Who is Musk

Elon Musk, an American entrepreneur, was born in Pretoria, South Africa on June 28, 1971. He is a co-founder of PayPal, an electronic payment company, and SpaceX, a company that builds spaceships and launch vehicles. Along with being the company’s CEO, he was also among the first big investors in Tesla, an electric vehicle manufacturer. Furthermore, in 2022 Musk purchased Twitter (later X).

Early life

Musk was born to a Canadian mother and a South African father. He showed an early aptitude for technology and business. He made a video game at the age of twelve and sold it to a computer magazine. Musk departed South Africa in 1988 after acquiring a Canadian passport, citing his desire to pursue better economic prospects in the United States over his unwillingness to support apartheid through forced military service.

PayPal and SpaceX

Musk began his academic career in Kingston, Ontario’s Queen’s University. In 1992, he moved to Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, where he eventually earned bachelor’s degrees in economics and physics in 1997. He went to Stanford University in California to pursue doctoral studies in physics, but he departed after just two days, believing that work in Internet technology had far greater potential to transform society than physics. He established Zip2, a startup that supplied online newspapers with business directories and maps, in 1995. After the computer maker Compaq purchased Zip2 in 1999 for $307 million, Musk went on to launch X.com, an online financial services firm that eventually evolved into PayPal, a corporation that specialized in online money transfers. In 2002, eBay, an online auction company, paid $1.5 billion to acquire PayPal.

Driven by his conviction that humanity needed to become a multiplanet species for survival, Musk harbored dissatisfaction with the exorbitant costs associated with rocket launches. In response, he took action, founding Space Exploration Technologies (SpaceX) in 2002 with the aim of producing rockets at a more affordable price point. SpaceX’s initial rockets included the Falcon 1, which made its debut in 2006, followed by the larger Falcon 9 in 2010. Musk envisioned the Falcon 9 as a vehicle capable of launching payloads into space at a significantly lower cost compared to its competitors.

In 2018, SpaceX’s third rocket, the Falcon Heavy, debuted with the capability to transport payloads of up to 117,000 pounds (53,000 kg) into orbit. Notably, it was engineered to offer this service at a significantly reduced cost compared to its primary competitor, the Boeing Company’s Delta IV Heavy.

SpaceX has also revealed the Super Heavy–Starship system, slated to supersede the Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy. This next-generation system aims to transport payloads of up to 100,000 kg (220,000 pounds) into low Earth orbit, leveraging the Super Heavy as its initial stage. The Starship envisioned as the cargo vessel, is designed not only for establishing bases on the Moon and Mars but also to facilitate rapid transportation between cities on Earth.

The Dragon spacecraft, which delivers supplies to the International Space Station (ISS), was also created by SpaceX. Up to seven astronauts can travel aboard Dragon, and in 2020 it made a crewed voyage to the International Space Station (ISS) with astronauts Doug Hurley and Robert Behnken. 2020 saw the launch of the Super Heavy Starship system’s initial test flights. Apart from being the CEO of SpaceX, Musk was also in charge of designing the Dragon, Starship, and Falcon rockets. As part of NASA’s Artemis space program, SpaceX has been tasked to develop a lander that will be used by people to return to the Moon by 2025.

X

After signing up for Twitter in 2009, Musk became one of the platform’s most well-known users with over 85 million followers as of 2022 under the handle @elonmusk.In August 2018, he aired his reservations about Tesla’s public listing and took to Twitter, posting multiple tweets advocating for taking the company private at $420 per share. In his tweets, he asserted that funding for this move had been “secured.” The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) filed a lawsuit against Musk the following month, accusing him of securities fraud and stating that the tweets were “false and misleading.”

Shortly after, Tesla’s board rejected the SEC’s proposed settlement, reportedly in response to Musk’s threats to resign. However, as the announcement led to a dip in Tesla’s shares, a more stringent deal was eventually reached. Musk retained his position as CEO throughout the three-year agreement, but he had to grant advance approval for all his tweets to Tesla attorneys. Moreover, both Tesla and Musk faced fines totaling $20 million.

In light of Twitter’s content-moderation guidelines, Musk questioned the company’s dedication to free speech values. According to Twitter’s SEC filings from early April 2022, Musk had acquired more than 9% of the business. Soon after, Twitter said that Musk would become a board member. However, Musk changed his mind and put in an offer for the entire business, valued at $54.20 per share, for a total of $44 billion. The acquisition was approved by Twitter’s board, granting him complete ownership of the business. “Enhancing the product with new features, making the algorithms open source to increase trust, defeating the spam bots, and authenticating all humans,” according to Elon Musk, were among his objectives for the firm.

In July 2022, Musk announced his withdrawal from the deal, citing Twitter’s failure to provide adequate information regarding bot accounts and accusing the company of breaching several terms of the purchase agreement. Twitter’s board chair, Bret Taylor, affirmed the company’s commitment to closing the deal as per the agreed-upon terms with Musk. In response, Twitter filed a lawsuit in an attempt to compel Musk to follow through with the purchase. However, in September 2022, Twitter shareholders opted to accept Musk’s offer despite legal challenges, and the transaction was eventually completed in October.

Upon taking ownership of Twitter, one of Musk’s initial moves involved terminating nearly half of the staff. He also revamped the platform’s verification system, making the coveted blue check-mark, previously reserved for celebrities, available for a subscription fee of $8 per month. Additionally, he disbanded Twitter’s content moderation committee and reinstated several previously banned accounts, including that of former US President Donald Trump, which had been suspended in the aftermath of the January 6, 2021, Capitol building attack. These actions led to a significant decline in advertising revenue as numerous businesses withdrew their ads from the platform.

By July 2023, Musk had rebranded Twitter to “X,” with a notable update renaming tweets as posts.

Tesla

In 2004, Elon Musk joined forces with key investors in Tesla Motors, later renamed Tesla, an electric vehicle startup initiated by businessmen Martin Eberhard and Marc Tarpenning. Tesla’s first vehicle, the Roadster, boasted an impressive 245-mile (394 km) range on a single charge in 2006. Departing from the conventional, Musk envisioned an electric car that wasn’t just functional but exhilarating—a sports car capable of hitting 60 miles per hour (97 km/h) in under four seconds.

The company soared with a $226 million IPO in 2010, and within two years, Tesla unveiled the Model S, earning acclaim for its performance and design. With the introduction of the Model X premium SUV in 2015, Tesla continued to amass positive feedback. The highly anticipated Model 3 hit production lines in 2017, swiftly becoming the best-selling electric car in history.

In 2013, Musk proposed the Hyperloop—a tube for travel at nearly 760 miles per hour, covering 350 miles between Los Angeles and San Francisco in just 35 minutes, at a cost of $6 billion. Despite his vision, time constraints due to his roles at SpaceX and Tesla limited his involvement in the Hyperloop’s development.