Elon Musk

Canadian business mogul, entrepreneur and investor (b. 28 June 1971, Pretoria, Transvaal, South Africa); lives and works in the USA. Elon Musk runs several global enterprises, serving as the Founder and CEO of SpaceX, CEO of Tesla, Inc, and co-founder of OpenAI and Neuralink. In December 2022, he acquired Twitter for $44 billion, becoming its CEO and primary stakeholder. Musk earned the status of the second-wealthiest person in the world (with an estimated net worth of ~$139 billion) and simultaneously an "anti-record" for the biggest loss of personal fortune in history. He has ten children; Musk was married twice and had a relationship with Canadian electronic musician Grimes (b. 1988).

Elon Musk is widely regarded as one of the most polarizing modern celebrities, equally renowned for his significant contributions to various industries and heavily criticized for controversial and anti-scientific public statements, his political views, several high-profile lawsuits, and countless business flops and failed projects, such as the "Hyperloop" train. His philanthropic Musk Foundation is infamous as the world's least efficient billionaire's charity, dispursing less than 1% of funds (and even those primarily went to Elon's OpenAI and his brother's businesses). Publicly stating deep concerns for climate change and a complete lack of interest in "luxuries" and traditional attributes of wealth, Musk owns and extensively uses several private jets. (An ElonJet social media tracking his flights gained significant publicity after reporting unreasonably high fossil fuel usage and disturbing cases of ultra-short and easily avoidable flights. After acquiring Twitter in December 2022, Elon Musk immediately suspended the and threatened legal action against its creator.)

In 2019, Elon Musk debuted as an amateur musician and self-released "RIP Harambe" rap track on SoundCloud, produced by The Guardian as "indistinguishable... from umpteen competent but unthrilling bits of bedroom electronica posted elsewhere on Soundcloud."

Elon Musk was born to an extremely wealthy family and grew up in South Africa. He arrived in Canada in 1989, applying for a port through his Canadian-born mother. Two years later, Musk relocated to the United States and transferred to Stanford University's Ph.D. program in 1995. However, Elon dropped out shortly after and instead co-founded his first startup, a web-based "city guidance" software service, Zip2, with his brother Kimbal. In 1999, after Compaq acquired it for $307 million, Musk co-founded X.com, one of the earliest "online" banks, which soon merged with its primary competitor to form PayPal in 2000. The payment platform quickly gained popularity, purchased by eBay for a whopping $1.5 billion two years later. In 2002, Elon Musk invested these funds to establish SpaceX. In 2004, he became one of the early investors in Tesla Motors, gradually increasing his interest and subsequently taking over as CEO, Chairman, and Product Architect.