Elon Musk was born on June 28, 1971, in Pretoria, South Africa . He began his post secondary education at Queen’s University in Ontario, Canada at age 17, and after two years, transferred to the University of Pennsylvania where he graduated with a degree in Economics from the Wharton School and a degree in physics from the College of Arts and Science. In 1995, he was accepted into the Ph.D. program at Stanford to study material science and physics, but dropped out after 2 days to pursue an entrepreneurial venture in the emerging internet.
By 1999, the web software company Zip2 that he had co-founded with his brother Kimbal, was purchased by Compaq for $340 million. This was the beginning of Elon’s creation or co-founding of a series of companies.
In 2002, he founded SpaceX, a private aerospace manufacturer and space transportation company. Its goal is to reduce space transportation costs and enable the colonization of Mars. SpaceX has successfully developed and launched numerous rockets and spacecraft, including the Falcon 1, Falcon 9, Falcon Heavy, and the Dragon spacecraft.
A year later, Musk founded Tesla, Inc., a company dedicated to clean energy, that produces electric cars, solar energy products, and energy storage solutions. Musk played a crucial role in popularizing electric vehicles and pushing for sustainable transportation alternatives.
In 2016, Musk turned his attention to enhancing the human brain with computer technology. To this end, he founded Neuralink, dedicated to the development of implantable brain-machine interface technology to extend the domain of artificial intelligence to enhance human cognition. In that same year, he founded The Boring Company dedicated to boring into the earth to dig tunnels that would serve as underground highways to divert traffic away from overcrowded highways. In 2017, The Boring Company was commissioned to build a high-speed transportation network from downtown Chicago to O’Hare Airport. With contracts in Los Angeles and Las Vagas, The Boring Company was anything but boring.
By April, 2020, Musk was running four companies: SpaceX with a valuation of $100 billion, Tesla with a valuation of $1 trillion, The Boring Company with a valuation of $5.6 billion, and Neuralink with a valuation of $1 billion. Yet, he still had some unfinished business. Feeling that restrictions on free speech and the censoring of opinions on social media was infringing on the First Amendment, and promoting a “woke-minded virus,” he decided to become involved in reforming Twitter. On October 27, after 6 months of bargaining, legal challenges and political skirmishes, he purchased Twitter, fired most of the staff and renamed the social media site, X.
Elon Musk is a high IQ person with a photographic memory. The success of his ventures is attributable to the vision that emanates from his problem solving ability and his capacity to abstract from what is to what might be. Like Jobs and Bezos, he is a loner who was bullied early in life. In an interview with Neil Strauss of Rolling Stone Magazine, he described his early social challenges:
For the longest time, I was the youngest and the smallest kid in the class because my birthday just happens to fall on almost the last day they will accept you into school, June 28th. And I was a late bloomer. So I was the youngest and the smallest kid in class for years and years.…The gangs at school would hunt me down – literally hunt me down!
On one occasion, he was thrown down a flight of stairs and his head was thrust against the pavement, resulting in a loss of consciousness. A small scar on his nose reveals the rhinoplasty that restored his crushed cartilage. In her book, Quirkey: The Remarkable Story of the Traits, Foibles and Genius of Breakthrough Innovators Who Changed the World, (2018) Melissa Shilling describes three personality traits that Elon Musk has in common with Steven Jobs and Albert Einstein: social detachment, idealism, and impatience with formal education.
On one occasion, he was thrown down a flight of stairs and his head was thrust against the pavement, resulting in A small scar on his nose reveals the rhinoplasty that restored his crushed cartilage. In her book, Quirky: TheRemarkable Story of the Traits, Foibles, and Genius of Breakthrough Innovators Who Changed the World, (2018) MelissaSchilling describes three personality traits that Elon Musk has in common with Steven Jobs and Albert Einstein: social detachment, idealism, and impatience with formal education.
Elon musk is currently the CEO and lead designer of SpaceX, the CEO and product architect of Tesla, Inc., the CEO of Neuralink, and the founder of The Boring Company. In addition to his involvement in these groundbreaking companies, Elon Musk has expressed interest in various other ventures and technologies. He has been involved in projects related to high-speed transportation, artificial intelligence, and renewable energy.
Musk’s entrepreneurial endeavors have earned him widespread recognition and an estimated net worth of several hundred billion dollars.. He is known for his ambitious vision, innovative thinking, and outspoken nature, often using platforms on his recently acquired Twitter to share his ideas, opinions, and updates on his companies.
