Elon Reeve Musk FRS (/ˈiːlɒn/; born June 28, 1971) is an engineer, industrial designer, technology entrepreneur and philanthropist.[2][3][4][5] He is the founder, CEO, CTO and chief designer of SpaceX;[6] early investor,[7][note 1] CEO and product architect of Tesla, Inc.;[10][11] founder of The Boring Company;[12] co-founder of Neuralink; and co-founder and initial co-chairman of OpenAI.[13] He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society (FRS) in 2018.[14][15] In 2018, he was ranked 25th on the Forbes list of The World's Most Powerful People,[16] and was ranked joint-first on the Forbes list of the Most Innovative Leaders of 2019.[17] As of August 14, 2020, his net worth was estimated at $76.7 billion U.S. dollars and he is listed by Forbes as the 7th-richest person in the world.[18][19][1] He is the longest tenured CEO of any automotive manufacturer globally.[20]

Musk was born to a Canadian mother and South African father and raised in Pretoria, South Africa.[21] He briefly attended the University of Pretoria before moving to Canada when he was 17 to attend Queen's University.[16] He transferred to the University of Pennsylvania two years later, where he received a bachelor's degree in economics from the Wharton School[22] and a bachelor's degree in physics from the College of Arts and Sciences.[23] He moved to California in 1995 to begin a Ph.D. in applied physics and material sciences at Stanford University, but decided to pursue a business career instead of enrolling.[24] He co-founded (with his brother Kimbal) Zip2, a web software company, which was acquired by Compaq for $340 million in 1999. Musk then founded X.com, an online bank. It merged with Confinity in

2000, which had launched PayPal the previous year and was subsequently bought by eBay for $1.5 billion in October 2002.[10][25][26]

 

In May 2002, Musk founded SpaceX, an aerospace manufacturer and space transport services company, of which he is CEO and lead designer. He joined Tesla Motors, Inc. (now Tesla, Inc.), an electric vehicle manufacturer, in 2004, the year after it was founded,[10] became its product architect, and became its CEO in October 2008.[27] In 2006, he helped create SolarCity, a solar energy services company (now a subsidiary of Tesla). In 2015, Musk co-founded OpenAI, a nonprofit research company that aims to promote friendly artificial intelligence. In July 2016, he co-founded Neuralink, a neurotechnology company focused on developing brain–computer interfaces. In December 2016, Musk founded The Boring Company, an infrastructure and tunnel construction company focused on tunnels optimized for electric vehicles. 

 

Early life

Elon Musk was born on June 28, 1971, in Pretoria, Transvaal, South Africa.[21][32] His mother is Maye Musk (née Haldeman), a model and dietitian born in Saskatchewan, Canada,[33][34][35] and who was raised in South Africa. His father is Errol Musk, a South African electromechanical engineer, pilot, sailor, consultant and property developer.[36] He has a younger brother, Kimbal (born 1972), and a younger sister, Tosca (born 1974).[40][35]

His maternal grandfather, Dr. Joshua Haldeman, was an American-born Canadian.[41] His paternal grandmother had both British and Pennsylvania Dutch ancestry.[42][43] After his parents divorced in 1980, Musk lived mostly with his father in the suburbs of Pretoria,[42] a choice he made two years after his parents separated but which he subsequently regretted.[44] Musk is estranged from his father, whom he has referred to as "a terrible human being."[44] He also has a half-sister[45] and a half-brother.[46]

During his childhood, Musk was an avid reader.[47]:33 At the age of 10, he developed an interest in computing while using the Commodore VIC-20.[48] He learned computer programming using a manual and, by the age of 12, sold the code of a BASIC-based video game he created called Blastar to PC and Office Technology magazine for approximately $500.[49][50] His childhood reading included Isaac Asimov's Foundation series, from which he drew the lesson that "you should try to take the set of actions that are likely to prolong civilization, minimize the probability of a dark age and reduce the length of a dark age if there is one".[44]