elon Musk

Elon Reeve Musk was born on June 28, 1971, in Pretoria, South Africa, into a wealthy family, with his father being an electromechanical engineer and his mother a Canadian model and dietitian. He developed an early interest in computing and entrepreneurship, teaching himself computer programming and selling his first video game, Blastar, at age 12. In 1989, at the age of 17, Musk emigrated to Canada to avoid mandatory military service in apartheid-era South Africa, leveraging his Canadian citizenship through his mother’s birthplace. He attended Queen’s University in Kingston before transferring to the University of Pennsylvania, where he earned dual bachelor’s degrees in physics and economics by 1997. Musk initially enrolled in a Ph.D. program at Stanford University in 1995 but dropped out after just two days to pursue opportunities in the burgeoning internet industry, setting the stage for his entrepreneurial journey. Musk co-founded Zip2 in 1995, a software company providing business directories and maps for newspapers, which Compaq acquired in 1999 for $307 million in cash, netting Musk $22 million from his stake. He then co-founded X.com, an online financial services and email payment company, investing $10 million of his own money; it merged with Confinity in 2000 to form PayPal, which eBay acquired in 2002 for $1.5 billion in stock, earning Musk $180 million. That same year, he founded SpaceX with $100 million of his own funds, aiming to reduce space travel costs and enable Mars colonization. By 2020, SpaceX made history when its Crew Dragon capsule carried NASA astronauts to the International Space Station, becoming the first private company to do so. Musk joined Tesla Motors in 2004 as an early investor and chairman, later becoming CEO and product architect in 2008 during a financial crisis, steering it toward dominance in electric vehicles. In November 2025, Tesla approved a pay package worth $1 trillion—contingent on performance milestones over 10 years—potentially the largest executive compensation package in history. He also co-founded Neuralink in 2016 and the Boring Company in 2017, while launching xAI in 2023, which became a subsidiary of SpaceX in 2026. As of April 2026, Forbes estimates his net worth at US$809 billion, making him the world’s wealthiest person since 2025. Musk acquired the social media platform Twitter in October 2022 for $44 billion, later rebranding it as X in 2023, and has since drawn controversy for loosening content moderation policies, leading to a documented rise in hate speech and misinformation. He has been involved in political discourse, notably serving as Senior Advisor to the President and de facto head of the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) after Donald Trump’s January 2025 inauguration, though he left the administration in May 2025 amid a public feud. Musk’s emails to financier Jeffrey Epstein, revealed in the Epstein files published in 2025 and 2026, sparked global debate about his associations. He is a father to ten children, including twins and triplets with former partner Justine Wilson and additional children with musician Grimes. His polarizing public persona stems from his support of far-right politics, promotion of conspiracy theories, and controversial statements on social issues.