Elon Musk Biography, Wife, Children, Qualifications, Net Worth
Who is Elon Musk?
Elon Reeve Musk is a South African-born American entrepreneur, technologist, innovator, billionaire, business magnate, and philanthropist.
He has achieved global fame as CEO of electric automobile maker Tesla, private space company SpaceX, and owner of Twitter Inc.
At age 31, Elon Musk had already become a multi-millionaire, after co-founding popular online money-transfer service, PayPal.
In October, 2022, Elon Musk bought Twitter for $44billion, becoming the new owner of the popular micro blog site.
In January, 2021, Musk was officially declared the world’s richest man with a net worth of $185billion (£136billion).
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In 1999, he started PayPal as the best means of sending and receiving money digitally which made shopping for goods and services online much easier than it was in the past.
Musk is the founder of Space Exploration Technologies or SpaceX which in 2005 started building the Falcon rocket, which he hoped could someday make both space tourism and a colony on the planet Mars realistic goals for humankind.
When was Elon Musk born?
Elon Musk was born on Monday, June 28th, 1971, in Pretoria, South Africa.
Age
The boss of Twitter and Tesla, Elon Musk is currently 52 years old and will be 53 years come June 28th this year, 2024.
Height
Elon Musk is1.88 meters tall.
Where was Elon Musk born?
Elon Musk was born and raised in Pretoria, South Africa, before he moved to Canada and later the United States of America (USA).
Where does Elon Musk come from?
Elon Musk is a native of South Africa. In other words, Elon Musk comes from South Africa in Africa where he was born and raised.
Father
The father of Elon Musk is a known wealthy South African engineer and businessman named, Errol Musk.
According to Elon Musk, his father (Errol Musk) was an awful person who made life terrible for him (Elon Musk), growing up in South Africa.
Both Errol Musk and Elon Musk last met at the former’s 70th birthday celebrations in Cape Town, South Africa in 2016.
Mother
Elon Musk’s mother, Maye Haldeman Musk — who is a Canadian, is an international supermodel, registered dietitian-nutritionist, worldwide speaker and author of “A Woman Makes a Plan”.
Parents
Elon Musk was born to a South African father Errol Musk and Canadian mother Maye Haldeman Musk.
Elon’s parents got married in 1970, after having known each other from Grade 5.
Elon Musk’s parents divorced when he was only 10 years old in 1979-1980, before his father Errol Musk went on to wed Heide Bezuidenhout, a young widow who already had two children, including Jana.
Siblings
Elon Musk is the firstborn (or the oldest) of three children of his divorced parents.
The second (or middle born) is Musk’s younger brother named Kimbal, who is a farmer, owner of restaurants, and businessman.
The youngest and only lady of Elon Musk’s siblings is known as Tosca, who is a film director and producer with her own entertainment company.
Chidhood Abuse
After the divorce of his parents, young Elon Musk lived with his father, who he (Elon Musk) described as “a terrible human being” in an interview with Rolling Stone.
“I had a terrible upbringing. I had a lot of adversity growing up. One thing I worry about with my kids is they don’t face enough adversity,” Elon Musk once said.
Whilst in primary school in South Africa, Elon Musk had it tough from some of his school mates who always bullied him for being a bookworm or know-it-all young boy.
“They got my best (expletive) friend to lure me out of hiding so they could beat me up. And that (expletive) hurt,” Musk recounted.
“For some reason, they decided that I was it, and they were going to go after me nonstop. That’s what made growing up difficult. For a number of years, there was no respite. You get chased around by gangs at school who tried to beat the (expletive) out of me, and then I’d come home, and it would just be awful there as well.”
Where did Elon Musk go to school?
Elon Musk began a year early of his primary education at the private English-speaking Waterkloof House Preparatory School in South Africa.
He later graduated from Pretoria Boys High School — which is also in South Africa.
Whilst in Canada, Elon Musk attended Queen’s University in Kingston, Ontario — one of Ontario’s top schools.
Qualifications
After two years at Queen’s University and midway through his undergraduate education in 1992, Elon Musk transferred to the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia, where he graduated with a bachelor of science degree in Physics in 1997, in addition to a bachelor of arts in Economics from the Wharton School.
His love for physics was very deep and according to him, “(Physics is) a good framework for thinking. Boil things down to their fundamental truths and reason up from there.”
But it wasn’t all work and no play for Elon Musk when he was transferred to the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia in the USA. With a fellow student, he bought a 10-bedroom fraternity house, which they used as an ad hoc nightclub.
He later gained admission to the prestigious doctoral program at Stanford University in California, with the focus to earning a Ph.D. in energy physics, but quit Standard University just 2 days after his admission, to start his first company, Zip2 Corporation.
Early Life Accomplishments
Growing up in South Africa, Elon Musk was fascinated by science fiction, computers, and software.
At age 10, he had become acquainted with programming using a Commodore VIC-20 — an early and relatively inexpensive home computer.
At age 12, Musk wrote the BASIC code for his own video game called “Blastar” — a video game in the style of Space Invaders — which he sold (the BASIC code for the game) to a computer magazine for $500.
Elon Musk recounted an incident from his childhood where he and his brother Kimbal decided to open a video game arcade near their school but had their parents botched up the plan.
Not only was young Elon Musk fascinated by science fiction, he was also interested in karate and wrestling.
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In 1988, Elon Musk, after obtaining a Canadian passport at age 17, immigrated to Canada because he was unwilling to support apartheid through the mandatory/compulsory military enlistment service for White males into the South African army.
This was the era of Apartheid where the South African legal system denied political and economic rights to the majority-black native population in the country.
Whilst in Canada, Musk enrolled at Queen’s University in Kingston — one of Ontario’s top schools.
Wife
After he immigrated from South Africa to Canada to have his college education at Queen’s University in Kingston, Ontario, Elon Musk met his Canadian wife, Justine Wilson, who was an aspiring writer.
The two officially married in January, 2000, and divorced in 2008.
Children
Elon Musk and his ex-wife, Canadian author Justine Wilson, got married in January, 2000, and in 2002, welcomed their first son Nevada Alexander, who unfortunately died of Sudden Infant Death Syndrome (SIDS) when he was only 10 weeks old.
After the loss of their firstborn, Elon Musk and his wife Justine Wilson turned to IVF and she (Wilson) gave birth to twins — Griffin and Vivian — in 2004 (they are now 18).
Vivian later came out as transgender in June 2022 after filing a court document to change her first name and taking the last name of her mother, stating “gender identity and the fact that I no longer live or wish to be related to my biological father (Elon Musk) in any way, shape or form.”
Elon and Wilson went for their second IVF and she (Wilson) gave birth to triplet sons Kai, Saxon, and Damian in January 2006. The triplets are all 16 years old.
In 2008, Elon Musk and Justine Wilson divorced.
They were blessed with five sons — twins (2) and triplets (3) before divorcing in 2008.
In May 2018, Elon Musk began a relationship with Canadian pop star Grimes shortly after two marriages to “Westworld” star Talulah Riley and a brief relationship with actress Amber Heard.
In May 2020, Musk and Grimes welcomed their son named, X AE A-XII.
Because the variables “Æ” and “A-12” violated California’s law for not being part of the English alphabet, Elon Musk and Grimes had to change their son’s name from X Æ A-12 to X AE A-XII.
In September 2021, it was reported by Page Six that Musk and Grimes’s relationship had come to an end.
In March 2022, Grimes, after mending her relationship with Elon Musk, revealed that they had welcomed their first daughter named Exa Dark Sideræl via a surrogate in December 2021.
Exa was given the nickname” Y” after their other child had been named “X”.
In November 2021, Elon Musk and Shivon Zilis — a 36-year-old top executive or director of operations and special projects at Musk’s artificial intelligence company, Neuralink — quietly welcomed twins Austin and Texas, just weeks before he and Grimes welcomed their second baby via surrogate, according to court documents obtained by Business Insider in July 2022.
Elon Musk is the father of 10 children — 9 living, one dead, including a pair of twins and a set of triplets with his ex-wife Justine Wilson and a boy and girl with ex-girlfriend Grimes.
Elon Musk has publicly stated that he is afraid and worried about population collapse.
What is Elon Musk’s first businesss?
Before Elon Musk became the famous richest Internet entrepreneur, the only real job he had performed in his entire life was when he worked at a Canadian bank one summer as a college intern.
The business magnate and innovator had all along planned to be a successful independent career person in business.
In 1995, Elon Musk had moved to California just at the time the Internet had started booming and thus wanted to be part of that success story.
As a result, he dropped out of Stanford University just two days after his admission in order to start his first company called, Zip2 Corporation in 1995.
Zip2 Corporation
In 1995, Elon Musk, who had $15,000 at age 24, and with his younger brother Kimbal by his side, started his first company, Zip2 Corporation — an online city guide or a web software company that provided maps and business directories to online newspapers.
Through Zip2 Corporation, Elon Musk landed contracts with both the New York Times and the Chicago Tribune to provide content for their new online websites.
Because Elon Musk was bent on making his first company Zip2 Corporation succeed, he had to make some sacrifices by living in the same rented office which served as his company’s headquarters, sleeping on a futon couch and showering at the local YMCA which was cheaper than renting an apartment.
In spite of this effort by Musk, his company Zip2 Corporation struggled to fulfill its contracts and meet the payroll and other costs, and so he looked for outside financing.
Elon Musk
Luckily for him, a group of venture capitalists — investors who provide start-up money to new businesses —came in to assist by financing Zip2 Corporation with $3.6 million, which eventually made him give up majority control of the company in exchange.
In 1999, Zip2 Corporation was bought by giant computer manufacturer Compaq for $341 million USD, and Musk used his Zip2 buyout money to create an online financial services company called, X.com, which later became known as PayPal — which specialized in transferring money online.
X.com
In February 1999, because of Elon Musk’s smart move of allowing the group of Venture Capitalists to invest in his then struggling company, Compaq Computer Corporation bought Zip2 Corporation for $341 million in cash — which at the time happened to be one of the biggest cash deals in the Internet business sector.
At age 28, Musk became a millionaire after he was paid $22 million out of the $341 million for his 7 percent share.
Still in 1999, he used $10 million of his $22 million to start another company, which became known as X.com — an online bank which had grand plans to become a full-range provider of financial services to consumers like how to securely transfer money using a recipient’s e-mail address.
Because of his proven track record from Zip2 Corporation, Elon Musk right away had two important executives signed on with him.
They were investment banker John Story and Bill Harris, the former chief executive officer of Intuit Corporation, the maker of the best-selling Quicken accounting software as well as TurboTax, a tax-preparation program.
Harris became the president and chief executive officer of X.com, whilst Elon Musk served as the chairman of X.com.
PayPal
In March 2000, Elon Musk’s X.com bought a company named Confinity — which had started an Internet money-transfer platform called PayPal.
The original idea behind the formation of PayPal was to let users of handheld personal digital assistants or PDAs simply transfer money.
In May 2000, Harris resigned from X.com because he disagreed with Elon Musk’s belief, at the time, that Paypal’s online-transfer technology — which was known as “P2P” for “person-to-person” — had a promising future.
Five months later, Elon Musk dropped X.com and in its place, used Paypal as the new face of his company.
This was after he had announced that X.com would abandon its original online bank and instead concentrate on turning itself into the leading global payment transfer provider.
From 2001, PayPal tremendously grew because of its presence on eBay — an online auction Web site where person-to-person sales happen in hundreds of thousands.
In February 2002, after PayPal’s impressive debut on the first day of Wall Street trading as a publicly traded company with an initial public offering (IPO) of stock, eBay later that year bought the company (Paypal) outright for $1.5 billion USD.
“My proceeds from PayPal after tax were about $180 million,” Musk said in a 2018 interview.
“$100 (million) of that went into SpaceX, $70 (million) into Tesla, and $10 (million) into SolarCity. And I literally had to borrow money for rent.”
Elon Musk, who at the time was PayPal’s largest shareholder with 11.5 percent stake, netted $165 million in valuable eBay stock from the deal.
Tesla
In 2004, Elon Musk, who had long been fascinated with the production of electric cars, joined Tesla Motors (later renamed Tesla) — an electric car company originally founded by entrepreneurs, Martin Eberhard and Marc Tarpenning.
Musk became one of the major funding members of Tesla, after investing about $6.3 million in the electric car company in 2004.
In 2006, the electric car company Tesla introduced its first car named, the Roadster — which was a sports car that could make or travel 245 miles (394 km) on a single charge or go from 0 to 60 miles (97 km) per hour in less than four seconds.
Tesla
In 2007, following a series of disagreements, entrepreneur Martin Eberhard was ousted and an interim CEO appointed before Elon Musk finally took over as CEO and product architect of Tesla.
In 2010, under the watch of Musk, Tesla’s initial impressive public offering raised about $226 million.
In 2012, the electric car company introduced the Model S sedan — which was acclaimed by automotive critics for its performance and design.
In 2015, Tesla was hailed across the globe for the introduction of its Model X luxury SUV on the market.
The year 2017 saw the production of The Model 3 — which was less-expensive vehicle — and which became the best-selling electric car of all time.
Apart from the production of electric vehicles, Tesla, after its acquisition of SolarCity, also produces two rechargeable solar batteries with the smaller Powerwall developed for home backup power and off-the-grid use, while the larger Powerpack is intended for commercial or electric utility grid use.
SpaceX
In June 2002, Elon Musk founded Space Exploration Technologies (SpaceX) after the sale of Paypal. He had long been fascinated by the possibility of life on Mars.
As a member of the Mars Society — a nonprofit organization that encourages the exploration of the red planet — Elon Musk had long dreamt of the possibility of life on the planet, Mars.
Musk’s dream was to create a “Mars Oasis,” by sending an experimental greenhouse to the planet, which in favorable alignment of the planets is about 35 million miles distant from Earth.
The mission of the company was to build affordable rockets or spacecraft for commercial activities through space travel.
In less than six years, NASA presented SpaceX with a contract to transport cargo to and fro the International Space Station (ISS).
Its first two rockets were the Falcon 1 (first launched in 2006) and the larger Falcon 9 (first launched in 2010), which were designed to cost much less than competing rockets. A third rocket, the Falcon Heavy (first launched in 2018), was designed to carry 117,000 pounds (53,000 kg) to orbit, nearly twice as much as its largest competitor, the Boeing Company’s Delta IV Heavy, for one-third the cost. SpaceX has announced the successor to the Falcon 9 and the Falcon Heavy: the Super Heavy–Starship system.
In 2012, Elon Musk and SpaceX launched the Falcon 9 rocket into space and towards the ISS with 1,000 pounds of supplies for the astronauts living there.
This made history because it was the first time a private company had sent any goods to the International Space Station (ISS).
Since then, SpaceX has been in charge of sending supplies, people, and satellites into space. Commercial spaceflight has been propelled into the future by a billionaire that began his career as a kid playing games on his personal computer.
Twitter, X
In 2009, Elon Musk joined social media giant, Twitter, as a user with the account @elonmusk.
Gradually, he became one of the most popular Twitter account users and currently has over 85million followers as of this year, 2023.
In early April, 2022, Twitter’s filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) of America revealed that Elon Musk had bought more than 9 percent of the company (Twitter).
Shortly after this revelation, Twitter made an announcement to the effect that Elon Musk would join the company’s board, but he (Elon Musk) rejected it and instead made a bid for the entire Twitter company for $44 billion — at a value of $54.20 per share.
According to Elon Musk, his plans for Twitter included, “enhancing the product with new features, making the algorithms open source to increase trust, defeating the spam bots, and authenticating all humans.”
In July, 2022, Elon Musk shockingly announced that he was withdrawing his bid from acquiring Twitter, stating that the company (Twitter) had not provided sufficient information about bot accounts and was also in “material breach of multiple provisions” of the purchase agreement.
In response, the chair of Twitter’s board of directors at the time, Bret Taylor, said that the company was “committed to closing the transaction on the price and terms agreed upon with Mr. Musk.”
Later, Twitter sued Elon Musk to force him to buy the company as agreed upon earlier.
In September 2022, Twitter’s shareholders voted to accept Musk’s offer.
In October, 2022, it was announced that Mr Elon Musk had finally bought Twitter for $44billion, making him the sole owner of the Twitter.
Net Worth
According to Forbes and Forbes, Elon Musk, who is the Chief Executive Officer of Tesla, owner of Twitter, founder of SpaceX, among others, has a net worth of $198.4 Billion USD as of 2024.
He was first listed on the Forbes Billionaires List in 2012, with a net worth of $2 billion.
Elon Musk is the second richest person in the world. He comes after 74-year-old French national Bernard Arnault — the chair and CEO of LVMH — who has a net worth of $211.4 Billion USD.
LVMH brands include Louis Vuitton, Hennessey, Marc Jacobs, and Sephora.
Elon Musk Twitter
#elonmusk OR https://twitter.com/elonmusk
Source: George Awiadem Maclean, BieGyaNation.Com
