elon musk family biography

Elon Musk is the CEO of Tesla Motors, the co-founder of Paypal, the founder of SpaceX, and the chairman of SolarCity. [1]

Elon Reeve Musk was born 28 Jun 1971 in Pretoria, Transvaal, South Africa. He is the son of Canadian-born Maye (Haldeman) Musk, a model and dietician, and Errol Musk, an engineer in South Africa. They had two other children, before they divorced, and Maye took the children with her back to Canada. [1] [2]

Elon married Justine Wilson, Canadian fantasy author, in 2000. They had five children, first twins in 2004 then triplets in 2006. The couple separated in 2008. [1]

Elon married second Talulah Riley-Milburn 2010. They separated in 2012, then remarried in 2013, and finally divorced in 2016. [1]

• ↑ 1.0 1.1 1.2 1.3 "Meet the Elon Musk Family' , The Guardian (online), 21 Feb 2018. Accessed 29 Nov 2021.
• ↑ Ancestry.com. United States Patent and Trademark Office, U.S. Patents, 1970-2019 [database on-line]. Lehi, UT, USA: Ancestry.com Operations Inc, 2020. Ancestry Record 62219 #8917522
• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elon_Musk
• Ancestry.com. U.S., Index to Public Records, 1994-2019 [database on-line]. Lehi, UT, USA: Ancestry.com Operations, Inc., 2020. Ancestry Record 62209 #254800464
• Ancestry.com. U.S., Public Records Index, 1950-1993, Volume 1 [database on-line]. Lehi, UT, USA: Ancestry.com Operations, Inc., 2010. Ancestry Record 1788 #73620975
• Ancestry.com. United States Patent and Trademark Office, U.S. Patents, 1970-2019 [database on-line]. Lehi, UT, USA: Ancestry.com Operations Inc, 2020. Ancestry Record 62219 #3175698
• Elon's Connection to Mennonite History
• Elon Musk: Troublemakers in His Tree
• Elon's formal name
• full middle name (R.)
• exact birthdate
• birth location
• private siblings' names
• private children's names (2)
• spouse's name and marriage information
• Which notable or notorious Twitter super-user are you most closely connected to? May 9, 2022.
• 2022 WikiTree Challenge 10: Elon Musk's week has ended. May 2, 2022.
• Help us find and connect profiles for next week's Twitterverse Feature May 2, 2022.
• Which automotive founder are you most closely connected to? Nov 29, 2021.

We are featuring this profile in the Connection Finder this week. Between now and Wednesday is a good time to take a look at the sources and biography to see if there are updates and improvements that need made, especially those that will bring it up to WikiTree Style Guide standards. We know it's short notice, so don't fret too much. Just do what you can.

Here is a link to the article in Sunday's Tages-Anzeiger: https://www.tagesanzeiger.ch/aus-diesem-schweizer-dorf-stammt-tesla-gruender-elon-musk-719465997366

And here is also a short summary of the article available in English: https://www.swissinfo.ch/eng/historians-trace-elon-musk-s-swiss-roots-to-emmental/47559580

So Elon Musk probably has plenty of English/British ancestors on his mother's side, outweighing the Swiss heritage by orders of magnitude (he loves to say orders of magnitude, by the way).

Source listing the connection to Kimbal Musk and family members

The missing spouses/mates and children also are incomplete but obviously known although Grimes and son have been oddly excluded from the profile information AND the biography, which is strange. Grimes in her own right is famous as well. She may already have a profile that you can easily attach the this tree.

He took one for the team and the family by already being so exposed and scrutinized by people who hate that he is growing our future!! I like my spot in the shadows

and Grimes/Claire Boucher (sons mother)

This week's featured connections are Princesses : Elon is 22 degrees from Catherine Mountbatten-Windsor, 22 degrees from Joan of Kent, 19 degrees from Mary Stuart, 20 degrees from Marguerite de France, 27 degrees from Maud of England, 19 degrees from Louise Argyll, 20 degrees from Elisabeth Holstein-Gottorp-Romanov, 19 degrees from Sophie Hedevig Oldenburg, 26 degrees from Ingeborg Håkonsdatter, 25 degrees from 방자 이, 16 degrees from Rachel Parker and 22 degrees from Clotilde di Borbone-Francia on our single family tree . Login to see how you relate to 33 million family members.

M  >  Musk  >  Elon Musk

Categories: Automobile Manufacturers | Example Profiles of the Week | WikiTree Challenge 2022 Guest Stars | Featured Connections Archive 2022 | Featured Connections Archive 2021 | Notables

WIKITREE HOME   |   ABOUT   |   G2G FORUM   |   HELP   |   SEARCH

IMPORTANT PRIVACY NOTICE & DISCLAIMER: YOU HAVE A RESPONSIBILITY TO USE CAUTION WHEN DISTRIBUTING PRIVATE INFORMATION. WIKITREE PROTECTS MOST SENSITIVE INFORMATION BUT ONLY TO THE EXTENT STATED IN THE TERMS OF SERVICE AND PRIVACY POLICY .

PRIVACY TAKE-DOWN REQUEST © 2008 - 2023 INTERESTING.COM, INC. CONTENT MAY BE COPYRIGHTED BY WIKITREE COMMUNITY MEMBERS.

• World Biography

Elon Musk Biography

1971 • South Africa

Entrepreneur, philanthropist.

Elon Musk was a multi-millionaire by the time he reached the age of thirty-one thanks to his creation of the company that became PayPal, the popular money-transfer service for Web consumers. Musk has become one of a new breed of what the New York Times called "thrillionaires," or a class of former high-tech entrepreneurs who are using their newfound wealth to help turn science-fiction dreams into reality. Musk is the founder of Space Exploration Technologies, or SpaceX, a company based in El Segundo, California. In 2005 SpaceX was busy building the Falcon rocket, which he hoped could some day make both space tourism and a colony on the planet Mars realistic goals for humankind.

Sells homemade video game

Musk is a native of South Africa, born in 1971 to parents who later divorced. His father was an engineer and his mother—originally from Canada—was a nutritionist. Musk was fascinated by science fiction and computers in his adolescent years. When he was twelve, he wrote the code for his own video game and actually sold it to a company. In his late teens, he immigrated to Canada in order to avoid the required military service for white males in South Africa. It was still the era of apartheid, the South African legal system that denied political and economic rights to the country's majority-black native population. Musk was uninterested in serving in the army, which was engaged at the time in a battle to stamp out a black nationalist movement. Thanks to his mother's Canadian ties, he was able to enroll at Queen's University in Kingston, one of Ontario's top schools.

Musk had planned on a career in business, and he worked at a Canadian bank one summer as a college intern. This was his only real job before he became an Internet entrepreneur. Midway through his undergraduate education, he transferred to the University of Pennsylvania, where he earned a bachelor's degree in economics and a second bachelor's in physics a year later. From there, he won admission to the prestigious doctoral program at Stanford University in California, where he planned to concentrate on a Ph.D. in energy physics. He moved to California just as the Internet boom was starting in 1995, and he decided he wanted to be in on it, too. He dropped out of Stanford after just two days in order to start his first company, Zip2 Corporation. This was an online city guide aimed at the newspaper publishing business, and Musk was able to land contracts with both the New York Times and the Chicago Tribune to provide content for their new online sites.

Musk was just twenty-four when he started the company, and he devoted all of his energies to see it succeed. At one point,

"Failure is an option here. If things are not failing, you are not innovating enough."

he lived in the same rented office that served as his company's headquarters, sleeping on a futon couch and showering at the local YMCA, which "was cheaper than renting an apartment," he explained in an interview with Roger Eglin of the Sunday Times of London. Still, the company struggled to fulfill its contracts and meet the payroll and other costs, and he looked for outside financing. Eventually a group of venture capitalists, investors who provide start-up money to new businesses, financed Zip2 with $3.6 million, but he gave up majority control of the company in exchange.

Starts online bank

In the end, Musk's decision was a smart one. In February 1999 Compaq Computer Corporation bought Zip2 for $307 million in cash, which was one of the largest cash deals in the Internet business sector at the time. Out of that amount, Musk was paid $22 million for his 7 percent share, which made him a millionaire at twenty-eight. In 1999, he used $10 million of it to start another company, which he called X.com. This was an online bank with grand plans to become a full-range provider of financial services to consumers. The company's one major innovation was figuring out how to securely transfer money using a recipient's e-mail address.

Musk's proven track record from Zip2 helped it gain serious attention and generous investors right away. Two important executives signed on with him: 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 was appointed president and chief executive officer of X.com, with Musk serving as company chair. The company received a generous infusion of $25 million in start-up capital from Sequoia Capital, a leading venture-capital firm in California.

X.com went online in December 1999 with a bold offer for new customers: those who opened an online checking account with X.com received a $20 cash card that they could use at an automatic-teller machine (ATM). If they referred a friend, they received a $10 card for each new member who signed up. Within two months, X.com had one hundred thousand customers, which was close to the number reached by its major competitor, Etrade Telebank. But consumer skepticism about the security of online banking was X.com's biggest obstacle to success, and there was a setback when Musk and the other executives had to admit that computer hackers had been able to perform some illegal transfers from traditional bank accounts into X.com accounts. They immediately started a new policy that required customers to submit a canceled check in order to withdraw money, but there were tensions in the office about the future of the company.

Buys PayPal

In March 2000, X.com bought a company called Confinity, which had started an Internet money-transfer presence called PayPal. PayPal was originally set up to let users of handheld personal digital assistants, or PDAs, transfer money. It had only been in business a few months when X.com acquired it, and Musk believed that its online-transfer technology, which was known as "P2P" for "person-to-person," had a promising future. He and Harris did not agree, and Harris resigned from X.com in May 2000. Five months later, Musk announced that X.com would abandon its original online bank and instead concentrate on turning itself into the leading global payment transfer provider. The X.com name was dropped in favor of PayPal.

PayPal grew enormously through 2001, thanks in part to its presence on eBay, the online auction Web site where person-to-person sales were happening in the hundreds of thousands. When PayPal became a publicly traded company with an initial public offering (IPO) of stock in February 2002, it had an impressive debut on the first day of Wall Street trading. Later that year, eBay bought the company outright for $1.5 billion. At the time, Musk was PayPal's largest shareholder, holding an 11.5 percent stake, and he netted $165 million in valuable eBay stock from the deal.

By then Musk had already moved on to his next venture. In June 2002 he founded SpaceX, or Space Exploration Technologies. He had long been fascinated by the possibility of life on Mars and was a member of the Mars Society, a nonprofit organization that encourages the exploration of the red planet. Filmmaker James Cameron (1954–) is one of several notable Mars Society members. Musk wanted to create a "Mars Oasis," sending an experimental greenhouse to the planet, which in favorable alignment of the planets is about 35 million miles distant from Earth. His oasis would contain a nutrient gel from which specific Mars-environment-friendly plant life could grow. His plan had a cost of $20 million. But then he learned that to send something into space with the standard delivery method, a Delta rocket made by the Boeing Corporation, would add another $50 million to the cost. Musk even tried to buy a rocket from Russia, but realized that dealing with the somewhat suspect international traders who dealt in such underground, or illegal, items was just too risky.

Borrows star Wars >name

Musk thought that maybe he might be able to build his own rocket instead. He began contacting innovators and technicians in the American aerospace industry, and he managed to lure some experienced engineers and technical specialists away from companies like Boeing and TRW to come and work for him at SpaceX's headquarters in El Segundo, California. He had a much more difficult time attracting venture capital for this idea, however. "Space is pretty far out of the comfort zone of just about every VC on Earth," he admitted to Matt Marshall of the San Jose Mercury News. Instead, he was forced to put up his own money to build what would become the first reusable rocket in the private sector.

Musk and his new SpaceX team began to build two types of Falcon rockets. The name came from the "Millennium Falcon," the spacecraft in the Star Wars movies. The plan was to build a rocket by using existing technology and at the lowest possible cost. The Falcon I, for example, uses a pintle engine, which dates from the 1960s. It has one fuel injector, while standard rockets used by the U.S. National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) generally use what is known as a "showerhead" design that features several fuel injectors. The company also needed a theodolite, which is used to align rockets, and instead of buying it new, they saved $25,000 by finding one on eBay.

There are other, equally expensive costs associated with rocketry. Since Musk's design would be reusable, the company needed to get back the rocket's first stage, which the rocket sheds as it leaves the Earth's atmosphere. The part usually falls into the ocean, according to safety plans, but retrieval at sea is expensive.

The New "Thrillionaires"

Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen (1953–) is ranked the seventh richest person in the world. Allen has used his wealth to finance SpaceShipOne. This private manned spacecraft, built by aircraft design pioneer Burt Rutan (1943–), was the first of its kind to reach suborbital space twice, which it did in 2004. For this two-time achievement, SpaceShipOne met the conditions of the $10 million Ansari X prize, established by the X Prize Foundation to encourage private entrepreneurship in aerospace.

Doom video game co-creator John Carmack (1970–; see entry) founded a computer game development company called id Software in 1991. He is considered one of the most gifted programmers ever to work in the gaming industry. He was one of the creators of the successful Doom and Quake games, which sold millions in the 1990s and attracted legions of devoted fans. In 2000, Carmack funded a new venture, Armadillo Aerospace in Mesquite, Texas, with the goal of building a manned suborbital spacecraft. It lost its bid to win the Ansari X prize when its vehicles ran into technical problems and crashed in 2004 and 2005.

Companies that contract with NASA charge $250,000 to bring such parts back, but Musk found some ocean-salvage companies that knew how to handle sensitive material. He found one that agreed to do the job for just $60,000. The Falcon does not have a specialty computer on board, which can cost $1 million alone to install and maintain. Instead its computer is a basic one that uses the same technology as an automatic teller machine and costs just $5,000.

Envisions Hondas in space

By building a reliable rocket at an affordable cost, SpaceX hopes to be able to take small satellites into orbit for a fee of around $6 million. This is half the standard rate in the aerospace business to take something into space. The company already had two customers—the U.S. Department of Defense and the government of Malaysia. "Many times we've been asked, 'If you reduce the cost, don't you reduce reliability?' This is completely ridiculous," Musk explained to Fast Company writer Jennifer Reingold. "A Ferrari is a very expensive car. It is not reliable. But I would bet you 1,000–to–1 that if you bought a Honda Civic that that sucker will not break down in the first year of operation. You can have a cheap car that's reliable, and the same applies to rockets."

Musk serves as the chief technology officer of SpaceX. All employees are shareholders, and the company's casual but committed atmosphere is reinforced by the workday presence of Musk's four dogs. He no longer sleeps at the office, however, for he has a home, a wife there, and in the garage a McLaren F1, a $1.2 million car that is the fastest production, or non-customized race car, in the world. He has testified before members of the U.S. Congress on the possibility of commercial human space flight and has also established the Musk Foundation, which is committed to space exploration and the discovery of clean energy sources. The Foundation runs the Musk Mars Desert Observatory telescope in southern Utah, as well as a simulated Mars environment where visitors can experience what life on Mars might be like, including waste-burning toilets. "I think human exploration of space is very important," he told Reingold. "Certainly, from a survival standpoint, the probability of living longer is much greater if we're on more than one planet."

For More Information

Periodicals.

Corcoran, Elizabeth. "Something Better than Free." Forbes (February 21, 2000): p. 62b.

Eglin, Roger. "Silicon Valley Shows How to Reach Stars." Sunday Times (London, England) (December 1, 2002): p. 7.

Lubove, Seth. "Way Out There." Forbes (May 12, 2003): p. 138.

Marshall, Matt. "Venture Capital Column." San Jose Mercury News (July 13, 2004).

Ptacek, Megan J. "X.com Scraps Bank Strategy to Focus on PayPal System." American Banker (October 11, 2000): p. 1.

Reingold, Jennifer. "Hondas in Space." Fast Company (February 2005): p. 74.

Schwartz,John."Thrillionaires: The New Space Capitalists." New York Times (June 14, 2005): p. F1.

Wallace, Nora K. "Vandenberg Air Base, Calif., to Launch SpaceX Reusable Rocket in January." Santa Barbara News-Press (October 5, 2003).

The Mars Society. http://www.marssociety.org/ (accessed on August 23, 2005).

Space Exploration Technologies Corporation. http://www.spacex.com/ (accessed on August 23, 2005).

User Contributions:

Comment about this article, ask questions, or add new information about this topic:.

• Consumer Many large companies fail to provide sufficient information about their products and services. We bridge this gap by conducting in-depth research to address your unanswered questions
• Collectibles

Elon Musk: The Complete Biography of an Extraordinary Innovator

• by history tools
• March 26, 2024

Elon Musk is one of the most famous entrepreneurs and business leaders of the 21st century. As the co-founder of PayPal, CEO of Tesla Motors and SpaceX, and driving force behind many other companies, Musk has had an outsized influence on technology, space exploration, and solving some of humanity‘s biggest challenges.

Let‘s take a closer look at Musk’s remarkable life story, complex persona, monumental successes and occasional setbacks, and what makes him such a polarizing character.

Childhood and Early Life in South Africa

Musk was born on June 28, 1971 in Pretoria, one of South Africa’s wealthiest and most segregated cities during apartheid. His mother Maye was a famous dietitian and model who grew up in Canada, while his father Errol was a wealthy white South African electromechanical engineer.

As a child, Musk was an avid reader and self-taught computer programmer. At age 12 he created and sold a video game called Blastar to a computer magazine for $500. But his relationship with his father was difficult – his parents divorced when he was 9 years old. Musk chose to live mostly with his father, which he would later regret considering they became estranged.

Discovering His Calling

After spending two years in the South African military, Musk moved to Canada at age 19. He studied at Queen‘s University in Ontario for two years, avoiding mandatory service in the South African military, before transferring to the University of Pennsylvania.

At Penn, Musk pursued a Bachelor’s degree in Physics as well as a Bachelor’s degree in Economics. Most notably, he rekindled an early passion by taking extra classes at the Stanford School of Engineering. It was a harbinger of innovations to come.

Founding Zip2 and PayPal

In 1995 Musk dropped out of Stanford’s PhD program to found his first startup Zip2 Corporation with his brother Kimbal. Zip2 provided online city guides to newspapers like the New York Times and Chicago Tribune.

Compaq bought Zip2 in 1999 for $307 million, earning Musk $22 million. He soon co-founded X.com, one of the first online banks providing services like checking accounts and money transfers.

X.com merged with its rival Confinity in 2000 to become PayPal, with Musk serving as the new CEO. Despite internal struggles at the new company, PayPal went on to revolutionize online payments. In 2002 eBay acquired PayPal for $1.5 billion in stock, of which Musk received $175 million.

“If something‘s important enough you should try, even if the probable outcome is failure.”

Making History with SpaceX

Flush with cash from the PayPal sale, Musk founded Space Exploration Technologies (SpaceX) in 2002 with an audacious long-term goal: make humanity multi-planetary by establishing a human colony on Mars.

SpaceX develops rockets, spacecraft and satellites aimed at revolutionizing space transportation to eventually make it affordable for private citizens to travel into orbit and to other planets. It almost went bankrupt in 2008, but Musk kept it afloat with personal funds.

In 2012 SpaceX’s Dragon spacecraft became the first commercial spaceship to deliver cargo to the International Space Station. And in 2020 SpaceX sent astronauts to the ISS for the first time, effectively resurrecting American manned spaceflight.

Tesla Accelerates Ahead with Musk at the Helm

Also in 2004 Musk made the series A investment round in Tesla Motors and joined Tesla’s board of directors as chairman. Founded by Martin Eberhard and Marc Tarpenning in 2003, Tesla aimed to prove electric cars could be better than gasoline-powered cars.

The original Roadster sports car impressed critics, but by 2007 Tesla was also on the verge of bankruptcy. Musk invested heavily in Tesla and took over leadership of the company, serving as CEO and product architect.

Under his guidance, Tesla went public in 2010 to raise funds and the Model S sedan was named Motor Trend‘s 2013 Car of the Year. By 2023 Tesla had become the world‘s most valuable automaker, dominating the rapidly growing EV market.

Expanding His Entrepreneurial Portfolio

In addition to SpaceX and Tesla, Musk has founded or co-founded a number of new companies over the last two decades. These include:

• The Boring Company (2016) – Develops tunnels aimed at eliminating street traffic to reduce transportation time
• Neuralink (2016) – Develops implantable brain-machine interfaces to connect human brains with computers
• OpenAI (2015) – Non-profit AI research company working to ensure artificial general intelligence benefits humanity
• Starlink (2019) – SpaceX project to provide global satellite Internet access coverage

Not all of these companies have proven successful so far. But Musk continues to think big while attracting top talent to bring innovative new technologies to reality.

Taking Over Twitter for $44 Billion

In January 2022, Musk started acquiring shares of social media company Twitter. By March he had accumulated a 9.2% stake to become Twitter‘s largest shareholder. This set in motion a tumultuous year that eventually led to his purchase of Twitter for $44 billion on October 27, 2022.

Shortly after acquiring Twitter, Musk laid off roughly half the company‘s 7,500 employees and radically changed the platform‘s operations. Many users have quit the platform over concerns about misinformation as Musk grants "amnesty" to suspended accounts. The long-term implications of his takeover remain uncertain.

“Failure is an option here. If things are not failing, you are not innovating enough.”

Marriages, Relationships and Family

In 2000, Musk married Canadian author Justine Wilson. Their first son died unexpectedly from SIDS at 10 weeks old. They share custody of 5 sons – a set of twins and a set of triplets – born through IVF. Musk and Wilson separated in 2008.

From 2010 to 2012, Musk was married to English actress Talulah Riley. After divorcing, they remarried in 2013 before finalizing their divorce again in 2016. Musk also had an on-and-off relationship with musician Grimes which began in 2018. They had 2 children – a son born in 2020 and daughter born in 2021 via surrogate.

In 2022 it was revealed that Musk secretly had twins in 2021 with Shivon Zilis, a top executive at his company Neuralink. He now has 10 children from 3 relationships. But his 18-year-old transgender daughter has disowned him, changing her name in opposition to Musk‘s "public transphobia."

Losing and Regaining Title of World‘s Richest Person

Thanks mostly to his shares in Tesla Motors, Musk experienced an astronomical rise in his personal net worth. He became the richest person in the world for the first time in January 2021 when he surpassed Jeff Bezos.

But his net worth dropped in 2022 and early 2023 as Tesla‘s share price declined. On January 6, 2023 Musk lost the title of world‘s richest person to Bernard Arnault, CEO of LVMH.

What‘s more, with an estimated $183 billion loss between November 2021 and January 2023, Musk holds the record for the largest loss of personal fortune in history according to Guinness World Records. Despite these setbacks, Musk’s supporters are betting he’ll reclaim the top spot someday.

What Makes Musk Such a Polarizing Figure

Musk has earned both ardent fans and vocal critics. So what makes him such a polarizing public figure?

Reasons supporters are drawn to Musk include:

• Daring vision for future innovations
• Willingness to take risks
• Commitment to tackling climate change with sustainable energy
• Power to make things happen that others consider impossible
• Relatable sense of humor on social media

However some people are strongly critical of Musk for:

• Poor treatment of employees by demanding unrealistic hours and goals
• Controversial public stances on issues like pandemic lockdowns
• Spreading misinformation and making questionable promises on Twitter
• Brash communication style and vindictiveness towards naysayers
• Concerns about concentration of power held by billionaires

But there‘s no questioning the outsized impact Musk already made on multiple industries. Even his detractors admit they‘re curious to see what he’ll achieve next.

• Jeff Bezos Complete Biography – Everything about the former richest person in the world
• Mark Zuckerberg Biography – The life story of another famous tech CEO
• Steve Jobs Biography – Get to know the late legendary co-founder of Apple

Related posts:

• Should Elon Musk Avoid Travel to Russia? Analyzing the Risks After Starlink‘s Role in Ukraine
• Is Jeff Bezos the Smartest Person Ever? Examining His IQ and Achievements
• Jeff Bezos: The Man Behind Amazon‘s Meteoric Rise
• Mastodon vs Twitter: A Detailed Comparison for Disillusioned Twitter Users
• Tesla is Reportedly Working on a Simulated San Francisco to Train its Autopilot
• Twitter vs Instagram in 2023: An Expert‘s In-Depth Feature and UX Comparison
• Bobby Murphy: The Innovator Propelling Snapchat into the Future of Social AR
• The Journey of Mark Zuckerberg: From Harvard Dropout to Tech Visionary

Tesla CEO Elon Musk: His career, life, and companies he started

• Elon Musk is the CEO of Tesla. He's also cofounder other major companies, including SpaceX.
• He was born in South Africa and founded his first startup in the '90s.
• Musk is a polarizing figure who has incited lawsuits and SEC investigations. 

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

His mother, Maye Musk , is a professional dietitian and model, appearing on boxes of Special K cereal and the cover of TIME magazine. Last year, at the age of 74, she was on the cover of Sport Illustrated's swimsuit edition.

Maye and Musk's father, Errol, were married for nearly a decade before they divorced. Maye said in her book that she'd wanted to end the marriage earlier, but the Divorce Act, which legalized the termination of a marriage in South Africa, was not enacted until 1979. Musk's parents divorced the same year the law was passed.

After their parents divorced, 9-year-old Musk and his younger brother Kimbal  decided to live with their father. It wasn't until after the move was made that his notoriously troubled relationship with his dad began to emerge. "It was not a good idea," Musk said of the move in an interview with Rolling Stone.

Musk's school days weren't easy — he was once hospitalized after being beaten by bullies. The bullies threw Musk down a set of stairs and beat him until he blacked out, as detailed in Ashlee Vance's book "Elon Musk: Tesla, SpaceX, and the Quest for a Fantastic Future." Musk's father told Business Insider the incident took place after Musk made some insensitive comments to a classmate.

The Tesla CEO has said he didn't always feel he was on the same wavelength as his classmates.

"Social clues were not intuitive," Musk said during a TED conference last year. In 2021, the billionaire said during his performance on " Saturday Night Live " that he has Asperger's syndrome.

Musk has said he spent a lot of his childhood reading and coding late into the night — and it paid off. At 17, he took a university-level aptitude test on his computer programming skills. Examiners made him retake the test because they had never seen such a high score, his mother said in a tweet. 

After graduating from high school, Musk moved to Canada with his mother, Maye; his sister, Tosca, and his brother, Kimbal, and spent two years studying at Queen's University in Kingston, Ontario, according to the school.

He later finished his studies at the University of Pennsylvania, earning degrees in physics and economics.

While studying at the  University of Pennsylvania , Musk and a classmate rented out a 10-bedroom frat house and turned it into a nightclub. The move, which Musk undertook with Adeo Ressi, was one of his first entrepreneurial experiments, Vogue reported.

After graduation, Musk traveled to Stanford University to study for his Ph.D. — but he barely started the program before leaving it. He deferred his admission after only two days in California, deciding to test his luck in the dot-com boom that was just getting underway. He never returned to finish his studies at Stanford.

Musk's college girlfriend Jennifer Gwynne would later auction a set of photos of Musk from his time studying at the University of Pennsylvania.

Late 1990s - 2000: Early career

With brother Kimbal, Musk launched Zip2. A cluster of Silicon Valley investors helped to fund the company, which provided city travel guides to newspapers like The New York Times and Chicago Tribune, per the Rolling Stone interview with Musk.

While Zip2 got off the ground, Musk lived in the office and showered at a local YMCA, he said in a Stanford University video. The hard work paid off when Compaq bought Zip2 in a deal worth $341 million in cash and stock, earning Musk $22 million.

Musk next started  X.com , an online banking company. He launched the company in 1999 using $10 million of the money he got from the Zip2 sale, Investopedia reported. About a year later, X.com merged with Confinity, a financial startup cofounded by Peter Thiel, to form PayPal.

Musk was named the CEO of the newly minted PayPal — but it wouldn't last long. While Musk was en route to Australia for a much-needed vacation, PayPal's board fired him and made Thiel the new CEO. "That's the problem with vacations," Musk told Fortune years later about his ill-fated trip in late 2000.

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

But things worked out for Musk — he made another windfall when eBay bought PayPal in late 2002. As PayPal's single biggest shareholder, he netted $165 million of the $1.5 billion price eBay paid, Money.com reported.

Related stories

Even before the PayPal sale, Musk was dreaming up his next move, including a wild plan to send mice or plants to Mars. In early 2002, Musk founded the company that would be known as Space Exploration Technologies , or SpaceX, with $100 million of the money received from the PayPal sale. Musk's goal was to make spaceflight cheaper by a factor of 10.

One early SpaceX vehicle was named after the song "Puff the Magic Dragon." The name of the spacecraft, the Dragon, was Musk's jab at skeptics who told him SpaceX launches would never be able to put vehicles into space, Musk later shared on Twitter.

SpaceX's long-term goal is to make colonizing Mars affordable. Musk has said that SpaceX stock won't be available an initial public offering until what Musk calls the "Mars Colonial Transporter" is flying regularly.

Musk had also been keeping plenty busy here on Earth, particularly with Tesla Motors. In 2004, Musk made the first of what would be $70 million of total Tesla investments, an electric car company. Tesla's founders were veteran startup executives Martin Eberhard and Marc Tarpenning.

Musk has said he took an active product role at the carmaker, helping develop its first car, the Tesla Roadster , the Roadster.

The Roadster was built on the chassis of a Lotus Elise — a tiny British sports car that Tesla remade into an electric car with a lithium-ion battery. The all-electric Roadster debuted in 2006 when Musk was serving as Tesla's chairman. 

2008: Elon Musk becomes Tesla CEO

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

In 2008, with the financial crisis seriously limiting his options, a Tesla bankruptcy was personally halted by Musk. He invested $40 million in Tesla and loaned the company $40 million more. Not coincidentally, he was named CEO the same year.

But between SpaceX, Tesla, and SolarCity, Musk nearly went broke. He described 2008 as "the worst year of my life" in an interview with 60 Minutes. Tesla kept losing money, and SpaceX was having trouble launching its Falcon 1 rocket. By 2009, Musk was living off 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 to deliver supplies into space, and Tesla finally found more outside investors.

Musk's career was starting to get noticed in other circles, too, most notably in Hollywood. Robert Downey Jr.'s portrayal of Tony Stark in the "Iron Man" movies is at least partially based on Musk, director Jon Favreau said on the "Recode Decode" podcast. Musk even had a cameo in " Iron Man 2 ."

2015: OpenAI

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

He later announced that he would step down from the board to avoid any potential conflicts of interest with Tesla , which has made strides into artificial intelligence for its self-driving car technology.

The billionaire has since spoken out against the company on multiple occasions and is even attempting to launch his own competitor, which he jokingly dubbed " Truth GPT " after the success of OpenAI's ChatGPT.

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

That year, Tesla also released its first version of Autopilot , a driver-assist feature for its EVs. Musk later went on to release an enhanced version of Autopilot called Full Self-Driving beta several years later.

He has since said that Tesla FSD is the difference between being "worth a lot of money or worth basically zero." However, Autopilot has generated its fair share of lawsuits, as well as investigations from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration over the years.

2016: SolarCity and The Boring Company

In late 2016, Tesla bought SolarCity in a $2.6 billion deal. That same year some Tesla shareholders filed a lawsuit accusing Musk of putting pressure on Tesla's board members to buy SolarCity and bail it out. Musk later won the lawsuit in 2022.

In 2016, he also started The Boring Company , which has a mission to dig a network of tunnels under and around cities for high-speed, no-traffic driving.

Boring's first tunnel network for commercial use, located in Las Vegas, opened in April 2021.

2017: Neuralink

Musk founded another company: Neuralink , in 2017, which is trying to build devices that can be implanted inside the human brain. The billionaire has described the device as a "Fitbit in your skull" and has said it will allow people to perform tasks using only their minds. The company has experimented with putting the device in pigs and monkeys and won approval from the US Food and Drug Administration to begin human trials in 2023.

In 2017, Musk also joined President Trump's business advisory council — a move that caused a huge public backlash. He initially defended the move but then quit after Trump pulled the US out of the Paris Agreement on climate change. Musk said he tried to convince Trump not to withdraw.

2018: Tesla Roadster in space

The Falcon Heavy, the successor to the Falcon 9 and the most powerful rocket SpaceX has built to date, completed a successful maiden launch in February 2018. The Falcon Heavy carried a unique payload: a dummy dubbed "Starman," and Musk's personal cherry red Tesla Roadster, which were launched toward Martian orbit.

"We really wanted to get the public here to wonder, to get excited about the possibility of something new happening in space — of the space frontier getting pushed forward," Musk told an audience at the 2018 South by Southwest conference. "The goal of this was to inspire you and make you believe again, just as people believed in the Apollo era, that anything is possible."

SEC subpoenas Tesla

Musk ran into some trouble in 2018 when he sent a tweet declaring he was considering taking  Tesla private at $420 per share and had already secured funding. Just a few days later, the SEC sent Tesla subpoenas about the company's plans to go private and Musk's comments.

By September, the SEC had formally filed a lawsuit against Musk, accusing him of making "false and misleading statements." Musk settled with the SEC, which resulted in both him and Tesla paying a $20 million fine and Musk stepping down as chairman of Tesla's board. Additionally, Tesla was required to appoint a committee to oversee Musk's communications.

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

2021: Musk becomes richest person in the world

Musk's net worth has soared in recent years. The Tesla CEO became the richest man in the world in 2021 when his fortune surpassed $200 billion, passing Amazon founder Jeff Bezos' net worth.

Musk said he commemorated the occasion by sending Bezos, his longtime rival, a silver medal. Musk's status as the richest man in the world was eclipsed by LVMH owner Bernard Arnault in 2023. Since, he has remained near the top of the list of wealthiest people in the world.

He also won Time's Person of the Year award in 2021.

2022: The 'Technoking' sets his sights on Twitter 

In 2022, Musk started buying up shares of Twitter and later turned down an offer to join the board in favor of buying Twitter outright for $44 billion.

Musk, who has become one of the most-followed accounts on the social media site, attempted to backtrack on his offer to buy Twitter in July.  Twitter sued Musk promptly, in order to force him to go through with the purchase. 

After months of back and forth leading up to a trial in the Delaware Court of Chancery, Musk agreed to buy the company in October. The same day he took over Twitter, he ousted several key executives including then-Twitter CEO Parag Agrawal. Musk took over as "Chief Twit" and proceeded to cut the Twitter workforce in half in the chaotic months following the Musk acquisition .

He later brought in a new CEO for Twitter in May 2023 after the billionaire said Twitter was no longer "in the fast lane to bankruptcy."

The platform was also rebranded "X" in July 2023.

The billionaire has also expressed interest in launching his own AI venture. In April 2023, Musk confirmed reports that he's planning to create an AI startup to build a ChatGPT rival .

Katie Canales, Matt Weinberger, and Mary Meisenzahl contributed to an earlier version of this story. 

• Main content

• Lifestyles & Social Issues
• Philosophy & Religion
• Politics, Law & Government
• World History
• Health & Medicine
• Browse Biographies
• Birds, Reptiles & Other Vertebrates
• Bugs, Mollusks & Other Invertebrates
• Environment
• Fossils & Geologic Time
• Geography & Travel
• Entertainment & Pop Culture
• Sports & Recreation
• Visual Arts

• Introduction & Quick Facts

PayPal and SpaceX

• X (formerly Twitter)

When was Elon Musk born?

Where did elon musk go to school, what did elon musk accomplish.

Elon Musk (born June 28, 1971, Pretoria , South Africa) South African -born American entrepreneur who cofounded the electronic-payment firm PayPal and formed SpaceX , maker of launch vehicles and spacecraft . He was also one of the first significant investors in, as well as chief executive officer of, the electric car manufacturer Tesla. In addition, Musk acquired Twitter (later X) in 2022.

Musk was born to a South African father and a Canadian mother. He displayed an early talent for computers and entrepreneurship. At age 12 he created a video game and sold it to a computer magazine. In 1988, after obtaining a Canadian passport, Musk left South Africa because he was unwilling to support apartheid through compulsory military service and because he sought the greater economic opportunities available in the United States .

Musk attended Queen’s University in Kingston, Ontario, and in 1992 he transferred to the University of Pennsylvania , Philadelphia, where he received bachelor’s degrees in physics and economics in 1997. He enrolled in graduate school in physics at Stanford University in California , but he left after only two days because he felt that the Internet had much more potential to change society than work in physics. In 1995 he founded Zip2 , a company that provided maps and business directories to online newspapers. In 1999 Zip2 was bought by the computer manufacturer Compaq for $307 million, and Musk then founded an online financial services company, X.com, which later became PayPal, which specialized in transferring money online. The online auction eBay bought PayPal in 2002 for $1.5 billion.

Musk was long convinced that for life to survive, humanity has to become a multiplanet species. However, he was dissatisfied with the great expense of rocket launchers. In 2002 he founded Space Exploration Technologies (SpaceX) to make more affordable rockets. 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. The Super Heavy first stage would be capable of lifting 100,000 kg (220,000 pounds) to low Earth orbit . The payload would be the Starship, a spacecraft designed for providing fast transportation between cities on Earth and building bases on the Moon and Mars. SpaceX also developed the Dragon spacecraft, which carries supplies to the International Space Station (ISS). Dragon can carry as many as seven astronauts, and it had a crewed flight carrying astronauts Doug Hurley and Robert Behnken to the ISS in 2020. The first test flights of the Super Heavy–Starship system launched in 2020. In addition to being CEO of SpaceX, Musk was also chief designer in building the Falcon rockets, Dragon, and Starship. SpaceX is contracted to build the lander for the astronauts returning to the Moon by 2025 as part of NASA ’s Artemis space program.

Musk had long been interested in the possibilities of electric cars, and in 2004 he became one of the major funders of Tesla Motors (later renamed Tesla), an electric car company founded by entrepreneurs Martin Eberhard and Marc Tarpenning . In 2006 Tesla introduced its first car, the Roadster , which could travel 245 miles (394 km) on a single charge. Unlike most previous electric vehicles, which Musk thought were stodgy and uninteresting, it was a sports car that could go from 0 to 60 miles (97 km) per hour in less than four seconds. In 2010 the company’s initial public offering raised about $226 million. Two years later Tesla introduced the Model S sedan, which was acclaimed by automotive critics for its performance and design. The company won further praise for its Model X luxury SUV, which went on the market in 2015. The Model 3, a less-expensive vehicle, went into production in 2017 and became the best-selling electric car of all time.

Dissatisfied with the projected cost ($68 billion) of a high-speed rail system in California, Musk in 2013 proposed an alternate faster system, the Hyperloop , a pneumatic tube in which a pod carrying 28 passengers would travel the 350 miles (560 km) between Los Angeles and San Francisco in 35 minutes at a top speed of 760 miles (1,220 km) per hour, nearly the speed of sound . Musk claimed that the Hyperloop would cost only $6 billion and that, with the pods departing every two minutes on average, the system could accommodate the six million people who travel that route every year. However, he stated, between running SpaceX and Tesla, he could not devote time to the Hyperloop’s development.

X (formerly Twitter )

Musk joined the social media service Twitter in 2009, and, as @elonmusk, he became one of the most popular accounts on the site, with more than 85 million followers as of 2022. He expressed reservations about Tesla’s being publicly traded, and in August 2018 he made a series of tweets about taking the company private at a value of $420 per share, noting that he had “secured funding.” (The value of $420 was seen as a joking reference to April 20, a day celebrated by devotees of cannabis .) The following month the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) sued Musk for securities fraud, alleging that the tweets were “false and misleading.” Shortly thereafter Tesla’s board rejected the SEC’s proposed settlement, reportedly because Musk had threatened to resign. However, the news sent Tesla stock plummeting, and a harsher deal was ultimately accepted. Its terms included Musk’s stepping down as chairman for three years, though he was allowed to continue as CEO; his tweets were to be preapproved by Tesla lawyers, and fines of $20 million for both Tesla and Musk were levied.

Musk was critical of Twitter’s commitment to principles of free speech , in light of the company’s content-moderation policies. Early in April 2022, Twitter’s filings with the SEC disclosed that Musk had bought more than 9 percent of the company. Shortly thereafter Twitter announced that Musk would join the company’s board, but Musk decided against that and made a bid for the entire company, at a value of $54.20 a share, for $44 billion. Twitter’s board accepted the deal, which would make him sole owner of the company. Musk stated that his plans for the company 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 Musk announced that he was withdrawing his bid, stating that Twitter had not provided sufficient information about bot accounts and claiming that the company was in “material breach of multiple provisions” of the purchase agreement. Bret Taylor, the chair of Twitter’s board of directors, responded by saying that the company was “committed to closing the transaction on the price and terms agreed upon with Mr. Musk.” Twitter sued Musk to force him to buy the company. In September 2022 Twitter’s shareholders voted to accept Musk’s offer. Facing a legal battle, Musk ultimately proceeded with the deal, and it was completed in October.

Among Musk’s first acts as Twitter’s owner were to lay off about half the company and to allow users to purchase for $8 a month the blue check-mark verification, which had previously been bestowed by Twitter upon notable figures. In addition, he disbanded Twitter’s content-moderation body and reinstated many banned accounts, most notably that of former U.S. president Donald Trump , which had been suspended after the U.S. Capitol attack on January 6, 2021 . Advertising revenue fell sharply as many companies withdrew their ads from the platform. Musk changed the name of the company from Twitter to X in July 2023. (Tweets became posts with the change.)

Biography of Elon Musk

Pool / Pool / Getty Images

• Famous Inventors
• Famous Inventions
• Patents & Trademarks
• Invention Timelines
• Computers & The Internet
• American History
• African American History
• African History
• Ancient History and Culture
• Asian History
• European History
• Latin American History
• Medieval & Renaissance History
• Military History
• The 20th Century
• Women's History

Elon Musk is best known for being the co-founder of PayPal, a money-transfer service for Web consumers, for founding Space Exploration Technologies or SpaceX, the first private company to launch a rocket into space and for founding Tesla Motors, which builds electric cars.

Famous Quotes from Musk

• "Failure is an option here. If things are not failing, you are not innovating enough."
• "It is where great things are possible" [Musk on moving to the USA]

Background and Education

Elon Musk was born in South Africa, in 1971. His father was an engineer and his mother is a nutritionist. An avid fan of computers, by the age of twelve, Musk had written the code for his own video game, a space game called Blastar, which the preteen sold for a profit.

Elon Musk attended Queen's University in Kingston, Ontario, Canada, and transferred to the University of Pennsylvania, where he earned two bachelor's degrees in economics and physics. He was admitted to Stanford University in California with the intention of earning a PhD in energy physics. However, Musk's life was about to change dramatically.

Zip2 Corporation

In 1995, at the age of twenty-four, Elon Musk dropped out of Stanford University after just two days of classes to start his first company called Zip2 Corporation. Zip2 Corporation was an online city guide that provided content for the new online versions of the New York Times and the Chicago Tribune newspapers. Musk struggled to keep his new business afloat, eventually selling majority control of Zip2 to venture capitalists in exchange for a $3.6 million investment.

In 1999, the Compaq Computer Corporation bought Zip2 for $307 million. Out of that amount, Elon Musk's share was $22 million. Musk had become a millionaire at the age of twenty-eight. That same year Musk started his next company.

Online Banking

In 1999, Elon Musk started X.com with $10 million dollars from the sale of Zip2. X.com was an online bank, and Elon Musk is credited with inventing a method of securely transferring money using a recipient's e-mail address.

In 2000, X.com bought a company called Confinity, which had started an Internet money-transfer process called PayPal. Elon Musk renamed X.com/Confinity Paypal and dropped the company's online banking focus to concentrate on becoming a global payment transfer provider.

In 2002, eBay bought Paypal for $1.5 billion and Elon Musk made $165 million in eBay stock from the deal.

Space Exploration Technologies

In 2002, Elon Musk started SpaceX aka the Space Exploration Technologies. Elon Musk is a long-standing member of the Mars Society , a nonprofit organization that supports the exploration of Mars, and Musk is interested in establishing a greenhouse on Mars. SpaceX has been developing rocket technology to enable Musk's project.

Tesla Motors

In 2004, Elon Musk cofounded Tesla Motors, of which he is the sole product architect. Tesla Motors builds electric vehicles . The company has built an electric sports car, the Tesla Roadster, the Model S, an economy model four door electric sedan and plans to build more affordable compact cars in the future.

In 2006, Elon Musk co-founded SolarCity, a photovoltaics products and services company with his cousin Lyndon Rive.

In December 2015, Elon Musk announced the creation of OpenAI, a research company to develop artificial intelligence for the benefit of humanity.

In 2016, Musk created Neuralink, a neurotechnology startup company with a mission to integrate the human brain with artificial intelligence. The aim is to create devices that can be implanted in the human brain and merge human beings with software.

• History's 15 Most Famous Inventors
• A Biography of Henry T. Sampson
• Biography of Guglielmo Marconi, Italian Inventor and Electrical Engineer
• Biography of Henry Ford, American Industrialist and Inventor
• Who Invented the Cash Register?
• Biography of Gordon Moore
• Biography of Steve Wozniak, Apple Computer Co-Founder
• Biography of Dean Kamen, American Engineer and Inventor
• Famous Inventors From New Mexico
• Edward Teller and the Hydrogen Bomb
• Top List of Mexican Inventors
• Biography of Janet Emerson Bashen, American Inventor
• Biography of Patricia Bath, American Doctor and Inventor
• Biography of Joseph Louis Lagrange, Mathematician
• Biography of Thomas Adams, American Inventor
• Biography of George Washington Carver, Discovered 300 Uses for Peanuts

Elon Musk biography

Elon Reeve Musk was born on the 28th of June of 1972 in Pretoria, South Africa. He is known for being one of the founders of Paypal, SpaceX, Tesla Motors, OpenAl, and Hyperloop, among other companies. The entrepreneur and inventor appears in the list of the richest in the world, occupying the position number 56, in 2017, with 17.4 billion dollars. Forbes magazine, for the December 2016 publication, named him the 21st person with the most power in the world. His greatest goal, according to Musk, is to change humanity drastically; for this purpose, he works in SolarCity, SpaceX, and Tesla. One of his interests is the abandonment of petroleum fuels in order to reduce global warming. Perhaps Elon’s most ambitious project, so far, is the establishment of a human colony on Mars, with nearly a million people.

He spent his childhood in South Africa with his parents, an engineer from South Africa and a nutritionist from Canada. At age 10, with his first computer, a Commodore VIC-20, he began to learn to programme on his own. Two years later he sold his first videogame called Blastar for about $ 200. At that time he went through difficult times; his schoolmates subjected him to bullying because of his uncommon interests for them. Elon spent his money on science fiction books, comics, and video games.

In the period between 12 and 15 years of age, he entered into an existential crisis influenced by the readings of Nietzsche and Schopenhauer. The situation went to the extreme of taking him to the hospital because of beatings by his companions. In his home things were not better, the relationship with his father was quite complicated. He suffered the emotional violence of a father unable to understand him. Compulsory military service bothered him. For these reasons, at age 17, after graduating from high school in Pretoria, he decided to leave South Africa and take refuge with his mother in Canada.

What Musk wanted most was to reach the United States. He found in that country a way to make possible everything he imagined. Elon’s father conditioned his support: he would not pay for a university outside of South Africa. In 1989, while in Canada, he found a chance to study thanks to his maternal relatives, who came from North America. By 1992, Elon counted on a scholarship in the University of Pennsylvania. The young entrepreneur began his studies in Business Administration, in parallel he began his career in Physics. He was fortunate to have the support of one of his teachers, who turned out to be the executive director of Los Gatos, a company located in the southern part of San Francisco Bay, California. The experience gained on ultracapacitors in that company, and then in Pinnacle Research, along with the inspiration it had for inventors such as Nikola Tesla, made him define the fields in which he would focus on the future: renewable energy, the Internet and outer space.

The beginning on the Internet began with Zip2, in 1995, along with his brother Kimbal Musk and a friend named Greg Curry. The company was dedicated to the development and maintenance of web pages dedicated to the media. The idea was a success, managing around 200 sites on the Internet in the year of 1999. For that year the company was sold to Compaq for 300 million dollars; money that would help him found X.com. The next plan was to systematize payments and money management through the Internet, offering security and speed. The ease offered by X.com and security made the project a very profitable idea, as well as merging, in 2000, with Confinity; company that provided a similar service, but only between Palm Pilot devices. In 2001 X.com decided to change its name to Paypal.inc a well-known company that provides the service to make online payments internationally.

With the growing success, problems soon appeared. Different companies tried to close Paypal, including eBay, which ended up buying it in October 2002, for 1.5 billion dollars. The sale of Paypal gave way to the creation, by its former members, of companies such as LinkedIn and YouTube. The next Musk project was called Tesla Motors, the company that created the first functional electric car. The main investment in Tesla was solar energy. The idea was born in 2003 in the company AC Propulsion, which had a prototype electric car. Musk wanted to help design a sports car with the same base of AC Propulsion.

In 2004, along with Matt Tappenhig and Martin Eberhard, Tesla Motors was created, with the intention of mass producing the model T-Zero of AC Propulsion. Musk invested nearly 98% of the capital. The start of the company was hard; the budget for the first models exceeded what was expected, but they managed to sell enough to continue developing models. For 2012, 2100 Tesla Roadster was sold in different countries. In 2015 the Tesla Model X was launched, designed to cover all types of terrain.

Another of Musk’s three projects involves SpaceX. Thinking of establishing a colony on Mars, he began, in 2002, to investigate how to send a rocket to Mars. His initial idea was to obtain reusable rockets to carry out the two trips for reconnaissance missions. For that year, Space Exploration Technologies was founded, focused on launching rockets and reducing fuel costs and materials for launch with increases in viability. In 2008, an agreement was made between NASA for twelve rocket flights. Currently, SpaceX is responsible for the development of Falcon rockets, which use liquid fuel.

You may like

Paris Hilton

Tina Turner

Walter Scott

Vicente Guerrero

Nipsey Hussle

Nipsey Hussle Biography

Ermias Asghedom (August 15, 1985 – March 31, 2019), better known as Nipsey Hussle, was an American rapper, businessman, and community activist, who rose to fame in 2018 with his debut album Victory Lab . Nipsey began his career towards the mid-2000s releasing several successful mixtapes such as Slauson Boy Volume 1, Bullets Ain’t Got No Name series and The Marathon. His fame came to him, along with his first Grammy nomination, with his debut album in 2018. He had previously created his label All Money In No Money Out (2010).

Following his death, he received two posthumous Grammys for the songs Racks in the Middle and Higher. He was known for his social work on behalf of the Crenshaw community.

Early years

He was born in Los Angeles, United States, on August 15, 1985 . Son of Angelique Smith and Eritrean immigrant Dawit Asghedom, he grew up in Crenshaw, a neighborhood located south of Los Angeles, with his siblings Samiel and Samantha. He attended Hamilton High School but dropped out before graduating. Since he was little he looked for a way to help around the home, so over time, he began to work selling different products on the street.

After leaving school he became involved in the world of gangs, however, he turned away from it when he realized that it was not what he expected for his future. Decided then to dedicate himself to music, he sold everything that linked him to the gangs and worked for a time to buy his own production tools. After finishing his studies, he began to write and produce his own mixtapes, which he sold from a car. After finding inspiration from a trip he took to Eritrea with his father and spending time in prison, Nipsey turned fully to his career and business. He always looked for ways to start and help the community in which he grew up: giving jobs, helping students, renovating public spaces, etc …

Community activist

Nipsey was admired for his work at Crenshaw because instead of moving or investing in hedge funds, he preferred to help the community by boosting the local economy.

In late 2005, Nipsey Hussle released his first mixtape, Slauson Boy Volume 1, independently, to great local success. By then he already had a fan base at the regional level, so it took him a while to sign a contract with the Epic Records and Cinematic Music Group labels. Later, the first volumes of the Bullets Ain’t Got No Name series appeared, with which he expanded his popularity. Burner on My Lap, Ridin Slow, Aint No Black Superman, Hussle in the House and It’s Hard out Here , were some of the songs included in the series.

By 2009, Nipsey would make a name for himself collaborating with Drake on Killer and with Snoop Dog on Upside Down. He also released Bullets Ain’t Got No Name vol.3 and in 2010, he left Epic and opened his own label All Money In No Money Out. Under this label, he would soon release The Marathon, a mixtape in which hits such as Love ?, Mr. Untouchable, Young Rich and Famous and Late Nights and Early Mornings appeared. He also created The Marathon Clothing at that time, a sports and casual clothing brand that was based in his neighborhood. He then released the mixtape The Marathon Continues (2011), participated in the We Are the World 25 for Haiti campaign, and was featured in the popular XXL Magazine Annual Freshman Top Ten.

In 2013 came Crenshaw , a mixtape that would become famous because Jay-Z himself bought 100 copies for $ 100 each.

Victory Lap

After many delays, Nipsey would release his long-awaited debut album Victory Lap , on February 16, 2018, to great success. It was praised by critics and received a Grammy nomination for best rap album of the year. It was such a success that many singles entered the Billboard and Itunes charts. However, Nipsey did not enjoy much fame.

Hussle was assassinated on March 31, 2019, outside his store in South Los Angeles. He was shot multiple times by a man he had previously clashed with, he was arrested and charged with murder on April 2 of the same year. After his death, many personalities expressed the pain caused by the news. It is worth mentioning that the Mayor of Los Angeles himself gave his condolences to the family, recognizing Hussle’s social work in Crenshaw.

He was the partner of actress Lauren London and was the father of two children.

Sales strategies and greatest hits

Hussle was known for his sales strategies, since, he used to upload his singles in free download and then sell some limited editions for a cost of 100 to 1000 dollars . It promoted the sale of his work with campaigns such as Proud2Pay and Mailbox Money, in which he gave special incentives (autographed photos, dedication calls, tickets to his studio, and special events) to buyers. His revolutionary ideas promised him a fruitful career.

Some of his greatest hits

• Rose Clique
• Forever On My Fly Shit
• Thas Wat Hoes Do Proud of That (with Rick Ross)
• Face the world
• Bless, 1 of 1
• Where Yo Money At
• Fuck Donald Trump
• Young Rich and Famous

Jimmy Hoffa

Jimmy Hoffa Biography

James Riddle Hoffa (February 14, 1913 – July 30, 1975), better known as Jimmy Hoffa, was an American union activist. A reference to the working class of the 20th century, Hoffa began his union activity at the age of 18 within the trucker union. With time, he was gaining importance and enemies. He mixed with the mob and was the leader of the most important union organization in the U.S.A ., the International Brotherhood of Truckers. His actions took a toll on him and in 1967 he was arrested for bribery. In 1975, he disappeared after having dinner at a Detroit restaurant. To date, it is unknown what happened or where his body is. His disappearance was portrayed in Scorsese’s The Irishman .

He was born in Brazil, Indiana, on February 14, 1913. James was the son of John Hoffa and Viola Riddle. His father passed away when he was 7 years old, of Irish descent and working as a miner. When the dad died, the family moved to Detroit, where Hoffa lived the rest of his life. He studied until he was 14 years old and began working as a teenager, to help the family. At the age of 18, he began to participate in the union demonstrations of the truck driver’s union, and over time he gained recognition. However, Hoffa had never driven a truck.

Jimmy Hoffa, the truckers, and the mob

Despite his clear inexperience, Hoffa managed to earn the respect of all road workers thanks to his charisma and effective acting. He was thus elected president of the famous International Brotherhood of Truckers or “Teamsters” in 1957. From then on he would be known for his aggressive methods and connections with the Cosa Nostra (Italian mafia). It is known that Jimmy used the mob to gain notoriety and destroy his competitors, while the union served as a front to clean up dirty money from the mob.

As time went by, his relationship with Cosa Nostra became increasingly evident, becoming the target of various investigations (fraud, conspiracy, evasion, extortion, laundering…). Behind them was the prosecutor Robert Kennedy, who later became a solicitor, his sole objective being the capture of Hoffa. Although he managed to leave the courts unscathed on several occasions – thanks to his intimidation and bribery strategies – he was finally locked up in 1967.

Hoffa had faced justice several times, so the confinement did not scare him, he planned to continue running the union and all its businesses from jail, leaving someone manageable in command. But this did not turn out as he expected, his puppet rebelled and the mafia took advantage of his confinement to expand their business with more facilities. It was clear that everyone was better off without Hoffa at the helm.

The disappearance of Jimmy Hoffa

In 1971 his sentence was commuted and Hoffa returned to work, he tried to regain his place and strength, but had little luck, because the mafia was clear that the business was better without him. The day he arrived, on July 30, 1975, he was summoned by Anthony Provenzano and Anthony Giacalone, two gangster bosses who were tired of his instance. They summoned him to a restaurant in Detroit, but never showed up, Hoffa waited for more than an hour and then got into a car, disappearing ever since. Nobody saw him again.

Jimmy was powerful, but he had made many enemies and was in the crosshairs of the mob, making his disappearance one of the most famous of the 20th century. His body was never found and in 1982 he was presumed dead. Although over time many took credit for his disappearance (and his death) from him, little is known for sure.

One of the possible culprits is perhaps Frank Sheeran, the Irishman , Hoffa’s henchman, who, pressured by the gangsters, would have killed the union leader. According to Sheeran’s version, that day he would have taken Hoffa to a house, where he shot him three times, and then moved his body to a still uncertain place.

His body and his disappearance became one of the best-known mysteries of the time . To date, the fate of his body is unknown. Many say it is buried, others that it was dismembered and thrown into a river, and others that it was compacted. There were many complaints about the discovery of his body, but all false.

His legacy was continued by his son, the current head of the International Brotherhood of Truckers, James P. Hoffa.

He was married to Josephine Poszywak and was the father of James P. Hoffa and Barbara Ann Crancer.

On July 30, 1982, he was declared legally dead.

Scorsese’s The Irishman

Scorsese’s The Irishman premiered on Netflix in 2019. The film follows Hoffa’s hitman and right-hand man, Frank Sheeran, as he thus narrates his story and participation in the disappearance of Hoffa. In the film, Hoffa is played by Al Pacino , while Sheeran and the prosecutor Kennedy are played by Robert De Niro and Jack Huston.

Peter Drucker

Peter Drucker biography

Peter Drucker (November 19, 1909 – November 11, 2005) writer, consultant, entrepreneur, and journalist. He was born in Vienna, Austria. He is considered the father of the Management to which he devoted more than 60 years of his professional life. His parents of Jewish origin and then converted to Christianity moved to a small town called Kaasgrabeen. Drucker grew up in an environment in which new ideas and social positions created by intellectuals, senior government officials and scientists were emerging. He studied at the Döbling Gymnasium and in 1927, Drucker moved to the German city of Hamburg, where he worked as an apprentice in a cotton company.

Then he began to train in the world of journalism, writing for the Der Österreichische Volkswirt. Then he got a job in Frankfurt, his job was to write for the Daily Frankfurter General-Anzeiger. Meanwhile, he completed a doctorate in International Law. Drucker began to integrate his two facets and for that, he was a recognized journalist. Drucker worked in this place until the fall of the Weimar Republic. After this period he decided to move to London, where he worked in a bank and was also a student of John Maynard Keynes .

Although he was a disciple of Keynes, he assured, decades later, that Keynesianism failed as an economic thesis where it was applied. Because of the ravages of Nazism and persecution of Jews, he emigrated to the United States, where he served as a professor at Sarah Lawrence College in New York, from 1939 to 1949 and simultaneously was a writer. His first job as a consultant was in 1940. He then returned to teaching at Bennington College in Vermont. Thanks to his popularity he received a position to teach in the faculty of Business Administration of the University of New York.

He was an active contributor for a long period of time to magazines such as The Atlantic Monthly and was a columnist for The Wall Street Journal. The quality and recognition of his writings assured him important contracts both as a writer and as a consultant with large companies, government agencies, and non-profit organizations in the United States, Europe, Latin America, and Asia. Quickly and surprisingly his fortune grew. Drucker served as honorary president of the Peter F. Drucker Foundation for Nonprofit Management.

In 1971, he obtained the Clarke Chair of Social Sciences and Administration at the Graduate School of Management at the University of Claremont. Now, at present Drucker is considered the most successful of the exponents in matters of administration, his ideas and terminologies have influenced the corporate world since the 40s. Drucker was the first social scientist to use the expression “post-modernity” something that caught the attention of this man is that he does not like receiving compliments. He was simple, visionary, satirical and vital.

Within his studies, he says that his greatest interest is people. His work as a consultant began in the General Motors Multinational Companies, from that moment begins to raise the theory of Management, Management trends, the knowledge society. Thanks to this theory he has published several books, these are consulted often and are fundamental for the career of business administrator. In his works, he deals with the scientific, human, economic, historical, artistic and philosophical stage.

He was founder and director of a business school that bears his name. For Drucker, it was beneficial that many of his ideas have been reformed because of the innovative way of thinking and analyzing business issues. Although approaches such as the knowledge society are the basis of the current company and the future is still maintained. He has published more than thirty books, which include studies of Management, studies of socio-economic policies and essays. Some are Best Sellers. The first book was The end of economic man (1939), The future of industrial man (1942), The concept of Corporation (1946). Later he published The Effective Executive (1985). He focused on personal effectiveness and changes in the direction of the 21st century. In 2002 the society of the future was published.

His first book caused much controversy because he talked about the reasons why fascism initiated and analyzed the failures of established institutions. He urged the need for a new social and economic order. Although he had finished the book in 1933, he had to wait because no editor wanted to accept such horrible visions. Now, Drucker has dealt with such controversial issues as individual freedom, industrial society, big business, the power of managers, automation, monopoly, and totalitarianism.

We must indicate that his analysis of the Administration, is a valuable guide for the leaders of companies that need to study their own performance, diagnose its failures and improve its productivity, as well as that of your company. Several companies have taken their approaches and put them into practice, such as Sears Roebuck & Co., General Motors, Ford, IBM, Chrysler, and American Telephone & Telegraph.

The consultant assured that there are some differences between the figure of the manager and that of the leader. For him, true leaders recognize their shortcomings as mortal beings, but they systematically concentrate on the essentials and work tirelessly to acquire the decisive competences of management. Actually, the contributions of this character in the world of administration and in the economic and social world have been significant. Drucker died on November 11, 2005, leaving a great legacy.

Jeff Bezos biography

Jeff Bezos (January 12, 1964). His birth name is Jeffrey Preston Bezos. Businessman and founder and CEO of Amazon. He was born in Albuquerque, New Mexico, United States. His mother, Jacklyn Gise, had him as a teenager and his biological father, Ted Jorgensen, left them as soon as he heard the news. Years later his mother married Miguel Bezos a Cuban. Now, Miguel adopted Jeffrey and he received his last name. The family moved to Houston, Texas. Jeffrey Bezos studied at River Oaks Elementary, he was always a very smart and witty little boy.

They moved to Miami, where he studied at Miami Palmetto Senior High School. And upon graduating he entered Princeton University to study Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, his thesis was cum laude. In 1996, he started working in a fiber optic company, FITEL, where he was responsible for the development of computer systems, his performance was so good that he became vice president. After moving to New York with the idea of ​​entering the world of finance, in Bankers Trust, he also held the position of vice president in 1990. In the following four years, Bezos worked with another Wall Street company: D.E. Shaw and Co.

Bezos realized that the purchase/sale of products and services on the internet or other electronic means would be a great field to explore and exploit. For this reason, he founded the electronic commerce company Amazon in 1995. Its service was something new for the netizens, which produced an increase in the visits quickly. Only in the first month of operation had books been sold in all corners of the United States. Months later it reached 2,000 daily visitors, a figure that would multiply abysmally in the next year. In 1997, the success made Amazon become one of the most important companies online.

Bezos had managed to conquer the internet business. Encouraged by the reception of consumers, he undertook the diversification of products, including CD and DVD media and electronic devices. As demand increased, this ingenious man included new products to his virtual store. The growth and its popularity were such that today it distributes from food to home, clothes and shoes, video games and music, to toilet paper and diapers. Amazon has experimented with the lucrative benefit of advertising since it gives the possibility to companies to advertise their products and mark them as featured products.

Bezos established independent Amazon websites for United States, Canada, United Kingdom, Australia, Germany, Austria, France, China, Italy, Spain, Japan, the Netherlands, Brazil, India and Mexico, the variety of products can be several in each country. Currently, the services are enjoyed by companies such as Target Corporation, Marks & Spencer, the NBA, Sears Canada, Timex or Bombay Company. The AOL online sales service also supports. In 2007, Bezos shook the world with the creation and launch of Amazon’s alter ego: Amazon Kindle, a device specially designed for the visualization of electronic books. Amazon Kindle was launched for the first time in North America and is currently available in 45 countries.

In 2011, The Economist awarded Bezos and Gregg Zehr an Innovation Award for the Amazon Kindle. The following year, Bezos was named Entrepreneur of the Year by Fortune. It is part of the Bilderberg Group. Bezos has given several conferences in St. Moritz, Switzerland, and participated in the conference in Watford, Hertfordshire, England. He was a member of the Executive Committee of the Business Council in 2011 and 2012. In 2018, he appeared on the Forbes list, where a net wealth of 106 billion dollars was estimated. He has also received other awards as the best CEO in the world by Harvard Business Review. Jeff Bezos has also been on Fortune’s list of the 50 best leaders in the world. In September 2016, he was awarded the Heinlein Prize for advances in Space Marketing. He donated the prize money to the international student organization Students for the Exploration and Development of Space by Bezos.

Since 2017, he has seen an increase in Amazon shares. They went up more than 130%, which made him have a profit of more than 100 billion dollars, after this, he returned to be the richest person in the world. He was named Person of the Year in Time magazine and was awarded an honorary Doctor of Science and Technology degree at Carnegie Mellon University in 2008. Really, the awards and awards have been impressive. Much of this is because Bezos, started in the field of journalism, looking beyond its commercial horizons; beyond the web. Bezos entered the world of media, acquiring the traditional newspaper The Washington Post for the sum of 250 thousand dollars.

Henry Gantt

Henry Gantt Biography

Henry Laurence Gantt (May 20, 1861 – November 23, 1919) industrial engineer . He was born in Calvert County, Maryland, United States. During his childhood and youth, he and his family lived devastating moments, especially in the economic part. His parents owned crops in Calvert but remained in ruins after the devastation caused during the Civil War. After that political and social event, they did not overlap economically so they had to live various hardships.

In spite of this, his parents did everything possible so that the young Gantt finished his school training at McDonogh School in 1878 and went to Johns Hopkins University to study industrial engineering. His performance was very good, when he graduated he started working as a teacher and draftsman, Gantt had a great skill for drawing since he was a kid. Then he studied mechanical engineering at the same university. In 1887, he was hired in Frederick W. Taylor to carry out an application of the principles of the Scientific Administration with his work in Midvale Steel and Bethlehem Steel, he carried out this work until 1893. In his career as a consultant, he invented the Gantt diagram.

Later, he designed some systems to measure the efficiency and productivity of workers, such as task bonds and the payment system and other methods that facilitate this process. This diagram became very popular for its simplicity, performance, and quality at that time, as well as at this time, pointed out the various tasks to be performed in a horizontal timeline, it has been used as a tool in operations that require strict temporal planning. However, Henry Gantt’s studies focused on the analysis of the performance of work methods, which depends on his judgment of the willingness to use the correct methods and skills.

Gantt was very concerned about leaving his knowledge embodied in paper, therefore, in 1908 presented before the American Society of Mechanical Engineers the text: Training of workers in habits of diligence and collaboration, in which he exposed the need to change the employer’s tactics; it is not a way of acting in the place, in the techniques, in the work, in the information, in the habits, in the possibilities, in the efficiency and in the efficiency of his work. As a complement to this, it is a bonus system that has been added to work and work done in a standardized time standard.

With these measures we tried to raise, not only the quantity, but above all the quality of work, following Taylor’s theory, the so-called common prosperity theory: what he says is that the worker has a kind of personal satisfaction to do the job well, this generates a feeling of pride that will make you try harder. For his part, the employer will notice an increase in productivity and the sum of a reduction in labor disputes. This is exposed with mastery in work, wages, and benefits (1913).

In the field of administration, his most known contribution is the graph of the bars such as the chart or the Gantt chart, which is composed in a diagram in which the horizontal axis represents the units of time, and in the vertical is recorded the different functions, which are represented by horizontal bars. With the help of this engineer, companies and the discipline of business administration is very broad, some of them are: the Gantt diagram, the development of the concept of industrial efficiency, the implementation of the system of Bonds of Tasks, with this adopted the premium to the workers. And he also implemented the Daily Balance Chart.

It was also very emphatic to ensure that companies have a social responsibility, in their opinion, companies have obligations for the welfare of society. His support for the scientific organization of work is also highlighted. When he worked for Frederick W. Taylor, with whom he collaborated in the application of his own doctrine to improve productivity, and in the second stage of the Industrial Revolution .

After 14 years of being at Taylor’s side, he made the decision to separate from this because his interest was the humanization of industrial practices and the dehumanized theories of Frederick Taylor . Unfortunately, in his last years of life, Gantt did not have the opportunity to finish several of his projects because his health was undermined. Finally, Henry Gantt died on November 23, 1919, in the town of Pine Island in New York .

His importance lies in the fact that it is the founder of scientific administration , an activity developed in the United States that later spread throughout the world with the idea of ​​achieving humanization, rationalization, and performance.

Related Content: Industrial Engineering

Celebrities

Nicola Porcella

Nicola Porcella Biography Nicola Emilio Porcella Solimano (February 5, 1988), better known as Nicola Porcella, is an actor and TV...

Wendy Guevara

Wendy Guevara Biography Wendy Guevara Venegas (August 12, 1993), better known as Wendy Guevara, is an influencer, actress, singer, and...

Paris Hilton Biography Paris Whitney Hilton (February 17, 1981), better known as Paris Hilton, is a socialite, businesswoman, model, DJ,...

Leonardo DiCaprio

Biography of Leonardo DiCaprio Leonardo Wilhelm DiCaprio is a renowned actor and film producer who has won numerous awards within...

Denzel Washington

Biography of Denzel Washington Denzel Washington is an African American actor born on December 28, 1954 in Mount Vernon, New...

Ryan Reynolds

Biography of Ryan Reynolds Ryan Rodney Reynolds was born on October 23, 1976 in Vancouver, Canada, and he is a...

Biography of Brad Pitt William Bradley Pitt, better known as Brad Pitt, was born on December 18, 1963 in Shawnee,...

Entrepreneurs

Luciano Benetton

Luciano Benetton Biography Luciano Benetton (May 13, 1935) Born in Ponzano, Treviso, Italy. An Italian businessman and fashion designer, co-founder...

Louis Vuitton

Louis Vuitton Biography Louis Vuitton (August 4, 1821 – February 25, 1892) businessman and fashion designer. Founder of the leather...

Peter Drucker biography Peter Drucker (November 19, 1909 – November 11, 2005) writer, consultant, entrepreneur, and journalist. He was born...

Paul Allen biography Paul Gardner Allen (January 21, 1953) entrepreneur, business magnate, investor, and philanthropist. He was born in Seattle,...

Nik Powell biography Nik Powell (November 4, 1950) businessman and co-founder of the Virgin Group. He was born in Great...

Most Popular

Henri Fayol

Walt Disney

Taiichi Ohno

Philip B. Crosby

Kaoru Ishikawa

Ariana Grande

Adolf Hitler

• Search Search Please fill out this field.

Early Life and Education

Notable accomplishments, personal eccentricities, the bottom line.

• Business Leaders
• Entrepreneurs

Who Is Elon Musk?

Nathan Laine / Bloomberg / Getty Images

Elon Musk, born in Pretoria, South Africa, is one of the most successful entrepreneurs of all time. Musk has achieved global fame as the chief executive officer (CEO) of electric automobile maker Tesla ( TSLA ) and the private space company SpaceX. Musk was an early investor in several tech companies, and in October 2022, he completed a deal to take X (formerly Twitter) private.

His success and personal style have given rise to comparisons to other colorful tycoons from U.S. history, including Steve Jobs , Howard Hughes, and Henry Ford . He was named the richest person in the world in 2021, surpassing Amazon ( AMZN ) founder Jeff Bezos. However, as of June 22, 2024, Bezos has regained the title of richest man on Earth, making Musk the second richest man.

Let’s look briefly at the life of the man who has scaled the pinnacle of the business world.

Key Takeaways

• Elon Musk is the charismatic CEO of electric car maker Tesla and rocket manufacturer SpaceX.
• Following a contested process, Musk completed a deal to buy the company behind X in October 2022, becoming the owner of the social media company.
• Born and raised in South Africa, Musk spent time in Canada before moving to the United States.
• Educated at the University of Pennsylvania in physics and business, Musk started getting his feet wet as a serial tech entrepreneur with early successes like Zip2 and X.com, which merged with a company that became PayPal.
• Musk has behaved eccentrically from time to time.

Bailey Mariner / Investopedia

Elon Reeve Musk was born in 1971 in Pretoria, South Africa, the oldest of three children. His father was a South African engineer, and his mother was a Canadian model and nutritionist. After his parents divorced in 1980, Musk lived primarily with his father. He would later dub his father “a terrible human being...almost every evil thing you could possibly think of, he has done."

“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,” Musk would later say.

Bullied as a Child

Musk attended the private, English-speaking Waterkloof House Preparatory School—he started a year early—and later graduated from Pretoria Boys High School. A self-described bookworm, he made few friends in those places.

“They got my best (expletive) friend to lure me out of hiding so they could beat me up. And that (expletive) hurt,” Musk said. “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.”

Early Accomplishments

Technology became an escape for Musk. At 10, he became acquainted with programming using a Commodore VIC-20, an early and relatively inexpensive home computer. Before long, Musk had become proficient enough to create Blastar—a video game in the style of Space Invaders. He sold the BASIC code for the game to a PC magazine for $500.

In one telling incident from his childhood, Musk and his brother planned to open a video game arcade near their school. Their parents nixed the plan.

Musk’s College Years

At 17, Musk moved to Canada. He would later obtain Canadian citizenship through his mother.

After emigrating to Canada, Musk enrolled at Queen’s University in Kingston, Ontario. It was there that he met Justine Wilson, an aspiring writer. They would marry and have six sons together, a first son which died shortly after birth, twins, and then triplets, before divorcing in 2008.

Entering the U.S.

After two years at Queen’s University, Musk transferred to the University of Pennsylvania. He took on two majors, but his time there wasn’t all work and no play. With a fellow student, he bought a 10-bedroom fraternity house, which they used as an ad hoc nightclub.

Musk graduated with a bachelor's degree in physics and a second bachelor's degree in economics from the  Wharton School . The two majors foreshadowed Musk’s career, but it was physics that left the deepest impression.

“(Physics is) a good framework for thinking,” he would say later. “Boil things down to their fundamental truths and reason up from there.”

Musk was 24 years old when he moved to California to pursue a Ph.D. in applied physics at Stanford University. But, with the Internet exploding and Silicon Valley booming, Musk had entrepreneurial visions dancing in his head. He left the Ph.D. program after just two days.

In 1995, with $15,000 and his younger brother Kimbal at his side, Musk started Zip2, a web software company that would help newspapers develop online city guides.

In 1999, Zip2 was acquired by Compaq Computer Corporation for $307 million in cash and $34 million worth of stock options. Musk used his Zip2 buyout money to create X.com, a fintech venture before that term was in wide circulation.

X.com merged with a money transfer firm called Confinity, and the resulting company came to be known as PayPal. Peter Thiel ousted Musk as PayPal CEO before eBay ( EBAY ) bought the payments company for $1.5 billion, but Musk still profited from the buyout via his 11.7% PayPal stake.

“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.”

In 2017, Musk purchased the X.com domain name back from PayPal, citing its sentimental value.

Musk became involved with the electric cars venture as an early investor in 2004, ultimately contributing about $6.3 million, to begin with, and joined the team, including engineer Martin Eberhard, to help run a company then known as Tesla Motors. Following a series of disagreements, Eberhard was ousted in 2007, and an interim CEO was hired until Musk assumed control as CEO and product architect. Under his watch, Tesla has become the world’s most valuable automaker.

In addition to producing electric vehicles, Tesla maintains a robust presence in the solar energy space, thanks to its acquisition of SolarCity. The company currently produces rechargeable solar batteries and other solar power equipment. The Powerwall is a battery developed for home backup power. Tesla also produces commercial energy infrastructure including grid management programs.

Musk used most of the proceeds from his PayPal stake to found Space Exploration Technologies Corp., the rocket's developer commonly known as SpaceX. By his own account, Musk spent $100 million to found SpaceX in 2002 .

Under Musk’s leadership, SpaceX landed several high-profile contracts with the U.S. National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) and the U.S. Air Force to design space launch rockets. Musk has publicized plans to send an astronaut to Mars by 2025 in a collaborative effort with NASA.

The company was founded in March 2006 as Twitter by Jack Dorsey, Noah Glass, Biz Stone, and Evan Williams. Originally a private company, it went public in November 2013. It raised $1.8 billion through its initial public offering (IPO) .

Musk joined the site in June 2009. A frequent poster on the messaging network, Musk disclosed a 9.2% stake in Twitter in March 2022. The company responded by offering Musk a seat on the board, which he accepted before declining days later. Musk then sent a bear hug letter to the board proposing to buy the company at $54.20 per share.

The company’s board adopted a poison pill provision to discourage Musk from accumulating an even larger stake, but they ultimately accepted Musk’s offer after he disclosed $46.5 billion in committed financing for the deal in a securities filing.

In July 2022, Musk attempted to cancel the deal , arguing that X had failed to provide certain information regarding fake accounts. The company sued Musk to require him to complete the deal.

After months of legal wrangling, the billionaire’s plan to buy the social media platform came to fruition, and Musk took control of the company on October 28, 2022. The company was renamed X the following year.

During his May 8, 2021, appearance on the TV show Saturday Night Live , Musk revealed that he has Asperger’s syndrome, an autism spectrum disorder. “I’m actually making history tonight as the first person with Asperger’s to host SNL . Or at least the first to admit it,” he said. How does the neurodevelopment condition manifest itself? “I don’t always have a lot of intonation or variation in how I speak, which I’m told makes for great comedy,” Musk explained.

On September 7, 2018, Musk smoked cannabis during a filmed interview for The Joe Rogan Experience podcast.

Just a month earlier, Musk posted an infamous tweet claiming he was considering taking Tesla private and had secured the needed funding. Musk subsequently settled a Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) complaint alleging he knowingly misled investors with the tweet by paying a $20 million fine along with the same penalty for Tesla and agreeing to let Tesla’s lawyers approve tweets with material corporate information before posting.

In March 2022, Musk filed a court motion to overturn the consent decree stemming from that case. In April 2022 during a live TED Talk, Musk called the SEC regulators on the case “bastards.”

Is Elon Musk Married?

Elon Musk has been divorced three times—twice from his second wife, Talulah Riley. From 2018 to 2022, he was in a relationship with Canadian singer/songwriter Claire Elise Boucher, professionally known as Grimes, with whom he had a son in 2020, a daughter in 2022, and a third child revealed in 2023. They remain best friends. He also has six boys (five living, one died after birth) from his first marriage to Justine Musk. He also shares twins with Shivon Zilis. Musk has a total of 11 children.

How Rich Is Elon Musk?

Elon Musk’s net worth was estimated at $207 billion as of June 24, 2024, making him the second wealthiest person on the planet.

Was Elon Musk Born Rich?

No, Elon Musk was born into a middle-class family. In 1995, when he founded Zip2, he reportedly had more than $100,000 in student debt and struggled to pay rent.

What Does Elon Musk Do at Tesla?

Elon Musk is officially listed as the co-founder and chief executive officer of Tesla on the company’s website. In a 2021 securities filing, the company disclosed an additional Musk title as “Technoking of Tesla.”

What Companies Does Elon Musk Own?

Elon Musk is a large stakeholder in several companies, including Tesla, SpaceX, The Boring Co., Neuralink, and X Corp .

Musk’s early interests in philosophy, science fiction, and fantasy novels are reflected in his idealism and concern with human progress—and in his business career. He works in fields he has identified as crucial to humanity’s future, notably the transition to renewable energy sources, space exploration, and the Internet.

Musk has defied critics, disrupted industries, and made the most money anyone ever has from PayPal, Tesla Motors, SolarCity, and SpaceX—game changers all, despite the inevitable missteps.

Britannica Money. " Elon Musk ."

The New York Times. “ Elon Musk Has Become the World’s Richest Person, as Tesla’s Stock Rallies .”

Bloomberg. “ Bloomberg Billionaires Index .”

Distractify. " Elon Musk’s Parents Lead As Affluent and Controversial Lives As Their Son ."

Rolling Stone. “ Elon Musk: The Architect of Tomorrow .”

Education Next. " From Bullied Bookworm to Billionaire Innovator: Elon Musk Inspiring Journey ."

Historydraft. " Elon Musk ."

The Washington Post. “ The 22 Most Memorable Quotes from the New Elon Musk Book, Ranked .”

Yahoo! Finance. " Elon Musk Made a Video Game at Age 12 and Sold It for $500. Where Is It Now? "

Gizmodo. “ Elon Musk: The Tech Maverick Making Tony Stark Look Dull .”

CNBC. " Elon Musk Lived on $1 a Day When He Moved to Canada as a Teen and More Surprising Facts About His Youth ."

Biography. " Elon Musk ."

Marie Claire. “ ‘I Was a Starter Wife’: Inside America’s Messiest Divorce .”

CNBC. “ Elon Musk Ran a Nightclub Out of His College Frat House To Make Money for Rent .”

Inc. “ Elon Musk Just Said MBAs Are Overrated, and He’s Dead Right .”

TED. “ The Mind Behind Tesla, SpaceX, SolarCity... .” Click "Read Transcript."

X. “ Elon Musk, Dec. 28, 2019, 6:22 PM .”

CNBC. “ Elon Musk Tried to Pitch the Head of the Yellow Pages Before the Internet Boom: ‘He Threw the Book at Me’ .”

TheStreet. " Elon Musk Disagrees With Billionaire Peter Thiel on the Key to Success ."

Simple. " How Elon Musk Uniquely Manages His Wealth Through His Family Office, Excession ."

U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. “ eBay to Acquire PayPal .”

YouTube. “ Elon Musk Interview [I Made 180 Million Dollars but Still Had To Borrow Money for Rent] .” 1:58–2:14 (Video).

X. “ Elon Musk, July 10, 2017, 9:10 PM .”

Wired. “ How Elon Musk Turned Tesla Into the Car Company of the Future .”

SpaceX. “ Updates .”

YouTube. “ People Should Arrive on Mars in 2025 .” (Video)

Britannica Money. " X ."

X. " Elon Musk ."

U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. “ Twitter, Inc., Schedule 13G, March 14, 2022 .” Page 3.

X. “ Parag Agrawal, April 5, 2022, 8:32 AM .”

X. “ Parag Agrawal, April 10, 2022, 11:13 PM .”

U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. “ Amendment No. 2 to Schedule 13D/A, April 13, 2022 .”

CNBC. " Twitter Board Adopts ‘Poison Pill’ After Musk’s $43 Billion Bid To Buy Company ."

Reuters. " Explainer: How Elon Musk Funded the $44 Billion Twitter Deal ."

U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. “ Form 8-K, April 15, 2022 .”

U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. “ Amendment No. 3 to Schedule 13D, April 20, 2022 .”

ABC News. " A Timeline of Elon Musk’s Tumultuous Twitter Acquisition ."

CNBC. “ Elon Musk Now in Charge of Twitter, CEO and CFO Have Left, Sources Say .”

The New York Times. " From Twitter to X: Elon Musk Begins Erasing an Iconic Internet Brand ."

American Autism Association. " Elon Musk Shared Aspergers Diagnosis on SNL ."

YouTube. “ Elon Musk Monologue—SNL .”

CNBC. " Elon Musk Smokes Weed, Sips Whiskey on Joe Rogan’s Podcast ."

X. “ Elon Musk, Aug. 7, 2018, 12:48 PM .”

U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. “ Elon Musk Settles SEC Fraud Charges; Tesla Charged With and Resolves Securities Law Charge .”

U.S. District Court, Southern District of New York. “ Defendant Elon Musk’s Notice of Motion To Quash & To Terminate Consent Decree .”

Reuters. " Musk Says U.S. SEC ‘Bastards’ Forced Settlement Over Tesla Tweets ."

Vanity Fair. “ Elon Musk Splits with Actress Talulah Riley for the Second (or Third?) Time .”

TODAY. " Who Are Elon Musk's Children? "

X. “ Grimes, March 10, 2022, 11:32 AM .”

Vanity Fair. “‘ Infamy Is Kind of Fun’: Grimes on Music, Mars, and Her Secret New Baby with Elon Musk .”

The Economic Times. “ Elon Musk Had Over $100K of Student Debt When He Started 1st Company, Turned His Room into Nightclub To Pay Rent .”

Tesla. “ Elon Musk .”

U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. “ Form 8-K, March 15, 2021 .”

• Terms of Service
• Editorial Policy
• Privacy Policy

• Search Please fill out this field.
• Newsletters
• Sweepstakes

Everything You Need to Know About Elon Musk's Family

The richest man in the world has an impressive family tree as well.

CEO of Tesla, SpaceX, and (potentially soon-to-be) Twitter, Elon Musk has certainly become a household name. But there's more to the mogul than just his businesses—including his wild family dynamic. Here's all you need to know about the children and family of the richest man alive.

Who Is Elon Musk?

Musk, 51, was raised in South Africa. In 1995, he founded the company Zip2, intended to provide online newspapers with maps and business directories. Just four years later, the company was purchased by computer manufacturer Compaq for a whopping $307 million.

The entrepreneur then founded the online banking services company X.com with his brother Kimbal, which later merged with software company Confinity to become PayPal.

Using proceeds from PayPal, Musk spent $100 million founding Space Exploration Technologies (SpaceX) in 2002. His goal was to make more affordable rockets, and the company's first two rockets, Falcon 1 and Falcon 9, first launched in 2006 and 2010 respectively.

Though Tesla Motors was founded in 2003 by Martin Eberhard and Marc Tarpenning, Musk has become influential to the electric car company. He has been a Tesla board member since 2004, and has served as chief executive officer since 2006.

By April 2022, Musk had purchased enough stock to make him a majority shareholder of the popular social media platform Twitter. He announced a $44 billion bid to buy Twitter, saying he wanted to add new features, make algorithms open source, defeat spam bots, and authenticate all humans. However, after making making strides toward the acquisition, the Wall Street Journal reports that Musk is now seeking to terminate the deal.

Musk has also been involved in plenty of other businesses over the years, which all contributed to his status as the wealthiest person alive.

Who Are Elon Musk's Parents?

Success doesn't fall far from the tree.

Musk is the son of Errol Musk, an engineer in South Africa, and Maye Musk, famous model. Musk's relationship with his father is far from pleasant. The family had some tension after Errol, 75, admitted to fathering a child with stepdaughter Jana Bezuidenhout, 34. "He was such a terrible human being," Musk told Rolling Stone during a 2017 interview. "You have no idea."

Canadian model Maye Musk, 74, has pushed boundaries and promoted confidence throughout her career. She became CoverGirl's oldest spokesperson at 69, and the oldest woman to be featured on a Sports Illustrated swimsuit cover at 74. "I was famous until Elon became famous," she told The New York Times in 2016.

Elon's parents split in 1979.

Who Are Elon Musk's Siblings?

Despite strained relationships with his father, Musk has remained close with his siblings. Musk is the eldest of three; his siblings are Kimbal Musk, 49, and Tosca Musk, 47. Kimbal is passionate about food justice, and has founded three food companies: The Kitchen Restaurant Group, Big Green, and Square Roots. He is also a board member of powerful companies including Tesla, SpaceX, and Chipotle. Tosca is a producer, director, and founder of streaming service, Passionflix.

How Many Kids Does Elon Musk Have?

A father of nine, Musk's family tree can get a bit confusing. Get to know the family:

Nevada Alexander Musk

Musk and first wife, Justine Wilson, welcomed their first child in 2002. Nevada tragically passed away at 10 weeks old from sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS). Wilson described the death in a 2010 essay for Marie Claire , writing "Nevada went down for a nap, placed on his back as always, and stopped breathing. By the time the paramedics resuscitated him, he had been deprived of oxygen for so long that he was brain-dead."

Vivian Jenna Wilson and Griffin Musk

Following Nevada's death, Musk and Justine Wilson had twins Griffin Musk and Vivian Jenna Wilson via in vitro fertilization (IVF). Vivian petitioned to legally change her name and gender on April 18, 2022, and she no longer wants to be associated with her father. Musk previously has spoken out against using people's desired pronouns on Twitter, calling them an "esthetic nightmare."

Kai, Saxon, and Damian Musk

Musk and Wilson turned to IVF again when giving birth to triplet sons Kai, Saxon, and Damian in 2006. The couple divorced two years after their sons' birth.

X AE A-XII Musk

Musk began dating Canadian musician Grimes in 2018, and the two welcomed son X AE A-XII in May 2020. Far from traditional, the baby's name inevitably had the internet buzzing. Grimes explained the meaning on Twitter, noting that "X" stood for "the unknown variable" while Æ, shorthand for "Artificial intelligence," translated to "love" in many languages.

When questioned about the pronunciation of the unique name, Musk told podcast host Joe Rogan , "I mean it's just X, the letter X. And then, the Æ is, like, pronounced 'Ash'... and then, A-12, A-12 is my contribution." He credited Grimes with the name.

Exa Dark Sideræl Musk

Though they are typically in the limelight, Grimes revealed in a 2022 Vanity Fair interview that the famous couple had given birth to Musk's first daughter, Exa Dark Sideræl Musk, in December 2021 via surrogate. She said they have nicknamed the daughter "Y."

She was born just a few months after Grimes and Musk's public break up. Grimes told Vanity Fair that "Exa" refers to the supercomputing term "exaFLOPS," and "Dark" alludes to the unknown. Grimes described the name's third component, Sideræl, as relating to " the true time of the universe, star time, deep space time, not our relative earth time." A second, more lighthearted, significance of the term is to honor Grimes' favorite Lord of the Rings character, Galadriel.

According to court documents recently obtained by Business Insider, the executive had twins with Shivon Zilis, Neuralink director of operations and special projects, in November 2021— shortly before Grimes gave birth to Exa Dark Sideræl Musk The couple reportedly filed a petition for the twins to "have their father's last name and contain their mother's last name as part of their middle name." The petition was approved in May 2022.

Who Is Elon Musk Co-Parenting With?

Justine wilson.

After knowing each other for nearly a decade, Wilson and Musk got married in January 2000. The two met while attending Queen's University in Ontario, Canada, but it wasn't love at first sight. Wilson wrote in her post-separation Marie Claire essay that she turned Elon down when he initially pursued her. The couple reconnected after college, and Wilson eventually moved to California to be with the executive. Wilson and Musk share five children together.

Musk and Canadian singer Grimes, whose real name is Claire Boucher, debuted their relationship on the red carpet in May 2018. Their rocky relationship seemingly stabilized when Grimes posted about her pregnancy in 2020, though she didn't confirm that Musk was the father until a Rolling Stone interview two months later.

They gave birth to son X Æ A-12 in May 2020. Musk announced the couple's split in September 2021, noting in a statement that they "still love each other, see each other frequently and are on great terms." The couple continued living together, and welcomed daughter Exa Dark Sideræl Musk via surrogate in March 2022. Grimes told Vanity Fair that she would probably refer to Musk as her "boyfriend," though the couple broke up again after the article was published.

Shivon Zilis

And just when you thought it couldn't get any bigger, the Tesla co-founder's family keeps growing!

According to Insider, Musk had secret twins with his executive, Shivon Zilis, in November 2021. Zilis, 36, started her career at IBM. She then became a founding member of Bloomberg Beta before moving on to work as a project director at Neuralink, a neurotechnology company that Musk founded in 2016. She is currently the director of operations and special projects.

Related Articles

Elon Musk Age, Wife, Girlfriend, Children, Family, Biography

Some Lesser Known Facts About Elon Musk

• Does Elon Musk smoke?: Yes

Elon Musk Drinking Alcohol

• He has his roots in America, Canada, South Africa and also has Pennsylvania Dutch ancestry.
• At the age of 10, Elon started teaching himself computer programming after developing an interest in the Commodore VIC-20 (computer).
• He sold his first video game, ‘Blastar’ to ‘PC and Office Technology’ (a magazine) for $500. He was just 12 years old at that time.
• In his childhood, he was deeply inspired by Isaac Asimov’s book, ‘Foundation series.’
• Elon had a very dreadful childhood as he was bullied in his school. Once, he even got hospitalized after a group of boys beat him until he became unconscious and threw him down a flight of stairs.
• Just before his 18th birthday, Elon moved to Canada against his father’s will. His father wanted Elon to complete his graduation from Pretoria itself but Elon chose to flee since he believed that it was easier to get to the United States from Canada.
• In 1995, after raising funds from a small group of ‘angel investors,’ Elon and his brother, Kimbal, founded ‘Zip2’ (a web software company). Elon wanted to become the CEO of Zip2 but was not allowed by the other members of the board. However, Zip2 was later acquired by Compaq in 1999.
• In 1999. Elon co-founded an e-mail payment and online financial services company, ‘X.com.’ A year later, X.com merged with Confinity, which provided a money-transfer service called, ‘PayPal.’ In 2000, He was knocked out from his position of CEO because of some disagreement with the allied party. Elon was the largest shareholder of X.com before it was acquired by eBay in 2002.
• In 2000, he got married to his first wife, Justine Wilson. Their first son, Nevada Alexander Musk, died just after 10 weeks of his birth due to ‘Sudden Infant Death Syndrome (SIDS).’ Through “in vitro fertilization” the couple was blessed with twins and triplets in the year 2004 and 2006 respectively.
• He drafted “Mars Oasis” in 2001. The project was aimed to gain public interest in space exploration. Elon went to Russia to buy refurbished ‘Dnepr Intercontinental ballistic missiles’ (ICBMs) for his project from the companies like NPO Lavochkin, and Kosmotras. He was spat upon by one of the Russian chief designers after Elon proposed his plan. He returned empty-handed to the US.
• In 2002, in another meeting with the company Kosmotras, the company offered one rocket for $8 million to Elon, which he found too expensive. He left the meeting in between in anger and there he got the idea of founding a company which could build the cost-effective rockets he needed and hence Elon ended up founding “SpaceX” in May 2002.
• In 2003, Tesla (a car manufacturer company) was co-founded by Martin Eberhard and Marc Tarpenning. In 2004, Elon joined the company as the Chairman of the board of Directors. Amidst some financial crisis and a few conflicts in 2008, Elon became the CEO of Tesla overthrowing Martin Eberhard from the post.
• Musk’s Salary at Tesla is ₹1 only.
• In 2005, his aircraft: (1994) model Dassault Falcon 900, was used in the film, “Thank you for smoking.” Elon made a cameo in the film as the pilot of the plane.
• He was a member of the United States National Academy of Sciences Aeronautics and Space Engineering Board in 2006.
• Musk provided financial support to his cousins, Lyndon, and Peter Rive, who founded ‘SolarCity’ in 2006. He also helped them by giving the initial concept of the project. Tesla, Inc wholly acquired SolarCity in 2016.
• In 2008, Elon and Justine shared the custody of their five sons after getting separated from each other.
• After dating actress, Talulah Riley, Elon tied the knot with her in 2010. In 2012, Musk announced a divorce with the actress. In 2013, Elon remarried her after which Musk again announced that he had filed for a second divorce from Talulah. Though the divorce was withdrawn but was later finalized in 2016.
• In 2010, his name was among “Time ‘ s 100 people” who affected the world the most and was also listed among the 75 most influential people of the 21st century by Esquire magazine.
• Musk was listed among the “America’s 20 Most Powerful CEOs 40 And Under” by Forbes in February 2011.
• In 2013, Musk became the Fortune Businessperson of the year for SpaceX, Tesla, and SolarCity.

• In 2015, Elon made a cameo, playing himself in an episode, “The Musk Who Fell to Earth” of ‘The Simpsons.’ In the same year, Elon made a guest appearance, playing himself in an episode of the famous series, ‘The Big Bang Theory.’

• Along with Sal Khan and  Mark Zuckerberg , he was listed as one of the “Top 10 Business Visionaries Creating Value for the World” in 2016.
• He held the 21st position on the Forbes list of the World’s Most Powerful People in December 2016.
• In 2016, Musk purchased the Tesla.com domain name from Stu Grossman.
• ‘Neuralink,’ was co-founded by Musk in 2016. It is a startup company that incorporates the human brain with artificial intelligence. It strives to create devices that can be embedded in the human brain.
• In 2017, Elon bought the domain X.com from PayPal, stating that he holds “great sentimental value” with it.

Space X launched Falcon Heavy with a Tesla Roadstar as a dummy payload

• Once, Musk was stuck in a traffic jam, it was then, Musk decided to build a tunnel and unveiled its company’s name, ‘The Boring Company.’

Elon Musk’s ‘Wild Boar’ being tested for the rescue operation

Elon Musk With Yusaku Maezawa

• In an interview, Elon revealed that Tesla would never make an electric motorcycle. He further revealed that when he was a teenager he was almost killed by a truck while driving his motorcycle.
• Being a Philanthropist, he founded the ‘Musk Foundation,’ which aims to provide solar-power energy systems in the disaster-prone areas.
• On his trip to India, he spent a night with a spiritual guru who told him to serve the poor. That is how Musk got the enlightenment of social service.

We are semi-separated but still love each other, see each other frequently and are on great terms.

Free speech is the bedrock of a functioning democracy, and Twitter is the digital town square where matters vital to the future of humanity are debated.”

Elon Musk’s mother, Maye Musk, featured on the cover of Sports Illustrated Swimsuit 2022

I tried threats, rewards, and arguments to change my father for the better. No way, it just got worse.”

Elon Musk’s tweet about his pet dog Floki as the CEO of Twitter

I realised by then that is someone bullied me, I could punch them very hard in the nose, and they wouldn’t bully me again. They might beat the s*** out of me, but if I had punched them hard in the nose, they wouldn’t come after me again.”

• During an interaction with Canadian psychologist Dr. Jordan Peterson in July 2024, he called gender-affirming care “evil” and said he would destroy the woke mind virus that killed his child Xavier. After coming out as transgender in June 2022, Xavier filed a legal request to change her name from Xavier to Vivian and desired she should not be connected with Musk.

References/Sources: [ + ]

Explore your options for easing the burden of student loan repayments with Savi.

AARP daily Crossword Puzzle

Hotels with AARP discounts

Life Insurance

AARP Dental Insurance Plans

LIMITED TIME OFFER: Labor Day Sale!

Join AARP for just $9 per year with a 5-year membership and get a FREE Gift! 

Get instant access to members-only products, hundreds of discounts, a free second membership, and a subscription to AARP the Magazine. 

• right_container

Work & Jobs

Social Security

• AARP en Español

• Membership & Benefits
• Members Edition
• AARP Rewards
• AARP Rewards %{points}%

Conditions & Treatments

Drugs & Supplements

Health Care & Coverage

Health Benefits

AARP Hearing Center

Advice on Tinnitus and Hearing Loss

Get Happier

Creating Social Connections

Brain Health Resources

Tools and Explainers on Brain Health

Your Health

8 Major Health Risks for People 50+

Scams & Fraud

Personal Finance

Money Benefits

View and Report Scams in Your Area

AARP Foundation Tax-Aide

Free Tax Preparation Assistance

AARP Money Map

Get Your Finances Back on Track

How to Protect What You Collect

Small Business

Age Discrimination

Flexible Work

Freelance Jobs You Can Do From Home

AARP Skills Builder

Online Courses to Boost Your Career

31 Great Ways to Boost Your Career

ON-DEMAND WEBINARS

Tips to Enhance Your Job Search

Get More out of Your Benefits

When to Start Taking Social Security

10 Top Social Security FAQs

Social Security Benefits Calculator

Medicare Made Easy

Original vs. Medicare Advantage

Enrollment Guide

Step-by-Step Tool for First-Timers

Prescription Drugs

9 Biggest Changes Under New Rx Law

Medicare FAQs

Quick Answers to Your Top Questions

Care at Home

Financial & Legal

Life Balance

LONG-TERM CARE

​Understanding Basics of LTC Insurance​

State Guides

Assistance and Services in Your Area

Prepare to Care Guides

How to Develop a Caregiving Plan

End of Life

How to Cope With Grief, Loss

Recently Played

Word & Trivia

Atari® & Retro

Members Only

Staying Sharp

Mobile Apps

More About Games

Right Again! Trivia

Right Again! Trivia – Sports

Atari® Video Games

Throwback Thursday Crossword

Travel Tips

Vacation Ideas

Destinations

Travel Benefits

Beach Vacation Ideas

Fun Beach Vacations

Road Trips For Every Personality

Passport Access

Passports Can Be Renewed Online

AARP National Park Guide

Black Canyon of the Gunnison

Entertainment & Style

Family & Relationships

Personal Tech

Home & Living

Celebrities

Beauty & Style

Movies for Grownups

Summer Movie Preview

Jon Bon Jovi’s Long Journey Back

Looking Back

50 World Changers Turning 50

Sex & Dating

7 Dating Dos and 7 Don'ts

Friends & Family

Veterinarians May Use AI to Treat Pets

Home Technology

Caregiver’s Guide to Smart Home Tech

Virtual Community Center

Join Free Tech Help Events

Creative Ways to Store Your Pets Gear

Meals to Make in the Microwave

Wearing Shoes Inside: Pros vs. Cons

Driver Safety

Maintenance & Safety

Trends & Technology

AARP Smart Guide

How to Clean Your Car

We Need To Talk

Assess Your Loved One's Driving Skills

AARP Smart Driver Course

Building Resilience in Difficult Times

Tips for Finding Your Calm

Weight Loss After 50 Challenge

Cautionary Tales of Today's Biggest Scams

7 Top Podcasts for Armchair Travelers

Jean Chatzky: ‘Closing the Savings Gap’

Quick Digest of Today's Top News

AARP Top Tips for Navigating Life

Get Moving With Our Workout Series

You are now leaving AARP.org and going to a website that is not operated by AARP. A different privacy policy and terms of service will apply.

Inside the Mind of Elon Musk: What We Learned From His Biography

Walter isaacson’s 688-page book reveals the (strange) man behind the tech mogul.

Tim Appelo,

Billionaire Elon Musk, 52, let Walter Isaacson, 71, bestselling biographer of Steve Jobs, follow him for two years and interview his family and colleagues. The resulting book, Elon Musk (September 12), provides fascinating insights into the mogul’s weird mind, titanic achievements and astounding failures.

Yes, he grew Tesla into a company worth more than its five biggest rivals put together; built a spacecraft company, SpaceX, that sent astronauts into orbit; and bought Twitter — which he famously renamed X and is a huge force in American politics and culture.

Join AARP for just $9 per year with a 5-year membership and get a FREE Gift!

But there’s so much more to those stories, and Musk’s life, which Isaacson details in this weighty, 688-page portrait.

Here are some of the more interesting points from the buzzy biography.

Musk was bullied as a child

While Musk was growing up in his native South Africa, a schoolyard bully stomped on his head, leading to injuries that required decades of corrective surgery. The worst part? His father, Errol Musk, sided with his assailant, berating Elon for an hour. “He yelled at me and called me an idiot and told me that I was just worthless,” Musk reports.

But at age 12, Musk learned an important lesson at a wilderness survival camp: "If someone bullied me, I could punch them very hard in the nose, and then they wouldn’t bully me again.”

Musk’s dad was probably the scariest person in his life

Musk compares his father — whom he refuses to speak with — to Jekyll and Hyde: bright and jolly one moment, darkly frightening the next. He says that Errol spins fantasies he seems to believe, embraces bizarre conspiracy theories, has made and lost fortunes, is addicted to high drama and has a peculiar love life. Musk’s mother, the model Maye Musk , 75, fears that her son will become like his father.

He may be on the autism spectrum

“He was never actually diagnosed as a kid,” Maye Musk told Isaacson, “but he says he has Asperger’s, and I’m sure he’s right.” (The term Asperger’s, which once was used to describe someone with autism spectrum disorder who has strong intellectual abilities, is no longer used by the autism community .) He does seem to display some characteristics associated with autism spectrum disorders; the book suggests that he is bad at picking up social cues, for instance. And he said, “It was only by reading books that I began to learn that people did not always say what they really meant.”

AARP NEWSLETTERS

%{ newsLetterPromoText  }%

%{ description }%

Privacy Policy

ARTICLE CONTINUES AFTER ADVERTISEMENT

He's got a very dark side

“He’s attracted to chaotic evil,” said the singer Grimes, Musk’s former partner. She told Isaacson, “He associates love with being mean or abusive.” Musk demanded, for example, that she shame him for being fat. Grimes says that when he goes into “demon mode,” he “goes dark and retreats inside the storm in his brain. Demon mode causes a lot of chaos. But it also gets shit done.”

$20 off a Walmart+ annual membership

He chose unique names for many of his 10 children

​​With his first wife, Justine Wilson Musk, he has five children: Vivian Jenna, Griffin, Kai, Saxon and Damian.

​With Grimes’ friend Shivon Zilis, an executive at his company Neurolink, he has two more kids, Strider and Azure.

He had no children with the actress Talulah Riley, who married and divorced him twice.

Estrangement from his child Jenna helped downsize his lifestyle

Jenna, who has criticized her father’s wealth, has stopped talking to him. Stung by her rejection and criticism, Musk sold his six extravagant homes and moved to a small tract house rented from SpaceX in Boca Chica, Texas. "Possessions kind of weigh you down and they’re an attack vector,” he explains.

He wasn’t exactly happy in 2021 when he became the richest person on earth

When Tesla stock went from $25 a share in late 2019 to $260 on Jan. 7, 2021, Musk's wealth hit $190 billion, surpassing the fortune of the previous richest human, Jeff Bezos, 59. “He just couldn’t let himself enjoy the moment,” Musk's sister-in-law Christiana Musk told Isaacson. “He was throwing up and stricken with excruciating stomach pain.”

He falls to the floor when he's depressed — or extremely amused

When Musk is too depressed to stand up, his executives have to conduct meetings lying down next to him. And when he discovered that Twitter banned the word “turdburger,” he laughed so hard he fell to the floor, wheezing.

Musk likes to play with fire

When forbidden to play with fire as a child, Musk lit a boxful of matches. He once floored his $1 million McLaren sports car, flipping it and flying into the air, risking death for himself and passenger Peter Thiel, 55, another billionaire entrepreneur, who refused to wear a seatbelt. Both survived unscathed. Amber Heard, the actress whose marriage with Johnny Depp sparked lawsuits and whose affair with Musk was also fiery, told Isaacson, “Elon loves fire, and sometimes it burns him.” 

His impulsive actions are sometimes bad for business

After Musk loaned Ukraine communications satellites to help resist Russia’s invasion, the Pentagon offered $145 million to support his effort, but there was backlash on Twitter. So he angrily tweeted, "The hell with it ... we'll just keep funding Ukraine govt for free." When he abruptly unplugged Twitter’s computer servers and sent them from California to Oregon, it destabilized Twitter for two months and caused a meltdown while he was hosting a Twitter Spaces event with Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis.

He has regrets. Or does he ?

“My main regret,” Musk told sister-in-law Christiana Musk, “is how often I stab myself in the thigh with a fork, how often I shoot my own feet and stab myself in the eye.” But when Isaacson asked him about regrets, Musk quoted a line from his favorite movie, Gladiator : “Are you not entertained?”

Tim Appelo covers entertainment and is the film and TV critic for AARP. Previously, he was the entertainment editor at Amazon, video critic at  Entertainment Weekly , and a critic and writer for  The Hollywood Reporter, People , MTV,  The Village Voice  and  LA Weekly .

Unlock Access to AARP Members Edition

Already a Member? Login

More From AARP

9 Essentials for a Happier Life, According to Oprah Winfrey

Her new book ‘Build the Life You Want’ with Arthur C. Brooks offers an action plan for ‘happierness’

The Big Fall 2023 Book Preview

Streisand and Winkler Among the Celebs With Big Memoirs Out This Fall

Benefits Recommended For You

SAVE MONEY WITH THESE LIMITED-TIME OFFERS

Global Beauties

Elon Musk Biography, Career, Age, Height, Family, Net Worth

Elon Reeve Musk is a South African-American entrepreneur who co-founded Tesla, SpaceX, Boring Company, Neuralink and OpenAI, and the Musk Foundation. Overall, Elon Musk is regarded as one of the world’s most important entrepreneurs and business leaders, with his effect on a variety of sectors still felt throughout the world.

Despite his numerous accomplishments, he stays involved in the business’s he started and continues to play an important role in determining the future of technology and industry. Elon Musk’s inventive projects and impactful activities continue to generate news worldwide. Elon Musk created SpaceX in 2004 with the purpose of lowering space transportation costs and allowing the colonisation of Mars.

Since then, the company has grown to become a premier commercial space exploration corporation, developing the Falcon rocket family and the Dragon spacecraft. Elon Musk is well-known for his contributions to the electric car sector, as well as his involvement in space exploration.

Elon Musk’s Biography

He was born on June 28, 1971 in Pretoria, Transvaal, South Africa and he is the elder of 3 siblings. Elon Musk’s life narrative is one of remarkable determination, vision, and ambition. Musk’s climb from humble origins in South Africa to the CEO of many groundbreaking companies has been nothing short of incredible.

His contributions to renewable energy, electric vehicles, space exploration, and other sectors have changed the world forever. As he pursues his ambitious goals, he continues to inspire dreamers and aspiring company owners all across the world. Elon Musk created and led numerous successful businesses that have revolutionised their respective sectors.

Kamala Harris Biography, Net Worth Donald Trump Biography, Net Worth

Elon Musk Age, Height, Family 2024

Elon Musk: Career

Following his education in Canada, Elon Musk went to America to study. He then attended Stanford University, but walked out after two days to launch his first firm, Zip2, which delivered business directories and maps to newspapers.

Elon Musk has since established himself as a well-known entrepreneur and business leader, renowned for his ambitious aims and inventive ideas. He has created or co-founded SpaceX, Neuralink, PayPal, Tesla Motors and The Boring Company. He is highly recognized for his effect on several areas, including technology, space exploration, and sustainable energy.

Musk made his first foray into the automobile industry in 2004, when he bought a controlling share in Tesla Motors, a company that designs and manufactures energy storage systems, electric vehicles, and solar panels. Tesla has grown into a global leader in electric vehicles under Musk’s leadership, and the business has created a variety of popular models, including the Model S, Model X, Model 3, and the Roadster.

Elon Musk acquired Twitter

Elon Musk paid around $44 billion for Twitter, one of the top social media sites. Twitter’s then CEO, Parag Agarwal, had described Elon Musk’s takeover as the beginning of an unforeseen future for Twitter. Twitter’s Board of Directors were dismissed with immediate effect.

Elon Musk: Family

Elon Musk is the son of engineer Errol Musk and model and nutritionist Maye Musk. He has two younger siblings, Tosca and Kimbal. Musk’s familial situation was not always simple. His parents got divorced when he was a young child. Despite these hurdles, Musk credits his family with instilling in him a strong work ethic and a passion of learning.

Elon Musk Personal Life

Elon Musk has had an eventful life full of upheavals, both at business and in love. He married Justine Musk in 2000 and has six children. They resided in California, where Elon was expanding his enterprises. However, in 2008, they decided to part ways. Elon later dated Talulah Riley, an English actress. They married, divorced, and remarried before calling it quits in 2016.

Elon did not stop there; he also dated Amber Heard and then met Grimes, a Canadian musician. They joked on Twitter, met in person, and have two children. They also lived in California, near to Elon Musk’s firms, such as SpaceX, as of now Elon Musk has 11 children.

Elon Musk Net Worth 2024

Musk was born into a rich Musk family, with his father, Errol Musk, half-owner of an emerald mine who excelled in a variety of professions. Musk’s net worth has increased dramatically over time as a result of the success of his enterprises and his ownership holdings in them. Elon Musk’s net worth is more than $198 billion in 2024.

Somu is a passionate writer in the news and entertainment field. Since February 2024, she’s been with Global Beauties, making headlines and stories easy to understand. Guided by industry leaders, Somu excels at finding fresh trends and sharing them with a broad audience.

2 thoughts on “Elon Musk Biography, Career, Age, Height, Family, Net Worth”

I too come from Pretoria. South Africa. Living in Vancouver canada now. Wish I had some of his brains. 😀

Very smart 👌 and intelligent man

Leave a Comment Cancel reply

Save my name, email, and website in this browser for the next time I comment.

• Share full article

For more audio journalism and storytelling, download New York Times Audio , a new iOS app available for news subscribers.

At the Democratic Convention, a Historic Nomination

What story did the democrats tell about kamala harris and will it be enough to win.

This transcript was created using speech recognition software. While it has been reviewed by human transcribers, it may contain errors. Please review the episode audio before quoting from this transcript and email [email protected] with any questions.

[BACKGROUND CHATTER]

I’m standing in a sea of people coming out of this vast convention. And people are holding signs, smiling. There’s confetti everywhere. There are balloons, white, red, and blue. And there’s a lot of excitement.

From “The New York Times,” I’m Sabrina Tavernise. And this is “The Daily” from inside the Democratic National Convention Hall, where Kamala Harris has just accepted her party’s nomination, becoming the first woman of color in US history to do so.

Today, the story this convention told about Harris and whether that story could be enough to win.

It’s Friday, August 23.

[SERENE MUSIC]

The work and prayers of centuries have brought us to this day. What shall our our legacy be? What will our children say? Let me in my heart, when my days are through, America, America, I gave my best to you.

On night one of the Democratic National Convention, the evening was really defined by this very emotional, quite bittersweet goodbye from President Biden.

And there’s nothing we cannot do when we do it together.

God bless you all. And may God protect our troops.

It was the closing of one chapter so that another could begin. It was Kamala Harris’s moment.

[UPBEAT JAZZ MUSIC]

So right now, it’s 7:40. We are on the floor at the Democratic National Convention. It is a crazy party atmosphere, which is like a massive understatement.

Day two kicked off with delegates gathering on the convention floor, casting their votes in a kind of symbolic way to make Harris the party’s nominee.

This giant festival of lights, people in cowboy hats, people with blinking bracelets, people with Christmas lights wrapped around their hats, heads, shoulders, people wearing donkey hats. I mean, it’s very, very, very celebratory in here.

We need to see that we’re moving on. We are turning a chapter in America.

How do you feel right now?

Awesome, excitement, energized. Ready to win this election.

I love it. I love it. People are just excited, electrified, and they’re just loving it, and they’re happy.

This has been the most electrifying event I’ve ever attended in my life. It’s my first convention. But what a convention to come for, right? To make history right now, as we charge forward to November 5, to elect the first female Black president. I’m excited.

So with Harris now the nominee, a new campaign slogan appeared everywhere. And that was, “A new way forward.” But in a campaign that’s just four weeks old, it was really an open question what “a new way forward” actually meant.

We’re not going back!

We’re not going back! We’re not going back!

And then over the course of the week, as speaker after speaker took the stage, we started to get an answer. The story of forward would be told through the story of Kamala Harris herself. And the question hanging over the week was really whether that story could appeal to a broad majority of Americans, voters outside of the convention hall who will ultimately decide the election.

[UPBEAT MUSIC]

Astead, welcome to the show.

Thank you for having me.

Again. The second time in a week. And I’m very excited for it.

So Astead, we had on the show on Monday to answer a question for us, that I think a lot of people have, which is, who is Kamala Harris? And you ended that conversation by saying that the Democratic Party also recognizes this reality, that for a lot of people, she is still this unknown quantity.

And that the party had a big task here at the convention this week, which was to find a way to finally tell her story. It does seem like they’ve tried to do that. Let’s walk through the case that they’re making for her. And what you’ve seen here in your reporting for your show, “The Run-Up.”

Yeah, I mean, I think that the Democrats have definitely laid out a case for her as a candidate, but also a story for her as a person. They have leaned into the different parts of her biography to really follow through on what, I think, is the best version of her campaign, which is a little bit for everybody. There is a story there about more moderate legislation, but pieces of progressive history. There’s different parts of her bio that speak to Black communities, immigrant communities.

Of course, the historic nature of her gender and the roles like that. And I really think it has followed through on what I expected for this week, which is that she seems to function politically as a mirror of some sort, where the party wants to position her as someone who basically, no matter what you’re looking for in terms of a vessel to beat Donald Trump, you can find it in this candidate.

Let’s dig into that more. Where did the convention start, that story?

Hello, Democrats!

Yeah, I think it really starts in her personal biography.

And I’m here tonight to tell you all about the Kamala Harris that I know.

They have told a story that she often tells about her being a first generation American.

Her mother moved here from India at 19.

And being a daughter of an immigrant mother who really raised two daughters in the Bay Area from working class roots. And that’s been a real thing that they’ve tried to own.

Kamala was not born into privilege. She had to work for what she’s got.

When she was young, she worked at McDonald’s.

They talk about her working at McDonald’s in college.

And she greeted every person without thousand watt smile and said, how can I help you?

I think it’s overall about trying to present this as someone who pulled himself up by bootstraps. It represents the American dream. And I think for Democrats, it really returns them back to the place they want to be. Democrats like thinking of themselves as a party who appeals to the diversity of America, both in racial ways, in gender ways, but also in class ways.

In Kamala Harris, we have a chance to elect a president who is for the middle class because she is from the middle class.

And I think they used other parts of her identity, specifically thinking about being the first Black woman to accept a major party’s nomination.

We know folks are going to do everything they can to distort her truth.

And I think Michelle Obama’s speech, specifically, spoke to the power and anxiety that sometimes that identity can bring.

My husband and I sadly know a little something about this.

For years, Donald Trump did everything in his power to try to make people fear us. See, his limited, narrow view of the world made him feel threatened by the existence of two hard-working, highly educated, successful people who happen to be Black.

And I would also say that it was an implicit response to what Republicans and others have been trying to say, talking about Kamala Harris as a DEI hire, someone who was only in their position because of their identity. But the way that Michelle Obama framed it was that those identities have power.

I want to know. I want to know. Who’s going to tell him, who’s going to tell him that the job he’s currently seeking might just be one of those Black jobs?

Just because someone the first to be in a position, does not mean that is the only reason in the position. But it also doesn’t make those identities meaningless. The fact that she is a Black woman should be seen as a strength, not as a weakness.

Is there a risk to that, though? I mean, by openly talking about race, is there a risk that goes too far and begins to alienate voters outside the convention out in the world who they need to win in November.

I mean, there’s always a risk. But I don’t really think so. Democrats have had increasing trouble with Black voters. There’s been a downturn in Black vote share all the way dating back to 2012.

In Biden’s now suspended candidacy, that was one of the things driving his polling weaknesses was kind of tepid reception from Black voters. A pitch to them is something that is a upside of the Kamala Harris campaign. And the hope that they could consolidate that community is where any Democratic nominee needs to be as a baseline.

We both got our start as young lawyers, helping children who were abused and neglected.

One thing I noticed that came up a lot during the speeches was her background as a prosecutor. How did the party present that part of her biography?

As a prosecutor, Kamala stood up for children who had been victims of sexual abuse.

She put rapists, child molesters, and murderers behind bars.

They talk about it in the way that I think fuels what they want to say is the reason she can take on Trump, that this is someone who has stood up to bullies before, who’s not going to be intimidated easily —

And Kamala is as tough as it comes.

— who’s tough, and who doesn’t shirk away from a challenge.

And she knows the best way to deal with a coward is to take him head on, because we all know cowards are weak. And Kamala Harris can smell weakness.

I think all of that adds up to say, you can trust this person to go up against Donald Trump. You can trust this person to go up against the Republican Party, because she’s not someone who is scared.

She never runs from a fight.

A woman, a fierce woman for the people.

But then, of course, we heard about another side of Kamala Harris, a more personal side.

Yeah, and I think this is the part of Kamala Harris where I think was kind of most missing in the presidential run. Frankly, it’s the part that she keeps most private. She is a warm family member and friend.

Hello to my big, beautiful blended family up there.

And I think what the speech from her husband did was really show and lay that out.

I got married, became a dad to Cole and Ella. Unfortunately, went through a divorce, but eventually started worrying about how I would make it all work. And that’s when something unexpected happened, I ended up with Kamala Harris’s phone number.

He talks about the kind of awkwardness of their first interaction.

I got Kamala’s voicemail, and I just started rambling. “Hey, it’s Doug.”

And I think you have a real kind of sense of their genuine connection to one another.

By the way, Kamala saved that voicemail. And she makes me listen to it on every anniversary.

Like, yes, this is someone who is tough, who is taking on corporations and cartels and all of that stuff by day. But this is someone who also makes a point to cook Sunday dinner for family every week.

And she makes a mean brisket for Passover.

And makes sure to really go close to his kids and is very close with her family.

That’s Kamala. She’s always been there for our children. And I know she’ll always be there for yours, too.

Going back to the last time the Democratic Party nominated a woman, Hillary Clinton, she had presented herself in a very different way. She kind of ran away from that stuff. She was saying, I don’t bake cookies, that’s not what I do. I’m kind of out there with the men, fighting.

And this convention and this candidate, Harris, is very different. She’s a newer generation. And she can do her career and bake cookies. Those things are not in conflict. This is a different type of woman leader.

This week we talked to Senator Elizabeth Warren on “The Run-Up,” and one of the things that she mentioned was she feels that there’s been a big change from 2016, even 2020 to now. Not just the amount of women in public office, but she said they don’t have to choose between sides of themselves. And I think that’s what diversity means.

Of course, Kamala Harris can be a tough politician and also bake cookies. Hillary Clinton did that, too. It was just that she was told that was not the way that she had to present herself. What Kamala Harris is benefiting from is there’s a greater space and ability to choose multiple things at once. And so particularly if others are going to talk more directly about gender or race or other things, that kind of frees her from having the burden of doing that herself.

And in fact, Hillary Clinton, herself, did speak, of course, on day one. She talked about that glass ceiling in the history that has led to now, including her own experience in 2016.

Yeah, I thought the Hillary Clinton speech was really powerful. I think a lot of the speakers put this moment in historical context, both politically and personally.

My mother, Dorothy, was born right here in Chicago before women had the right to vote. That changed 104 years ago yesterday. And since that day, every generation has carried the torch forward. In 1972, a fearless Black congresswoman named Shirley Chisholm —

— she ran for president. In 1984, I brought my daughter to see Geraldine Ferraro, the first woman nominated for vice president. And then there was 2016, when it was the honor of my life to accept our party’s nomination for president.

The last time I was here in my hometown was to memorialize my mother, the woman who showed me the power of my own voice. My mother volunteered at the local school.

I’m the proud granddaughter of a housekeeper, Sarah Daisy, who raised her three children in a one-bedroom apartment. It was her dream to work in government, to help people.

My grandmother, the woman who helped raise me as a child, a little old white lady born in a tiny town called Peru, Kansas.

I want to talk now about somebody who’s not with us tonight. Tessie Prevost Williams was born in New Orleans not long after the Supreme Court ruled that segregated public schools were unconstitutional. That was in 1954, same year I was born. Parents pulled their kids out of the school.

There was a way that I think the candidacy and the person was placed in a long legacy, both about gender identity and racial identity that kind of teed up this Thursday as a culminating moment, both politically and I think, in a broader historical context.

Together, we put a lot of cracks in the highest, hardest glass ceiling. And you know what? On the other side of that glass ceiling is Kamala Harris raising her hand and taking the oath of office as our 47th president of the United States!

I wish my mother and Kamala’s mother could see us. They would say, keep going. Shirley and Jerry would say, keep going!

I think you can do a lot to set up a candidate to be in a good position. All of this stuff adds up to some part of the puzzle, but the biggest piece is the candidate themself. At the end of the day, they have to close the deal. And I think this moment is her chance to tell her own story in a way that sometimes she has not decided to. And that’s still what this whole convention success and failure will ride on.

We’re going to watch tonight. We’re going to watch with our colleague, Reid Epstein. And you are going to have a great episode of “The Run-Up” on Friday. We will all be tuning in.

Thank you. I appreciate you doing this, Sabrina.

Really thanks a lot, Astead.

Are you a delegate?

Sorry, we caught you mid French fry eating. What’s your feeling about Kamala and what her story has been? Are you getting to know her this week? Are there things you’ve learned about her this week?

Yeah, I’m learning more and more as we go along. The more and more I learn about her, the more I’m impressed with her. I mean, she worked at McDonald’s when she was going to college to try to pay her way through.

Her very small beginnings. Not a trust fund baby type of thing. I relate to that. Like, I was on food stamps this year. So it’s like if she can do it with that background, it gives everybody hope.

Hillary was my girl. When Hillary ran, I championed her as well. But I didn’t feel this way as I feel about Harris. I’m like, do I want to run for office? If she can do it, I can. She looks just like me, right? She represents, she works at McDonald’s. She paid for every. It’s relatable. And that’s what everybody needs.

We’re going to break that glass ceiling. I’m getting teary, teary in my eyes. And it just means so much to be inclusive.

[WHIMSICAL MUSIC]

What does it mean to you that Kamala Harris is a woman? What does it mean to you that she’s a Black woman?

To have a Black woman become the president of the United States, and for her to turn the world upside down in 30 days, to know that I’m in the midst of this miraculous history is phenomenal.

One delegate who really stood out to us was Beverly Hatcher, a 76-year-old Black woman from Texas.

I was raised by a wonderful Baptist mama. I just lost her. But I am who I am because of my mother. We were always pushed to do whatever we wanted to do. I’ll never forget. I wanted to be a majorette. I taught myself, because we had no money for, what is it called, lessons

And a majorette is like the baton twirler, right?

Yes. And when I did finally try out in my 11th grade, I won right off. And my classmates, who were predominantly white, as years have gone by, have told me at class reunions and stuff, Beverly, the sleepy town of Wellington woke up.

Oh, my god, we got a Black girl getting ready to be the head majorette. But it happened because I had the drive and the will. My mother and my family stood behind me, and didn’t miss a parade, or a football game, or a basketball game.

And you see that in Harris?

Beverly, what would your mom say if she saw this?

My sisters have been telling me every day how proud my mom is. And I’m just happy. I’m happy to make her happy. Yeah.

We women, who have had mothers like Kamala, like Michelle, I remember Hillary’s mother, we women value their strength and their wisdom. And we’re just glad that they gave us a legacy to pass it on.

Thank you very much.

We’ll be right back.

Reid, hello.

OK. Kamala Harris just wrapped up her acceptance speech. Before we talk about what she said and the case she presented, tell us how her campaign was thinking about the stakes of this moment.

Sabrina, this evening was one of two opportunities, along with the debate next month, for her to speak to tens of millions of people at once. And so for that, the stakes were really high.

Her goal was to present herself as a serious person and a serious candidate, who was not the candidate who flamed out in 2019 or the unsteady vice president from the beginning of her term. She had to show that she had the gravitas to be the commander in chief, the political aptitude to reach out to the middle, and also to progressives in her party all at the same time.

A very tall order. Tell us how she went about doing that.

Good evening, everyone. Good evening.

Well, she started talking around 9:30 Chicago time to a packed United Center with 14,000 or 15,000 people, many, many wearing all white, the color of the suffragettes, a color that makes a statement just by wearing it. And when Harris took the stage —

— they erupted in a cheer that forced her for a couple of minutes to wait before she could start talking.

Thank you. OK, let’s get to business. Let’s get to business. All right.

And what did she finally say once she started talking?

She told the story of her life.

The path that led me here in recent weeks was, no doubt, unexpected. But I’m no stranger to unlikely journeys.

My mother, our mother, Shyamala Harris, had one of her own. And I miss her every day, and especially right now.

She talked about the influence of her mother, who raised her and her sister.

And she also taught us, “And never do anything half-assed.” And that is a direct quote. [LAUGHS]

She spoke about her family’s humble beginnings in Oakland.

Before she could finally afford to buy a home, she rented a small apartment in the East Bay.

Then she started talking about her career as a prosecutor.

In the courtroom, I stood proudly before a judge and I said five words.

She brought back one of the lines that she used in her 2020 campaign about how when she stood up in a courtroom, she began with the same words.

Kamala Harris for the people.

And she said she would bring that same philosophy to the White House, that she was not working for specific individuals, but for the people at large.

And so on behalf of the people —

Eventually she did a bigger wind up to formally accepting the nomination.

— on behalf of every American, regardless of party, race, gender, or the language your grandmother speaks —

And listed the people on whose behalf she did so.

— on behalf of everyone whose story could only be written in the greatest nation on Earth —

It was really a kind of a feat of speech writing to build up to this big emotional moment.

— I accept your nomination to be president of the United States of America.

And what did you make of that, how she was doing that?

It was building up this speech to be a serious political document and present her as a serious figure in this moment. And so she still has to prove to people that she is capable of being the commander in chief and running the country.

And how does she try to prove that she’s capable of being a commander in chief?

What she did was try to draw the distinction between herself and Donald Trump.

In many ways, Donald Trump is an unserious man. But the consequences, but the consequences of putting Donald Trump back in the White House are extremely serious.

And she warns that Trump would not have guardrails on him if he were elected to a second term.

Just imagine Donald Trump with no guardrails.

And how he would use the immense powers of the presidency of the United States not to improve your life, not to strengthen our national security, but to serve the only client he has ever had, himself.

The speech was very clear-eyed about the stakes of the election.

They know Trump won’t hold autocrats accountable because he wants to be an autocrat himself.

There was a whole section in the middle of the speech where she ticked through, one by one, a whole series of warnings about things that Trump would do to the country if he were back in the White House.

Get this, he plans to create a national anti-abortion coordinator and force states to report on women’s miscarriages and abortions.

Simply put, they are out of their minds.

What else stuck out to you?

It was remarkable, the section of the speech where she talked about Gaza.

President Biden and I are working around the clock, because now is the time to get a hostage deal and a ceasefire deal done.

She did not veer too far to the left.

I will always stand up for Israel’s right to defend itself.

She managed to say things that would be appealing to both sides.

President Biden and I are working to end this war, such that Israel is secure, the hostages are released, the suffering in Gaza ends, and the Palestinian people can realize their right to dignity, security, freedom, and self-determination.

It was a remarkable moment to hear the arena erupt at the end of that section, to hear her support for both the Israelis and the Palestinians reveal that kind of enthusiasm, after the party has been really ripped apart for months about how to handle the situation.

Fellow Americans, I love our country with all my heart.

She ended this speech with a paean to patriotism.

We are the heirs to the greatest democracy in the history of the world.

She dove headlong into the American exceptionalism argument that is native to Republicans and to older generations of politicians, like Joe Biden.

It is now our turn to do what generations before us have done. Guided by optimism and faith to fight for this country we love. To fight —

But is not something you always hear from younger Democrats, who are a little less comfortable with some of the flag waving.

Let’s vote for it. And together, let us write the next great chapter in the most extraordinary story ever told. Thank you. God bless you and may God bless the United States of America. Thank you all.

She seemed to really be taking aim at this criticism of her, which is that she’s this radical California liberal and she can’t be trusted with the keys to the country.

I mean, that was one of the tasks that she had tonight, was to make the argument, particularly to voters in the middle, the suburban voters that used to vote for Republicans, but have been repelled by Trump and driven to Democrats in the last several years, that they can vote for her without worrying that she’s some kind of Bernie Sanders acolyte.

And some of that is based on the way she ran her last presidential campaign. Some of it, frankly, is because she’s a Black woman from California. And that the voters who will determine this election are voters in less diverse states, for the most part.

So Reid stepping back here, it feels worth remembering just where we were at the end of the Republican National Convention that was just over a month ago. Things couldn’t have felt more different. The GOP was on top of the world, while the Democrats were in disarray over Biden’s refusal to leave the race.

And now here we are. And it feels like things couldn’t be better for the Democrats. At least that’s the feeling I’m having coming out of this convention.

I mean, the whole race has turned upside down from where it was when we left Milwaukee. And Democrats are upbeat. They are confident. It is a party that is remarkably united behind their candidate.

But you have to remember, this election will be very close. It is, indeed, a game of inches in the key battleground states. And what she was trying to do was to present herself as someone who can be trusted as commander in chief to win over the tiny slices of the electorate that will determine the winner in places like Wisconsin, and Michigan, and Pennsylvania, Georgia, and Arizona.

And those are the states that will determine the election. And they have made a calculated decision that those voters needed to see her as a commander in chief, something they had not seen from her before. And we will see in the coming days and weeks whether she’s accomplished that in a way that brings enough of those people on board for her to win a term as president.

Reid, thank you.

Thank you, Sabrina. [WHIMSICAL MUSIC]

Here’s what else you should know today. On Thursday, the Supreme Court allowed Arizona Republicans, for now, to impose tougher voting requirements, including a new rule that people registering to vote there before the coming election must show proof of citizenship.

As a result, Arizonans newly registering to vote for this year’s presidential election must provide copies of one of several documents, such as a birth certificate or a passport, in order to prove that they are US citizens. Democrats have denounced the new rule as an attempt to prevent legal immigrants from voting.

And US Health officials have approved the latest slate of annual COVID vaccines, clearing the way for Americans six months and older to receive updated shots in the coming days. The approvals come amid a prolonged surge of COVID infections, which have risen all summer.

Remember to catch a new episode of “The Interview” right here tomorrow. This week, Lulu Garcia-Navarro talks with Jenna Ortega, the star of the Netflix series “Wednesday,” and the new “Bettlejuice” sequel, about her head-spinning success over the past few years.

One day I just I woke up in somebody else’s shoes. I felt like I had entered somebody else’s life. And I didn’t know how to get back to mine.

Today’s episode was produced by Lynsea Garrison, Rob Szypko, Jessica Cheung, Asthaa Chaturvedi, and Shannon Lin. It was edited by Rachel Quester, contains original music by Rowan Niemisto, Dan Powell, Diane Wong, and Marion Lozano, and was engineered by Chris Wood. Our theme music is by Jim Brunberg and Ben Landsverk of Wonderly.

[THEME MUSIC]

That’s it for “The Daily.” I’m Sabrina Tavernise. See you on Monday.

• Apple Podcasts
• Google Podcasts

Hosted by Sabrina Tavernise

Featuring Astead W. Herndon and Reid J. Epstein

Produced by Lynsea Garrison Rob Szypko Jessica Cheung Asthaa Chaturvedi and Shannon Lin

Edited by Rachel Quester

Original music by Rowan Niemisto Marion Lozano Dan Powell and Diane Wong

Engineered by Chris Wood

Listen and follow ‘The Daily’ Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Amazon Music | YouTube | iHeartRadio

Last night, at the Democratic National Convention, Vice President Kamala Harris accepted her party’s nomination, becoming the first woman of color in U.S. history to do so.

Astead W. Herndon and Reid J. Epstein, who cover politics for The Times, discuss the story this convention told about Ms. Harris — and whether that story could be enough to win the presidential election.

On today’s episode

Astead W. Herndon , a national politics reporter and the host of the politics podcast “ The Run-Up ” for The New York Times.

Reid J. Epstein , who covers politics for The New York Times.

Background reading

Kamala Harris promised to chart a “new way forward” as she accepted the nomination.

“The Run-Up”: It’s her party now. What’s different?

There are a lot of ways to listen to The Daily. Here’s how.

We aim to make transcripts available the next workday after an episode’s publication. You can find them at the top of the page.

The Daily is made by Rachel Quester, Lynsea Garrison, Clare Toeniskoetter, Paige Cowett, Michael Simon Johnson, Brad Fisher, Chris Wood, Jessica Cheung, Stella Tan, Alexandra Leigh Young, Lisa Chow, Eric Krupke, Marc Georges, Luke Vander Ploeg, M.J. Davis Lin, Dan Powell, Sydney Harper, Michael Benoist, Liz O. Baylen, Asthaa Chaturvedi, Rachelle Bonja, Diana Nguyen, Marion Lozano, Corey Schreppel, Rob Szypko, Elisheba Ittoop, Mooj Zadie, Patricia Willens, Rowan Niemisto, Jody Becker, Rikki Novetsky, Nina Feldman, Will Reid, Carlos Prieto, Ben Calhoun, Susan Lee, Lexie Diao, Mary Wilson, Alex Stern, Sophia Lanman, Shannon Lin, Diane Wong, Devon Taylor, Alyssa Moxley, Olivia Natt, Daniel Ramirez and Brendan Klinkenberg.

Our theme music is by Jim Brunberg and Ben Landsverk of Wonderly. Special thanks to Sam Dolnick, Paula Szuchman, Lisa Tobin, Larissa Anderson, Julia Simon, Sofia Milan, Mahima Chablani, Elizabeth Davis-Moorer, Jeffrey Miranda, Maddy Masiello, Isabella Anderson, Nina Lassam and Nick Pitman.

Astead W. Herndon is a national politics reporter and the host of the politics podcast “The Run-Up.” More about Astead W. Herndon

Reid J. Epstein covers campaigns and elections from Washington. Before joining The Times in 2019, he worked at The Wall Street Journal, Politico, Newsday and The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. More about Reid J. Epstein

Advertisement