The richest man of the world, Elon Musk is the founder, CEO, and Chief Engineer at SpaceX; early-stage investor, CEO, and Product Architect of Tesla, Inc.; founder of The Boring Company; and co-founder of Neuralink and OpenAI.
The great business was born in Pretoria, South Africa in 1971 and moved to Canada to study at Queen’s University at the age of 17. Then after two years he transferred to the University of Pennsylvania for his bachelor’s degree in economics and physics. Then later in 1995, he moved to Stanford University and pursued a business career. Along with that, he co-founded the web software company Zip2 with help of his brother Kimbal. This was the actual beginning of his career.
- Zip 2
The firm did the task of developing and marketing of an Internet city guide for the newspaper publishing industry, with maps, directions including the yellow pages. Asking about his hardwork at the firm, Elon Musk said, “The website was up during the day and I was coding it at night, seven days a week, all the time.” Musk could not become the CEO of the firm because the board of directors disapproved and then at the end, Compaq acquired Zip2 for $307 million in February 1999 and Muskef received his 7%share which was $22 million.
- X.com and PayPal
Musk co-founded an online and e-mail payment company named X.com I’m 1999 which was one of the first federally insured online banks. Musk was not much experienced which is why the investors replaced him with CEO Bill Harris and under him company merged with a software company which was also the creator of PayPal named Confinity. With the merger came the position of CEO to Musk but due to some technological issues and lack of impressive business model he was replaced by Thiel in 2000. The company was then renamed to PayPal in 2001 which was not liked by Musk. Later eBay acquired PayPal for $1.5 billion and Elon Musk being the largest shareholder got $100 million.
But Musk still felt emotional towards X.com which is why he purchased it back in 2017 at a unrevealed amount.
- SpaceX
Musk worked in a nonprofit Mars Society in 2001 which inspired him to work on making life possible on Mars. Then later in 2002, he founded Space Exploration Technologies Corp. Or SpaceX with the use of his $100 million fortune and after 3 failed projects, SpaceX succeeded in launching the Falcon 1 in 2008 which was the first private liquid-fuel rocket to reach Earth orbit. After this, there are various projects successfully accomplished by the SpaceX including the Crewed flights, dearMoon projects, Falcon Heavy and many more.
SpaceX is also working on a project to provide fast-speed internet access with the development of the Starlink constellation of low Earth orbit satellites.
- Tesla Inc.
Tesla Motors was handled by Martin Eberhard and Marc Tarpenning until Musk made his series of investments in 2004 and became the majority shareholder getting the position of chairman. Then later in 2008 Musk became the CEO and product architect of Tesla.
Under him Tesla developed the first electric sports car, the Roadster in the same year. After that it made various other cars like Model S, Model X, Model Y, Cybertruck etc. It conducted its initial public offering in 2010 which led to the rise in the value of shares of Tesla which made it most valuable carmaker in summer 2020.
- SEC Lawsuit
Actions were taken against Elon Musk by the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) for tweeting that the funding had been secured for potentially taking Tesla private. Musk and his firm Tesla had to pay the fine of $20 million each and he also had to step down from chairman post but stayed the CEO.
- SolarCity and Tesla Energy
SolarCity was a solar energy systems providing firm co-founded by Musk’s cousins Lyndon and Peter Rive in 2006 but the concept and financial capital both provided by Musk. SolarCity became the second largest provider of solar power systems in the United States in 2013 and then in 2016 it was acquired by Musk to merge with its battery energy storage products to create Tesla Energy. It caused a major decrease in the value of shares of Tesla as the shareholders were not informed beforehand.
- Neuralink
Musk co-founded a neurotechnology startup company which would facilitate the integration of human brain with AI in 2016. It will provide devices which will be embedded in human brains to merge brain with machines which will enhance memory and provide better communication with softwares. Musk at a live demonstration in 2020 claimed that the firm will create device “Fitbit in your skull” that would be able to cure paralysis, deafness, blindness, and other disabilities.
- The Boring Company
Musk founded the firm in 2016 to construct tunnels. They took permissions from regulatory authorities and first built “test trench” on the premises of SpaceX’s office as there were not much formalities for it. The company completed a tunnel under the Las Vegas Convention Center in 2021.
Musk was listed on the Forbes Billionaires list in 2012 for the first time as his Net Worth reached $2 billion. Talking about his fast rise, Musk had a net worth of $27 billion in the beginning of 2020 and in the year his worth increased by $150 billion. In the same year Musk overtook Facebook co-founder Mark Zuckerberg to become the third-richest person in the world and then after a week became second richest surpassing Bill Gates. Then later in January 2021, Musk overtook Amazon founder Jeff Bezos to become the richest person in the world with a net worth of $185 billion. And now in November 2021, Musk became the first person with a net worth over $300 billion with almost three quarter income from Tesla Motors.
