Elon Musk : The Inspiration

   

Born	Elon Reeve Musk June 28, 1971 (age 48) Pretoria, South Africa
Citizenship	South Africa (1971–present) Canada (1971–present) United States (2002–present)
Education	University of Pretoria Queen's University University of Pennsylvania (BA, BS)
Occupation	Engineer industrial designer entrepreneur
Years active	1995–present
Home town	Hillsborough, California, United States[note 1]
Net worth	US$41.5 billion (June 2020)[1]
Title	Founder, CEO, Lead Designer of SpaceX CEO, Product Architect of Tesla, Inc. Founder of The Boring Company and X.com (now PayPal) Co-founder of Neuralink, OpenAI, and Zip2 Chairman of SolarCity
Partner(s)	Grimes (2018–present)
Children	6 (+ 1 deceased)
Parents	Errol Musk (father) Maye Musk (mother)
Signature

• Elon Musk( born June 28, 1971) is an engineer, industrial designer, technology entrepreneur and philanthropist. He is a citizen of South Africa, Canada, and the United States. He is the founder, CEO and chief engineer/designer of SpaceX; early investor, CEO and product architect of Tesla, Inc.; founder of The Boring Company; co-founder of Neuralink; and co-founder and initial co-chairman of OpenAI. He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society (FRS) in 2018. In December 2016, he was ranked 21st on the Forbes list of The World's Most Powerful People, and was ranked joint-first on the Forbes list of the Most Innovative Leaders of 2019.^[17] A self-made billionaire, as of June 2020 his net worth was estimated at $38.8 billion and he is listed by Forbes as the 31st-richest person in the world. He is the longest tenured CEO of any automotive manufacturer globally.
• Born to a Canadian mother and South African father, Musk was born and raised in Pretoria, South Africa. He briefly attended the University of Pretoria before moving to Canada when he was 17 to attend Queen's University. He transferred to the University of Pennsylvania two years later, where he received a bachelor's degree in economics from the Wharton School and a bachelor's degree in physics from the College of Arts and Sciences. He moved to California in 1995 to begin a Ph.D. in applied physics and material sciences at Stanford University, but decided to pursue a business career instead of enrolling.^[20] He subsequently co-founded (with his brother Kimbal) Zip2, a web software company, which was acquired by Compaq for $340 million in 1999. Musk then founded X.com, an online bank. It merged with Confinity in 2000, which had launched PayPal the previous year and was subsequently bought by eBay for $1.5 billion in October 2002.
• In May 2002, Musk founded SpaceX, an aerospace manufacturer and space transport services company, of which he is CEO and lead designer. He joined Tesla Motors, Inc. (now Tesla, Inc.), an electric vehicle manufacturer, in 2004, the year after it was founded, and became its CEO and product architect. In 2006, he helped create SolarCity, a solar energy services company (now a subsidiary of Tesla). In 2015, Musk co-founded OpenAI, a nonprofit research company that aims to promote friendly artificial intelligence. In July 2016, he co-founded Neuralink, a neurotechnology company focused on developing brain–computer interfaces. In December 2016, Musk founded The Boring Company, an infrastructure and tunnel construction company focused on tunnels optimized for electric vehicles.

• In addition to his primary business pursuits, Musk has envisioned a high-speed transportation system known as the Hyperloop. Musk has said the goals of SpaceX, Tesla, and SolarCity revolve around his vision to "change the world and help humanity" His goals include reducing global warming through sustainable energy production and consumption and lessening the risk of human extinction by establishing a human colony on Mars.

Education:

• While awaiting Canadian documentation, Musk attended the University of Pretoria for five months. Once in Canada, Musk entered Queen's University in 1989, avoiding mandatory service in the South African military. He left in 1992 to study economics and physics at the University of Pennsylvania; he graduated in 1997 with a Bachelor of Arts degree in economics from Wharton and a Bachelor of Science degree in physics from the College of Arts and Sciences.
• In 1994, Musk held two internships in Silicon Valley during the summer: at an energy storage start-up called Pinnacle Research Institute, which researched electrolytic ultracapacitors for energy storage, and at the Palo Alto-based start-up Rocket Science Games. Bruce Leak, the former lead engineer behind Apple's QuickTime who had hired Musk, noted: "He had boundless energy. Kids these days have no idea about hardware or how stuff works, but he had a PC hacker background and was not afraid to just go figure things out.
• In 1995, Musk was accepted to a PhD program in energy physics/materials science at Stanford University in California. Eager to pursue opportunities in the internet boom, however, he decided to instead launch his first company, Zip2 Corporation.

Career: 

• Zip2: In 1995, Musk and his brother, Kimbal, started Zip2, a web software company, with money raised from a small group of angel investors. The company developed and marketed an internet city guide for the newspaper publishing industry, with maps, directions and yellow pages, with the vector graphics mapping and direction code being implemented by Musk in Java. Musk obtained contracts with The New York Times and the Chicago Tribune, and persuaded the board of directors to abandon plans for a merger with CitySearch. Musk's attempts to become CEO were thwarted by the board. Compaq acquired Zip2 for US$307 million in cash in February 1999. Musk received US$22 million for his 7 percent share from the sale.

• X.com and PayPal: In March 1999, Musk co-founded X.com, an online financial services and e-mail payment company, with US$10 million from the sale of Zip2. One year later, the company merged with Confinity, which had a money-transfer service called PayPal. The merged company focused on the PayPal service and was renamed PayPal in 2001. Musk was ousted in October 2000 from his role as CEO (although he remained on the board) due to disagreements with other company executives over his desire to move PayPal's Unix-based infrastructure to a Microsoft one. In October 2002, PayPal was acquired by eBay for US$1.5 billion in stock, of which Musk received US$165 million.Before its sale, Musk, who was the company's largest shareholder, owned 11.7% of PayPal's shares.In July 2017, Musk purchased the domain X.com from PayPal for an undisclosed amount, stating that it has sentimental value to him.

• SpaceX: In 2001, Musk conceived Mars Oasis, an idea to land a miniature experimental greenhouse on Mars, containing food crops growing on Martian regolith, in an attempt to reawaken public interest in space exploration.^[74][75] In October 2001, Musk traveled to Moscow with Jim Cantrell (an aerospace supplies fixer), and Adeo Ressi (his best friend from college), to buy refurbished Dnepr Intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs) that could send the envisioned payloads into space. The group met with companies such as NPO Lavochkin and Kosmotras; however, according to Cantrell, Musk was seen as a novice and was consequently spat on by one of the Russian chief designers.^[76] The group returned to the United States empty-handed. In February 2002, the group returned to Russia to look for three ICBMs, bringing along Mike Griffin. Griffin had worked for the CIA's venture capital arm, In-Q-Tel, as well as NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, and was just leaving Orbital Sciences, a maker of satellites and spacecraft. The group had another meeting with Kosmotras and were offered one rocket for US$8 million. Musk considered the price too high, and stormed out of the meeting. On the flight back from Moscow, Musk realized that he could start a company that could build the affordable rockets he needed.^[76] According to early Tesla and SpaceX investor Steve Jurvetson,^[77] Musk calculated that the raw materials for building a rocket were only 3 percent of the sales price of a rocket at the time. It was concluded that^{[by whom?]}, in theory, by applying vertical integration and the modular approach employed in software engineering, SpaceX could cut launch price by a factor of ten and still enjoy a 70-percent gross margin.^{[78][better source needed]} Ultimately, Musk ended up founding SpaceX with the long-term goal of creating a true spacefaring civilization.