Elon Musk.
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Elon Musk runs Twitter, SpaceX, The Boring Company, and Tesla.
As of July 2023, Musk is the world’s richest person.
Musk has been divorced three times, dated celebrities, and has nine children.
Tesla CEO Elon Musk is the cofounder of other major companies, including SpaceX.
He was born in 1971 in South Africa. Musk’s parents are Maye and Errol, who divorced in 1979. In the 1990s, he founded his first startup, Zip2, with his brother, Kimbal, and began a decades-long career in tech.
Musk’s second venture, online banking company X.com, merged with a startup of Peter Thiel’s to form PayPal. When PayPal sold to eBay in 2002, Musk made $165 million.
Today, Musk is the richest person in the world. He’s frequently trading places with other billionaires in the ranks, but as of July 2023, Musk’s net worth stands at $239 billion, putting him on top. His estimated fortune peaked at around $340 billion in November 2021 as Tesla shares soared.
Elon Musk started buying shares in Twitter in January 2022 and initiated an acquisition in April.
By the time Elon Musk bought Twitter for $44 billion in October 2022, he had actually spent months trying to back out of the agreement. At the start of July, he sent a letter to Twitter purporting to terminate the acquisition. Twitter promptly sued him.
When the sale went through, Musk immediately ousted a number of Twitter executives, including its CEO, CFO, and chief legal officer. In November, Musk issued an ultimatum: work at an “extremely hardcore” rate or accept a three-month severance package. He would go on to lay off around 80% of Twitter’s staff.
Musk’s Twitter verification changes were announced on November 1. He tweeted that Twitter’s “current lords & peasants system for who has or doesn’t have a blue checkmark is bullshit.” He added, “Power to the people! Blue for $8/month.”
In May 2023, Musk named Linda Yaccarino as Twitter’s new CEO. “Looking forward to working with Linda to transform this platform into X, the everything app,” Musk said in a tweet.
In July 2023, Twitter was rebranded to X.
SpaceX
Musk founded SpaceX in 2002, investing $100 million he made from the sale of PayPal.
The company nearly failed. After three unsuccessful launches between 2006 and 2008, funding was running out. Then, on September 28, 2008, SpaceX became the first private company to achieve a successful orbital launch. That same year, SpaceX received a $1.5 billion NASA contract.
“Fate liked us that day,” Musk told CNBC when reflecting on the events nine years later.
SpaceX launches now happen on a fairly regular basis. The company publishes a SpaceX launch schedule on its website. Launches typically take place at Cape Canaveral Space Force Base or the Kennedy Space Center, which are both in Florida.
SpaceX runs the Starlink satellite internet system. Its satellites operate in Earth’s lower orbit, decreasing the lag between when the data is transferred to the receiver, according to the company. Musk said he plans to eventually create a constellation of up to 42,000 satellites.
The company launched its first batch of Starlink satellites in 2019 and has more than 4,000 of its satellites in orbit today.
The SpaceX Falcon 9, a partially reusable two-stage rocket, is often used for launches. The Falcon 9 family of rockets is a first-of-its-kind and a key asset for NASA in servicing the International Space Station since the retirement of the Space Shuttle program in 2011. Apart from the Space Shuttles, the majority of spacefaring equipment was previously single-use.
SpaceX is valued at almost $140 billion under Musk’s unique leadership style. Because it’s a private company, SpaceX stock is not easy to purchase for members of the general public.
The company is not currently pubicly planning an IPO. Musk has said that SpaceX won’t file for an initial public offering until what he calls the “Mars Colonial Transporter” is flying regularly.
SpaceX’s long-term goal is to make colonizing Mars affordable.
The Boring Company
Musk’s The Boring Company was created as a subsidiary of SpaceX and later became its own entity. Inspired by LA traffic gridlock, the tunneling venture has several ongoing projects on the West Coast.
In April 2022, The Boring Company completed Series C funding of $675 million, which was valued at $5.675 billion, according to a Boring Company news release. Boring Company stock is not currently publicly traded.
In 2018, Musk sold 20,000 Boring Company flamethrowers in just five days. The product, called “Not-A-Flamethrower,” has been off the market for years. However, it’s acquired something of a cult status among the tech mogul’s fans, and some people have been paying hundreds of dollars to snap them up on eBay.
Among Musk’s other innovative products is a 5’8″ humanoid Tesla robot named Optimus, announced in 2021. The robot is designed to help reduce the labor shortage, according to Musk, and keep workers safer. This could very well be groundbreaking, but it still has a long way to go before it is ready for production and available for purchase.
Elon Musk’s wives and kids
Musk’s spouses are Justine Musk, who he met at Queen’s University in Ontario, Canada, and Talulah Riley, whom he married in 2010. He met Riley at a bar in London, and the couple divorced and remarried before splitting again.
Five of Musk’s children were born during his eight-year marriage with his ex-wife, Justine.
It is unclear if Musk is dating anyone presently. Musk reportedly split last year with actress Natasha Bassett, who is believed to be his last public girlfriend.
Before that, Musk briefly dated actress Amber Heard in 2017 amid her divorce from actor Johnny Depp. The two first connected on the red carpet of the 2016 Met Gala, which Depp was expected to attend, but didn’t.
He and the musician Grimes started dating in 2018. Since then, they’ve broken up and gotten back together a few times. Now, they appear to just be co-parents of a boy and a girl named X Æ A-Xii and Y.
Musk quietly had twins in November 2021 with one of his top executives, Shivon Zilis.