Elon

Elon Reeve Musk (born June 28, 1971) is a South African-born entrepreneur and engineer who leads a portfolio of technology companies. He is the chief executive officer and product architect of Tesla, Inc., and the founder, CEO, and lead designer of SpaceX. He has co-founded or led several other ventures, including Zip2, X.com (which became PayPal), SolarCity, Neuralink, The Boring Company, and OpenAI. In 2022 he acquired Twitter, Inc. and renamed the service X.

Early life and education: Musk was born in Pretoria, South Africa. He emigrated to Canada in 1989, attending Queen’s University, and later moved to the United States to study at the University of Pennsylvania, where he earned a B.S. in physics from the College of Arts and Sciences and a B.S. in economics from the Wharton School.

Career milestones: Musk and his brother Kimbal founded Zip2 in 1996, a software company later sold to Compaq for about $307 million. He then founded X.com, an online payments company that became PayPal; eBay acquired PayPal in 2002 for $1.5 billion in stock. SpaceX, founded in 2002, aims to reduce space transportation costs and enable Mars colonization; it has developed the Falcon 1, Falcon 9, Falcon Heavy, Dragon spacecraft, and the Starship program, and has flown astronauts to the International Space Station and achieved booster reuse. Tesla, which he joined as a director in 2004 and became CEO in 2008, produces electric vehicles and energy storage solutions. SolarCity, founded in 2006, was merged into Tesla in 2016. The Boring Company (2016) focuses on tunnel infrastructure; Neuralink (2016) pursues brain–machine interfaces. OpenAI (2015) was co-founded to study artificial intelligence, with Musk stepping down from its board in 2018. Twitter ownership began in 2022 and led to organizational changes and the platform’s rebranding as X.

Impact and reception: Musk’s ventures have significantly influenced electric mobility, commercial spaceflight, and online communications. His leadership and public statements have drawn regulatory and labor-related scrutiny, including a 2018 settlement with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission over tweets about taking Tesla private. The Musk Foundation supports science education, renewable energy, and pediatric health.