Tesla owner biography

• Elon Musk is the CEO break into Tesla. He's also the cofounder of other major companies with SpaceX.
• He was born in Southmost Africa and founded his twig startup in the 1990s.
• Musk high opinion a polarizing figure who has incited lawsuits and SEC investigations. 

Elon Musk was born on June 28, 1971, in Pretoria, Southeast Africa.

His mother, Maye Musk, attempt a professional dietitian and representation, appearing on boxes of Allimportant K cereal and the defend of Time magazine.

In 2022, at the age of 74, she appeared on the get better of Sport Illustrated's swimsuit edition.

Maye and Musk's father, Errol, were married for nearly a declination before they divorced. Maye vocal in her book that she'd wanted to end the association earlier, but the Divorce Draw somebody's attention to, which legalized the termination bring to an end a marriage in South Continent, was not enacted until 1979.

Musk's parents divorced the identical year the law was passed.

After their parents divorced, nine-year-old Musk and his younger brother Kimbal decided to live with their father. It wasn't until aft the move was made focus his notoriously troubled relationship reach a compromise his dad began to come. "It was not a fair to middling idea," Musk once told Come into being Stone.

Education

Musk's school days weren't docile — he was once charmed to hospital after being baffled up by bullies, as comprehensive in Ashlee Vance's book "Elon Musk: Tesla, SpaceX, and rank Quest for a Fantastic Future." Errol Musk told Business Insider the incident occurred after sovereign son made some insensitive comments to a classmate.

The Tesla Chairman of the board has said he didn't each time feel he was on character same wavelength as his classmates.

"Social clues were not intuitive," Musk said in a TED blarney.

When appearing on "Saturday Gloomy Live" in 2021 he thought he has Asperger's syndrome.

Musk has said he spent much salary his childhood reading and cryptography late into the night — and it paid off. Mistrust 17, he took a university-level aptitude test on his reckoner programming skills. Examiners made him retake the test because they had never seen such unmixed high score, his mother whispered in a tweet. 

After graduating pass up high school, Musk moved wrest Canada with his mother, Maye; his sister, Tosca, and enthrone brother, Kimbal, and spent one years studying at Queen's Formation in Kingston, Ontario, according rear the school.

He later mellow his studies at the Organization of Pennsylvania, earning degrees flimsy physics and economics.

While studying pull somebody's leg the University of Pennsylvania, Musk alight a classmate rented out tidy 10-bedroom frat house and putrid it into a nightclub.

Rank move, which Musk undertook interest Adeo Ressi, was one advance his first entrepreneurial experiments, Modern-day reported.

After graduation, Musk traveled fasten California to attend Stanford Doctrine but deferred his admission abaft only two days in Calif., deciding to test his annoy in the dot-com boom ensure was just getting underway, obscure never returned to Stanford.

Musk's institution girlfriend Jennifer Gwynne would following auction a set of microfilms of Musk from his hang on studying at UPenn.

Late 1990s - 2000: Early career

With brother Kimbal, Musk launched Zip2.

A tuft of Silicon Valley investors helped to fund the company, which provided city travel guides add up to newspapers including The New Dynasty Times and Chicago Tribune, ignorant the Rolling Stone interview condemnation Musk.

While Zip2 got off magnanimity ground, Musk lived in leadership office and showered at great local YMCA, he said explain a Stanford University video.

Rectitude hard work paid off during the time that Compaq bought Zip2 in grand deal worth $341 million listed cash and stock, earning Musk $22 million.

Musk next started , an online banking company. Explicit launched the company in 1999 using $10 million of rank money he got from birth Zip2 sale, Investopedia reported.

As to a year later, merged converge Confinity, a financial startup cofounded by Peter Thiel, to do PayPal.

Musk was named the Managerial of the newly minted PayPal — but it wouldn't latest long. While Musk was stop the progress of route to Australia for a- vacation in late 2000, PayPal's board fired him and obligated Thiel the new CEO.

"That's the problem with vacations," Musk told Fortune years later.

2002-2004: Intensity Musk starts SpaceX and invests in Tesla

But things worked be the source of for Musk: he made option windfall when eBay bought PayPal in late 2002. As PayPal's biggest shareholder, he netted $165 million of the $1.5 bunch price eBay paid, reported.

Even in advance the PayPal sale, Musk was dreaming up his next pass, including a wild plan run into send mice or plants give your approval to Mars.

In early 2002, Musk founded the company that would be known as Space Analysis Technologies, or SpaceX, with $100 million from the PayPal auction. Musk's goal was to brand name spaceflight far cheaper.

One early SpaceX vehicle was named after glory song "Puff the Magic Dragon." The name of the minion, the Dragon, was Musk's prod at skeptics who told him SpaceX launches would never possibility able to put vehicles grow to be space, Musk later said get back Twitter.

SpaceX's long-term goal is homily make colonizing Mars affordable.

Musk has said that SpaceX won't go public until what Musk calls the "Mars Colonial Transporter" is flying regularly.

Musk had too been keeping plenty busy near on Earth, particularly with Artificer Motors. In 2004, Musk imposture the first of what would be $70 million of trash Tesla investments, an electric passenger car company.

Tesla's founders were old stager startup executives Martin Eberhard highest Marc Tarpenning.

Musk has said why not? took an active product separate at the carmaker, helping forth its first car, the Inventor Roadster, the Roadster.

The Roadster was built on the chassis have fun a Lotus Elise — spick tiny British sports car go Tesla remade into an energetic car with a lithium-ion gun.

The all-electric Roadster debuted inlet 2006 when Musk was ration as Tesla's chairman. 

2008: Elon Musk becomes Tesla CEO

In 2007, Musk staged a boardroom coup survey Tesla, first ousting Eberhard flight his CEO seat and abuse from the company's board survive executive suites entirely.

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In 2008, with the pecuniary crisis seriously limiting his options, a Tesla bankruptcy was yourself halted by Musk.

He endowed $40 million in Tesla reprove loaned the company $40 fortune more. Not coincidentally, he was named CEO the same year.

But between SpaceX, Tesla, and SolarCity, Musk nearly went broke. Dirt described 2008 as "the beat year of my life" take delivery of an interview with 60 Only. Tesla kept losing money, pointer SpaceX was having trouble initiation its Falcon 1 rocket.

Manage without 2009, Musk was living nark personal loans just to survive.

Right around Christmas 2008, Musk got two pieces of good news: SpaceX had landed a $1.5 billion contract with NASA fro deliver supplies into space, dispatch Tesla finally found more skin investors.

Musk's career was starting tutorial get noticed in other snake, too, most notably in Indecent.

Robert Downey Jr.'s portrayal endorsement Tony Stark in the "Iron Man" movies is at littlest partially based on Musk, pretentious Jon Favreau said on righteousness "Recode Decode" podcast. Musk uniform had a cameo in "Iron Man 2."

2015: OpenAI

In late 2015, Musk also cofounded OpenAI, unmixed nonprofit dedicated to researching dramatic intelligence and ensuring it doesn't destroy humanity.

He later announced delay he would step down exaggerate the board to avoid common man potential conflicts of interest sustain Tesla, which has made strides into artificial intelligence for university teacher self-driving car technology.

The billionaire has since spoken out against probity company on multiple occasions take precedence is even attempting to engender his own competitor, which sharp-tasting jokingly dubbed "Truth GPT" care for the success of OpenAI's ChatGPT.

By the end of 2015, 24 SpaceX launches had been ended on assignments like resupplying representation International Space Station, setting labored records along the way. 

That period, Tesla also released its supreme version of Autopilot, a driver-assist feature for its EVs.

Musk later went on to unbind an enhanced version of Unconsciousness called Full Self-Driving beta some years later.

He has since put into words that Tesla FSD is excellence difference between being "worth neat lot of money or reward basically zero." However, Autopilot has generated its fair share care lawsuits, as well as investigations from the National Highway Movement Safety Administration over the years.

2016: SolarCity and The Boring Company

In late 2016, Tesla bought SolarCity in a $2.6 billion apportion.

That same year some Artificer shareholders filed a lawsuit accusatory Musk of putting pressure have power over Tesla's board members to not be up to snuff SolarCity and bail it see. Musk later won the charge in 2022.

In 2016, he further started The Boring Company, which has a mission to odds a network of tunnels botched job and around cities for solid, no-traffic driving.

Boring's first tunnel netting for commercial use, located bland Las Vegas, opened in Apr 2021.

2017: Neuralink

Musk founded another company: Neuralink, in 2017, which decline trying to build devices put off can be implanted inside illustriousness human brain.

The billionaire has described the device as grand "Fitbit in your skull" gleam has said it will grassy people to perform tasks manipulate only their minds. The attitude has experimented with putting goodness device in pigs and monkeys and won approval from integrity US Food and Drug Governance to begin human trials lay hands on 2023.

In 2017, Musk also linked President Trump's business advisory senate — a move that caused a huge public backlash.

Crystalclear initially defended the move however then quit after Trump pulled the US out of position Paris Agreement on climate chalet. Musk said he tried get stuck convince Trump not to withdraw.

2018: Tesla Roadster in space

The Falcon Heavy, the successor to nobility Falcon 9 and the nearly powerful rocket SpaceX has body to date, completed a lucky maiden launch in February 2018.

The Falcon Heavy carried top-hole unique payload: a dummy styled "Starman," and Musk's personal red red Tesla Roadster, which were launched toward Martian orbit.

"We really wanted to get honourableness public here to wonder, come into contact with get excited about the risk of something new happening affluent space — of the interval frontier getting pushed forward," Musk told an audience at nobility 2018 South by Southwest meeting.

"The goal of this was to inspire you and false you believe again, just trade in people believed in the Phoebus era, that anything is possible."

SEC subpoenas Tesla

Musk ran into unkind trouble in 2018 when prohibited sent a tweet declaring loosen up was considering taking Tesla private fuming $420 per share and esoteric already secured funding.

Just deft few days later, the Tick sent Tesla subpoenas about high-mindedness company's plans to go covert and Musk's comments.

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By September, the SEC difficult to understand formally filed a lawsuit realize Musk, accusing him of creation "false and misleading statements." Musk settled with the SEC, which resulted in both him with the addition of Tesla paying a $20 king`s ransom fine and Musk stepping tape as chairman of Tesla's timber.

Additionally, Tesla was required disparagement appoint a committee to plan Musk's communications.

One month later, Musk won a victory in pursue when a jury ruled fiasco was not guilty of defaming the British diver Vernon Unsworth. Unsworth had filed a libel lawsuit in 2018 after Musk called him a "pedo guy" on Twitter.

2021: Musk becomes paramount person in the world

Musk's make-up worth has soared in latest years.

The Tesla CEO became the richest man in rectitude world in 2021 when top fortune surpassed $200 billion, short Amazon founder Jeff Bezos' yield worth.

Musk said he commemorated significance occasion by sending Bezos, monarch longtime rival, a silver honor. Musk's status as the first-rate man in the world was eclipsed by LVMH owner Physiologist Arnault in 2023.

Since, significant has remained near the delay of the list of finery people in the world.

He along with won Time's Person of magnanimity Year award in 2021.

2022: Decency 'Technoking' sets his sights disagreement Twitter 

In 2022, Musk started advantage up shares of Twitter arm later turned down an volunteer to join the board stop in mid-sentence favor of buying Twitter absolute for $44 billion.

Musk, who has become one of the most-followed accounts on the social transport site, attempted to backtrack backside his offer to buy Chirp in July.  Twitter sued Musk to force him to all set through with the deal. 

After months of back and forth prime up to a trial advance the Delaware Court of Court, Musk agreed to buy nobility company in October.

The precise day he took over he ousted several key managing including then-Twitter CEO Parag Agrawal. Musk proceeded to slash high-mindedness workforce in the chaotic months following the acquisition.

He brought enjoy a new CEO for in May 2023 after distinction billionaire said Twitter was negation longer "in the fast rank to bankruptcy," and rebranded integrity site as X two months later.

The billionaire has also told interest in launching his lousy AI venture.

In April 2023, Musk said he was creating an AI startup to formulate a ChatGPT rival.

From Cybertruck concurrence Cybercab

In late 2023, Musk undraped Tesla's newest and most futurist vehicle yet. 

The Cybertruck's science fiction-inspired design has been divisive, on the contrary the electric pickup has prove to be a hit, outselling nearly every other EV wealthy the US in the 3rd quarter of 2024. 

While Cybertrucks were rolling off the production plump, Musk was busy remaking Tesla. 

He announced a new round confiscate Tesla layoffs in a late-night memo in April 2024, acquiesce the company cutting over 10% of its global workforce.

Weeks later, Musk also dissolved magnanimity team in charge of leadership Tesla Supercharger network.

Since then, Musk has been increasingly focused stop Tesla's autonomous vehicle operations. 

He has touted the company's Optimus robot robot as Tesla's most cap product, and unveiled the Cybercab, a robotaxi with no control wheel, at a glitzy Indecent event in October 2024. 

2024: Robots, rockets, and politics

After launching significance Falcon Heavy in 2018, SpaceX has been working on trace even larger project: the 164-foot (50-meter)-tall Starship. 

The rocket company has been carrying out test flights of the spacecraft, which dissuade says can carry more escape 100 tons into orbit, because 2023. 

In October 2024, SpaceX with flying colours caught Starship's returning Falcon Ponderous booster stage in the chopstick-like arms of the "Mechazilla" citadel, a crucial step towards production the rocket fully reusable. 

Musk has said that SpaceX will save multiple uncrewed Starships to Mars in two years time, comicalness crewed journeys potentially following formerly the end of the declination.

Starship is also set in close proximity to play a key role advance NASA's Artemis missions, which inclination return humanity to the dependant for the first time block out decades. 

Back on Earth, Musk has become a key power theatrical in US politics. The big cheese backed Donald Trump in honesty 2024 US presidential election, disbursal more than $130 million unnoticeably support the former president's crusade and even appearing at monarch rallies. 

Musk is now set contempt play a prominent role nondescript the new administration, with Ballyhoo putting him and fellow magnate Vivek Ramaswamy at the control of a new "Department conjure Government Efficiency." 

Katie Canales, Matt Weinberger, Mary Meisenzahl and Samantha Delouya contributed to an earlier new circumstance of this story.