Elon Musk

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Elon Musk
Elon Musk
Elon Musk
Birth nameElon Reeve Musk
BornJune 28, 1971
BirthplacePretoria, South Africa
NationalitySouth African, Canadian, American
OccupationBusinessman, engineer
Known forSpaceX, Tesla, X, xAI
Years active1995–present

Elon Musk (born June 28, 1971) is a South African-born American businessman. He founded SpaceX in 2002 and has led Tesla as chief executive officer since 2008. His other ventures have included the online payments company that became PayPal, the brain-interface company Neuralink, the tunneling company The Boring Company, and the artificial intelligence company xAI.[1] In 2022 he bought Twitter, which he renamed X the following year.[2]

Musk was a major supporter of Donald Trump in the 2024 presidential election and led the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) during the first months of Trump's second term.[3] In May 2023, a post of his featuring a Milady Maker image drew wide attention to the collection.[4]

Early life and education

Musk was born in Pretoria, South Africa, to Maye Musk, a Canadian model, and Errol Musk, an engineer. In 1988, at 17, he moved to Canada to attend Queen's University. He transferred to the University of Pennsylvania in 1992 and graduated with bachelor's degrees in economics and physics. He enrolled in a doctoral program at Stanford University but left after two days to start a business. He became a U.S. citizen in 2002.[5]

Business career

Zip2 and PayPal

In 1995, Musk and his brother Kimbal founded Zip2, an online business directory, which they sold to Compaq in 1999 for about $307 million. Musk used the proceeds to found X.com, an online bank, in 1999. In 2000, X.com merged with Confinity, a company co-founded by Peter Thiel, to form PayPal, and Musk was removed as chief executive later that year. eBay acquired PayPal in 2002 in a $1.5 billion stock deal.[1]

SpaceX

Musk founded Space Exploration Technologies Corporation (SpaceX) in 2002 with the goal of lowering the cost of spaceflight.[1] In May 2012, its Dragon spacecraft became the first commercial vehicle to deliver cargo to the International Space Station.[6] On May 30, 2020, SpaceX's Crew Dragon carried NASA astronauts Robert Behnken and Douglas Hurley to the station, the first crewed launch of a SpaceX spacecraft.[7] The company also operates the Starlink satellite internet network. In 2026, SpaceX merged with xAI and went public in June in a record initial public offering.[8]

Tesla

Tesla was founded in 2003 by Martin Eberhard and Marc Tarpenning. Musk led its Series A funding round in 2004 with an investment of $6.5 million, joined its board that April, and became chief executive in October 2008.[1][9] Tesla launched its first car, the Roadster, in 2008.[5] In 2016, Tesla acquired SolarCity, a solar energy company founded by Musk's cousins, in a $2.6 billion stock deal.[1]

Other ventures

In 2015, Musk co-founded OpenAI as a nonprofit artificial intelligence research organization; he left its board in 2018. In 2016 he co-founded Neuralink, which develops brain-computer interfaces, and founded The Boring Company, a tunneling company that began as a SpaceX subsidiary.[1] He announced xAI, an artificial intelligence company, in July 2023.[10] Time named Musk its Person of the Year for 2021.[11]

Twitter and X

Musk agreed in April 2022 to buy Twitter for about $44 billion and took control of the company that October.[2] On July 23, 2023, he announced that Twitter would be rebranded as X and replaced the bird logo.[12] In March 2025, Musk's xAI acquired X in an all-stock deal.[13]

After the acquisition, X restored some accounts that had been suspended under the previous ownership. The account of Nick Fuentes was briefly reinstated in January 2023 and suspended again within a day, and in May 2024 Musk said he would reinstate it.[14][15] Changes to the platform's algorithms and social graph after the takeover also affected established online scenes such as Tpot. The pro-Musk account Adrian Dittmann, whose voice resembled Musk's in X Spaces, prompted speculation that Musk operated it; reporting in January 2025 identified a Fiji-based man as the person behind the account.[16][17]

On May 10, 2023, Musk posted a Milady Maker image with the words "There is no meme, I love you." The collection's trading activity and floor price rose immediately after the post.[4][18]

Politics

Musk endorsed Donald Trump in July 2024, shortly after the assassination attempt against Trump in Butler, Pennsylvania, and spent at least $250 million supporting his campaign, largely through America PAC.[3][19]

In January 2025, Trump appointed Musk to lead the Department of Government Efficiency, an initiative to reduce federal spending and staffing. Musk left the role in late May 2025, after criticizing the One Big Beautiful Bill Act for increasing the federal deficit.[20] A public dispute with Trump followed in June 2025, and in July Musk said he would form a new political party, the America Party.[21][22] He later returned to funding Republican candidates through America PAC ahead of the 2026 midterm elections.[23]

Personal life

Musk married the author Justine Wilson in 2000; they divorced in 2008. They had six children: a son, Nevada, who died in infancy; twins, Griffin and Vivian; and triplets, Kai, Saxon, and Damian.[5][24]

With the musician Grimes, Musk has three children: X Æ A-Xii, born in 2020; Exa Dark Sideræl, born in December 2021; and Techno Mechanicus, born in June 2022.[24] With Shivon Zilis, an executive at Neuralink, he has four children: twins, Strider and Azure, born in 2021, and Arcadia and Seldon Lycurgus, whose births became public in 2025.[24][25]

In February 2025, the writer Ashley St. Clair announced that she had given birth to a son several months earlier and said Musk was the father. Musk said he did not know whether the child was his but was "not against finding out", and St. Clair asked a New York court to declare him the father.[26]

In 2021, while hosting Saturday Night Live, he said he has Asperger's syndrome.[5]

See also

References

  1. ↑ 1.0 1.1 1.2 1.3 1.4 1.5 Raisa Bruner (April 27, 2022). "A Complete Timeline of Elon Musk's Business Endeavors". Time. Retrieved October 15, 2026.
  2. ↑ 2.0 2.1 April 25, 2022. "Elon Musk reaches agreement to acquire Twitter for about $44 billion". PBS News. Retrieved October 15, 2026.
  3. ↑ 3.0 3.1 "Musk says he will cut back on political spending after paying at least $250M backing Trump in 2024". PBS News. Retrieved October 15, 2026.
  4. ↑ 4.0 4.1 Toby Leah Bochan (May 10, 2023). "Elon Musk Tweets a Milady NFT, Floor Price Soars on OpenSea". CoinDesk. Retrieved October 13, 2026.
  5. ↑ 5.0 5.1 5.2 5.3 "Elon Musk: Biography, Entrepreneur, SpaceX and Tesla Founder". Biography.com. Retrieved October 15, 2026.
  6. ↑ "Dragon Splashes Down". NASA. Retrieved October 15, 2026.
  7. ↑ May 30, 2020. "NASA Astronauts Launch from America in Historic Test Flight of SpaceX Crew Dragon". NASA. Retrieved October 15, 2026.
  8. ↑ June 11, 2026. "SpaceX blasts off with a record-breaking $75 billion IPO". NPR. Retrieved October 15, 2026.
  9. ↑ "Elon Musk". Tesla Investor Relations. Retrieved October 13, 2026.
  10. ↑ July 2023. "xAI: What to Know About Elon Musk's New AI Company". Time. Retrieved October 15, 2026.
  11. ↑ December 13, 2021. "How Elon Musk Built His Fortune—And Became the Richest Private Citizen in the World". Time. Retrieved October 15, 2026.
  12. ↑ July 2023. "By Renaming Twitter as X, Musk Wipes Billions in Brand Value". Time. Retrieved October 15, 2026.
  13. ↑ July 2025. "X CEO Linda Yaccarino steps down after two years at Elon Musk's social media platform". PBS News. Retrieved October 15, 2026.
  14. ↑ January 2023. "Nick Fuentes Twitter account suspended less than 24 hours after reinstatement". The Hill. Retrieved October 15, 2026.
  15. ↑ May 3, 2024. "Elon Musk says he'll reinstate the X account of white nationalist Nick Fuentes". Axios. Retrieved October 15, 2026.
  16. ↑ Adi Robertson and Kylie Robison (January 3, 2025). "That Elon Musk 'Adrian Dittmann' screenshot is almost certainly fake". The Verge. Retrieved October 15, 2026.
  17. ↑ Anthony Ha (January 5, 2025). "Bad news for Adrian Dittmann/Elon Musk truthers". TechCrunch. Retrieved October 15, 2026.
  18. ↑ Hayward, Andrew (May 10, 2023). "Elon Musk Tweets Miladys NFT Meme—Price Predictably Pumps". Decrypt. Retrieved October 15, 2026.
  19. ↑ October 16, 2024. "Elon Musk has given $75 million, so far, to put Donald Trump back in the White House". NPR. Retrieved October 15, 2026.
  20. ↑ May 30, 2025. "What's next for DOGE after Elon Musk says he is leaving?". NPR. Retrieved October 15, 2026.
  21. ↑ June 5, 2025. "From bromance to breakup: How Elon Musk and Donald Trump blew up". NPR. Retrieved October 15, 2026.
  22. ↑ July 2025. "Musk Renews Promise to Start Rival Political Party Amid Feud". Time. Retrieved October 15, 2026.
  23. ↑ October 13, 2026. "How Elon Musk Learned to Love Political Spending Again". Time. Retrieved October 15, 2026.
  24. ↑ 24.0 24.1 24.2 Michelle McGahan (December 6, 2024). "Celebrities Who Have 10 or More Kids". Newsweek. Retrieved October 15, 2026.
  25. ↑ Mandy Taheri (March 1, 2025). "New Elon Musk Child Revealed: Everything We Know". Newsweek. Retrieved October 15, 2026.
  26. ↑ Martha McHardy and Shane Croucher (April 1, 2025). "Ashley St. Clair Says Elon Musk Withdrew Child Support Over 'Disobedience'". Newsweek. Retrieved October 15, 2026.
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