Elon Musk, the CEO of Tesla, SpaceX, and Twitter. So far, his selections at Twitter have drawn both criticism and support. He was born in South Africa, has been married three times, and has 9 known kids. Musk is a controversial leader who has incited lawsuits and SEC investigations. This is an update to an article originally published in August 2016. Katie Canales, Matt Weinberger, and Mary Meisenzahl contributed to an earlier model of this story. Elon Musk was born on June 28, 1971, in Pretoria, South Africa. Musk's mom, Maye, is an expert dietitian and model. She has appeared on bins of Special K cereal and the cowl of Time journal. In 2017, at the age of 69, she landed a contract with CoverGirl. After their dad and mom divorced in 1979, the 9-12 months-outdated Musk and his younger brother, Kimbal, determined to reside with their father. It wasn't till after the transfer was made that his notoriously troubled relationship along with his dad started to emerge.
Musk mentioned in a Rolling Stone interview about moving in along with his father. In 1983, at the age of 12, Musk offered a easy game called "Blastar" to a pc journal for $500. Still, Musk's college days weren't easy - he was as soon as hospitalized after being overwhelmed by bullies. The bullies threw Musk down a set of stairs and beat him till he blacked out. After graduating from high school, https://t.antj.link/192379/3788/0?bo=3471 Musk moved to Canada along with his mother, Maye; his sister, Tosca, and his brother, Kimbal, and spent two years learning at Queen's University in Kingston, Ontario. But he completed his studies at the University of Pennsylvania, incomes degrees in physics and economics. While finding out on the University of Pennsylvania, Musk and a classmate rented out a 10-bedroom frat home and turned it right into a nightclub. The move, which Musk undertook with Adeo Ressi, was one among his first entrepreneurial experiments. After graduation, Musk traveled to Stanford University to study for his Ph.D - however he barely started this system earlier than leaving it. Content has been cre at ed by GSA Content Generat or Demoversion!
He deferred his admission after solely two days in California, deciding to check his luck in the dot-com boom that was just getting underway. He by no means returned to finish his research at Stanford. Along with his brother, Kimbal, Elon Musk launched Zip2. A cluster of Silicon Valley buyers helped to fund the corporate, which offered metropolis travel guides to newspapers like The brand new York Times and Chicago Tribune. While Zip2 bought off the bottom, Musk literally lived in the office and showered at a local YMCA. The laborious work paid off when Compaq bought Zip2 in a deal worth $341 million in cash and inventory, earning Musk $22 million. He launched the company in 1999 using $10 million of the money he obtained from the Zip2 sale. Musk was named the CEO of the newly minted PayPal - however it wouldn't final long. In October 2000, he began a huge fight among the many PayPal cofounders by pushing for them to maneuver its servers from the free Unix working system to Microsoft Windows.
PayPal cofounder after which CTO Max Levchin pushed back, exhausting. But issues worked out for Musk - he made another windfall when eBay purchased PayPal in late 2002. As PayPal's single largest shareholder, he netted $165 million of the $1.5 billion price eBay paid. Even earlier than the PayPal sale, Musk was dreaming up his subsequent transfer, including a wild plan to ship mice or plants to Mars. In early 2002, Musk founded the company that could be known as Space Exploration Technologies, or SpaceX, with $a hundred million of the money acquired from the PayPal sale. One early SpaceX car was named after the music "Puff the Magic Dragon." The identify of the spacecraft, the Dragon, was Musk's jab at skeptics who informed him SpaceX would never be ready to place automobiles into house. SpaceX's lengthy-term purpose is to make colonizing Mars inexpensive. Musk has said that SpaceX will not file for an initial public offering till what Musk calls the "Mars Colonial Transporter" is flying regularly.
Musk had additionally been conserving lots busy right here on Earth, significantly with Tesla Motors. In 2004, Musk made the first of what can be $70 million of total investments in Tesla, an electric automobile company cofounded by veteran startup exec Martin Eberhard. Musk took an energetic product function at Tesla, serving to develop its first automobile, the Roadster. The all-electric Roadster debuted in 2006 when Musk was serving as Tesla's chairman. He's now also its CEO. As if that wasn't enough, Musk came up with the concept for SolarCity, a photo voltaic power company. In 2007, Musk staged a boardroom coup at Tesla, first ousting Eberhard from his CEO seat after which from the company's board and executive suites completely. In 2008, with the monetary crisis seriously limiting his options, Musk personally saved Tesla from bankruptcy. Musk invested $40 million in Tesla and loaned the company $40 million more. Not coincidentally, he was named the corporate's CEO the same yr. But between SpaceX, Tesla, and SolarCity, Musk nearly went broke.