Elon Musk is an American entrepreneur and adventurer. Its two largest companies are Tesla Motors and SpaceX .
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Biography
Elon Musk's mother conquered the South African catwalks with her beauty in the distant 1970s. Mrs May Musk moved to an African country at the age of 2. Her parents were adventurers. However, like herself.
In 1969, she became a finalist in the Miss South Africa contest, and in 1970, the beauty got married, gave birth to Elon and two more Masks, and combined all this with working as a model and studying at the University of the Orange Free State in South Africa as a nutritionist.
He created and sold his own video game at age 12
Musk was interested in computers from an early age. He started computer programming at a young age of 9 years.. The guy got $ 500 when the source code for the BASIC-based game was published in the South African magazine PC and Office Technology. It was the first product Elon sold [1] .
1988: Emigration from South Africa to Canada
After Musk left South Africa in 1988, he sought work across Canada , tending vegetables and digging grain bins at a cousin's farm in Waldeck, then cutting logs with a chainsaw in Vancouver.
At one employment center, he asked about a job with a better salary. It was the cleaning of the sawmill's boiler room. According to Elon, the back-breaking $ 18 job involved wearing a terry cloth suit and shoveling out leftover materials in extremely hot rooms.
Internship at the Bank of Nova Scotia after a call to a top manager with an offer to dine
In Canada, he and his brother were looking for businessmen they would like to work for. They took turns making cold calls to ask if they could have lunch with them. One such businessman was Peter Nicholson, CEO of the Bank of Nova Scotia, who was fascinated by the boys' initiative.
Upon meeting them, he was so impressed with Elon that he offered him a summer internship at a bank for $14 an hour.
To make extra money, Musk sold and fixed dorm PCs.
At the University of Queens in Ontario, Musk sold and fixed the computers of his classmates. For example, if the computer did not boot properly or was infected with a virus, he would fix it.
He earned his tuition fees by turning his house into a nightclub.
After transferring to the University of Pennsylvania in 1992, Musk quickly put his entrepreneurial spirit to good use. He and his friend moved into a 10-bedroom house for a relatively inexpensive sum. During the week they studied, but on the weekends they turned the place into a nightclub. Elon, who never liked to drink, stayed sober during all the parties to keep the situation under control.
1995: Musk dropped out of graduate school at Stanford University to start his startup Zip2
Even though he got his Ph.D. from Stanford, he decided that the Internet had a much better chance of changing society. Elon teamed up with his brother Kimbal to develop Zip2, a company that provided maps and catalogs to online newspapers. They invested $28,000 from their father's bank account in their venture.
1999: Sale of a share in Zip2 for $22 million
Zip2 was bought by the computer company Compaq in 1999, which was then a leading supplier of PC systems. The deal for the sale of Zip2 amounted to 307 million dollars . Elon's share is $22 million.
Musk netted $165 million after his company X.com merged with PayPal and was bought by eBay. After selling Zip2, Elon invested $12 million to build X.com, a financial services company. In early 2000, X.com merged with its rival Confinity and was renamed PayPal.
As the majority shareholder, Musk was ousted from his position as CEO amid a protracted row on the board of directors. PayPal then accepted an offer to buy from eBay in July 2002. After the $1.5 billion deal went through, Musk walked away with $180 million.
2017: Status of $16.6 billion
In 2017, the fortune is equal to 16.6 billion dollars .
Tesla shares plunge after Musk smoked marijuana on live TV
On the evening of September 6, 2018, Elon Musk, CEO of Tesla Motors , smoked marijuana live, which caused the company's stock to collapse by 9% on the morning of September 7.
$20 million fine for defrauding company privatization
At the end of September 2018, the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) announced a pre-trial agreement concluded with Elon Musk. The businessman agreed to pay a $20 million fine and step down as chairman of the board of directors of Tesla Motors after cheating on the company's privatization. However, he will remain as CEO of the electric vehicle manufacturer .
In addition to these requirements, Tesla must appoint two new independent directors. Another point of the agreements involves the introduction of additional measures of control and monitoring of Musk's messages.
In August 2018, Elon Musk announced his readiness to buy back Tesla shares at a price of $420 per share, but later abandoned the idea. According to the SEC, when the entrepreneur wrote about the support of the buyout from the investor he found, he misled Tesla shareholders. The commission concluded that the head of Tesla had no reason to make such statements. In addition, Musk could manipulate the price of the company's shares by giving out false information.
The pre-trial settlement of the proceedings contributed to the rise in Tesla quotes by more than 18% on Monday, October 1, 2018. Thus, the shares won back the fall on Friday, September 28, when the SEC announced the initiation of a case against Elon Musk. The agreement of the head of Tesla to step down as chairman of the board of directors and pay a fine was announced after the close of the exchange on September 28, so the decision could not affect Tesla quotes that day.
Meanwhile, the board of directors of Tesla supported the head of the company in his confrontation with the authorities.
Tesla and the board of directors have full confidence in Elon, his integrity and his leadership of the company, which have led to the creation of the most successful American automobile company in more than a century, the official statement said.
Tesla refuses to pay Musk without increasing company value
Tesla unveiled in early 2018 a plan to pay remuneration to its CEO, Elon Musk. According to this plan, Musk will receive nothing if the company does not systematically increase its value. The remuneration to the CEO will be paid only when the capitalization of Tesla will overcome the next milestone [3] .
2019 .Elon Musk presented Belarusian President Lukashenko with an electric car
In early September 2019, President of Belarus Alexander Lukashenko said that Elon Musk gave him an electric car . US media: Elon Musk fooled investors and deceived taxpayers.
At the end of August 2019, Vanity Fair magazine published a long article in which the publication's interlocutors accuse Elon Musk of making empty promises, fooling investors and deceiving taxpayers.
One of the former employees of Tesla , who was laid off, contemptuously declared: "He is a yap." This employee repeatedly asked Musk where the $750 million in taxpayers that New York State gave his company under the Buffalo Billion program to revitalize the upstate and create new jobs went. "You gave us hope for change."
In public, Musk rarely mentions the Tesla plant in Buffalo, the controversial spin-off of his big brother. Tesla bought the plant's main tenant SolarCity for nearly $5 billion in 2016. The plan was to turn this plant into the largest solar cell manufacturing facility in the Western Hemisphere. SolarCity was to produce 10,000 solar panels per day and install them in homes and businesses across the country. To fulfill such a plan would require a lot of new jobs, which the state so badly needed.
However, the dreams did not come true. Although SolarCity has promised to create 1,460 new jobs at the plant, only 329 people are employed there. In addition, there were suspicions that Tesla acquired SolarCity at the expense of its own shareholders, and the subsidy from the taxpayers in the amount of $750 million has sunk into oblivion. Increasingly, there are questions about SolarCity products. For example, Walmart sued Tesla for breach of contract, alleging that solar panels installed in seven stores ignited, causing massive damage.
The fact is that the initial success of the company hid difficult realities. All of Musk's new ventures, including the SolarCity plant, required raising money from outside investors, often large banks, who were then entitled to the first part of the company's income.
As a result, SolarCity found itself in a financial hole. Musk's promises to turn this plant into a massive project were not backed up by real technology. On the SolarCity website, Musk predicted he would "achieve a breakthrough" in solar energy pricing through "significant economies of scale." Although the company's board was concerned, Musk had a reputation for being a manufacturing genius and was trusted.
Thanks to Musk's grandiose promises, the state has allocated $350 million for the construction of the plant and another $400 million for equipment. The company received a 10-year lease on the facility for just $1 a year. In exchange, SolarCity promised to hire at least 1,460 people for high-tech jobs at the plant and another 2,000 people for sales and installation of solar panels.
But SolarCity's debt skyrocketed, its bond yields bottomed out, and executives began to walk away from the doomed event. To keep the plant afloat, Musk bought $75 million worth of bonds from Tesla. He also used his reputation to shore up the plant's position in the market: in February 2016, when SolarCity's shares fell to a three-year low, Musk bought $10 million worth of shares, boosting their value by almost 25%.
As a result, realizing that SolarCity, which was run by Musk's relatives and friends, was in imminent collapse, he forced the Tesla board of directors to buy out the plant. However, along with the plant, Tesla acquired a lot of debt and an extremely weak production that could not cope with its tasks. Of course, if Musk hadn't bailed out SolarCity, his entire indebted empire would probably have collapsed. But the purchase weakened Tesla, while Musk continues to feed investors with promises.
Growth of a status in 3.5 times for 8 months to $100 billion
By the end of August 2020, Elon Musk's fortune had grown more than 3.5 times since the beginning of the year and for the first time exceeded $ 100 billion . As of August 27, Musk's net worth is estimated at $101 billion. At the same time, at the beginning of the year, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index (BBI), it was at around 27.4 billion.
No. 3 in the list of the richest people in the world: $120 billion
In November 2020, Elon Musk rose to third place in the list of the richest people in the world. Musk's net worth rose by $10.2 billion at the end of the trading day on November 18 to $120 billion.
Zuckerberg dropped to fourth place, losing just over $1 billion in one day. Now his capital is estimated at $103 billion.
Amazon founder Jeff Bezos ranks first on the Bloomberg Billionaires Index with a net worth of $183 billion. In second place is Microsoft founder Bill Gates with a net worth of $128 billion.
Moving from Silicon Valley to Texas
In early December 2020, Tesla CEO Elon Musk stated that he had moved from Silicon Valley to Texas . His move coincided with a massive exodus of startups from California due to the onset of the pandemic and the expansion of remote work opportunities .
Musk's move coincided with his company SpaceX developing its new Starship , and the new Tesla Gigafactory was being built in Austin.
In an interview with CNBC , Musk noted that his personal move would not affect the Tesla and SpaceX business so far, and the companies would retain their production base in Silicon Valley. Although Musk has spent a significant part of his life in California, in recent years he has often been critical of local laws and regulations. Before that, he spent a lot of time in Texas, since the Boring Company office and the SpaceX launch site are located in this state. In addition, Tesla is planning to build a new car plant in Texas, which is currently under development.
Hewlett Packard Enterprise also announced that it plans to move its headquarters from Silicon Valley to Texas, and earlier in 2020, Palantir Technologies moved its headquarters from California to Denver. Musk believes tech companies will continue to leave California:
" I believe that the influence of Silicon Valley will gradually decline."
The entrepreneur considers the statistics of California sad, because once more than twelve car assembly enterprises functioned in the state, and now only Tesla carries out such activities. The aerospace company SpaceX, founded by Musk, has also practically lost competitors in California.
Musk was probably scared off by California with high taxes and strict regulatory policies. So, in Texas there is no state income tax, and in California Musk's income, which has already become the second richest person in the world, would be taxed at a rate of 13.3%.
Texas is Tesla's third-largest U.S. market after California and Florida, despite years of opposition from car dealers to its direct-selling model.
Romance with Nicole Shanahan
In the fall of 2021, Elon Musk entered into a brief love affair with Sergey Brin 's wife , prompting the Google co-founder to file for divorce in early 2022 and ending a long friendship of billionaires. The Wall Street Journal (WSJ) became aware of this at the end of July 2022 from informed sources. At the time of publication, Musk is the richest businessman in the world according to Forbes , whose fortune is estimated at $253.4 billion. Brin is in 10th place ($89.9 billion).
Elon Musk is the richest man in the world
At the beginning of January 2021, Elon Musk became the richest person on Earth . By January 11, his fortune is estimated at $ 209 billion (given by the Bloomberg Billionaires Index) against $ 186 billion from the head of Amazon Jeff Bezos , who was previously the richest on the planet.
The head of Tesla and SpaceX took first place on January 7, and a few days later he consolidated his lead. Bill Gates closed the top 3 of the Bloomberg rating ($134 billion).The Bloomberg Billionaires Index is calculated in real time based on the stock prices of companies in which billionaires own shares. In total, the rating includes the 500 richest people in the world.
According to Forbes , Musk and Bezos are worth $189.7 billion and $185.7 billion by January 11, 2021, respectively.
Musk reacted skeptically to the news of his wealth leadership, tweeting that it was "strange and he needs to get back to work."
At the beginning of 2020, the fortune of Elon Musk was estimated at $ 27 billion. Over the year, the figure grew by about $ 150 billion (the increase turned out to be the largest of the fortune of Bill Gates, CNBC notes ), which was largely facilitated by the rapid rise in Tesla quotes - the shares of the electric car manufacturer over the year have risen in price by more than than 9 times. Musk became the richest person after Tesla's shares rose by another 8% on January 7, 2021, and the company's market capitalization reached more than $760 billion.
Sale of 10% of its Tesla stock for $14 billion
In December 2021, Elon Musk said that he had sold enough Tesla shares lately, thereby fulfilling a promise to sell 10% of his Tesla shareholding.
According to documents filed with the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) , on December 21, Musk exercised options to purchase 2 million shares and sold about 584 thousand securities. In total, Musk has sold more than $14 billion worth of stock since November 8.
2022. Purchase of 9.2% shares of Twitter worth $3 billion
On April 4, 2022, it became known that Elon Musk acquired a 9.2% stake in Twitter and became the platform's largest shareholder. The cost of this package is approximately $3 billion.
The richest man in the world. Wealth $255.1 billion
In April 2022, Elon Musk topped the Forbes world list for the first time, overtaking Jeff Bezos, who has been recognized as the richest man in the world for 4 years.
Over the time, Musk's fortune increased by$ 68 billion, to$ 219 billion, Bezos' fortune dropped by$ 6 billion, to$ 171 billion.
Plan to buy Twitter outright for $44 billion
On April 14, 2022, Twitter shares jumped 12% in premarket trading after Elon Musk offered to buy the company outright. The richest man in the world said he was ready to pay $54.2 per paper, which is almost 20% more than they cost at the close of previous trading.
On the same day, Saudi Prince Al-Waleed bin Talal, Twitter's largest shareholder, rejected Elon Musk's offer to buy the social network.
" I don't suppose Musk's offer is harmonious with the true value of Twitter given its unborn development," he wrote.
On April 25, 2022, it became known that Elon Musk persuaded the main holders of Twitter shares to sell the company. 100% of the shares will cost the billionaire $44 billion . Previously, Musk aggressively bought publicly traded shares, and Twitter, resisting a hostile takeover, used the so-called. "poison pill": the issue of additional shares, which are given at a deep discount to top management and key shareholders in order to dilute the share of the attacking party. However, as we can see, Musk was able to break the resistance.
During the 2020 US presidential election, the billionaire actively supported Donald Trump . Twitter, in turn, was one of the key platforms for the Trumpists. However, towards the end of the race, the administration of the service decided that Joe Biden was dearer to her, after reports of numerous falsifications in favor of Biden, both the then president himself and thousands of his supporters who replicated this information were banned.
In the case of buying a social network, it is also not about the economy, but about politics. After the deal closes, Twitter will become a private company whose management will answer only to Musk. The billionaire buys the most powerful media resource on the eve of the congressional elections and 2 years before the next presidential election. He probably regards the social network as a counterbalance to Facebook , which has finally turned into an appendage to the press service of the Democratic Party. The White House has already voiced its concerns about the deal.
Interestingly, Trump has no intention of returning to Twitter just yet. This is also understandable, firstly, Trump plans to return to the presidency, he does not want to fall into excessive dependence on Musk, who, although an ally, is playing his own games. Secondly, the deal is not closed yet and it has to be approved by the antimonopoly agency. And here difficulties may arise: antimonopolists can delay the process so that Musk becomes the full owner of the service only after 2024.
Stop buying Twitter due to the large number of fake accounts
On May 13, 2022, Elon Musk announced the suspension of the Twitter purchase process . Against the backdrop of this statement, the shares of the social network fell sharply in price - at the peak, the fall in quotations reached 26% in preliminary trading. Read more here .
Attracting $700 million investment from the company of a Russian businessman to buy Twitter
In June 2022, it became known that the investment company Vy Capital, which is owned by Russian businessman Alexander Tamas, allocated about $700 million to Elon Musk to buy the social network Twitter . Read more here .
Sale of shares of Tesla for $6.9 billion
Tesla author and CEO Elon Musk vended7.9 million shares of the company for a aggregate of$6.9 billion. From them it follows that Musk sold the shares from August 5 to 9, after the annual meeting of Tesla shareholders, which was held on August 4 in Austin, Texas ). This came known on August 10, 2022.
According to Bloomberg estimates , over the past ten months, the businessman has sold about $ 32 billion worth of Tesla shares. The previous time, at the end of April, then it was about a package of $ 8.4 billion. After that, the head of Tesla said that he no longer plans to sell securities .
As of August 9, 2022, the amount of Tesla papers owned by Musk is $155 million .
Personal life
Elon Musk has been dating American singer Grimes since 2018. In January 2020, the couple blazoned that Grimes was awaiting a child.
2020: Birth of the sixth child
On May 4, 2020, Elon Musk blazoned the birth of his son. The founder of SpaceX and Tesla Motors has become a father for the sixth time.
When the entrepreneur was asked about what he would name the child, Musk suggested the option "X Æ A-12 Musk".
This is the first child of Canadian singer Grimes (Claire Alice Boucher), with whom Musk has not formally married. Musk also has five children from his first marriage (which lasted eight years) to Justine Wilson.
The second time Musk married actress Talulah Riley, but this marriage did not last long. After that, Elon Musk had an affair with the libelous Amber Heard. True, these relationships did not stand the test of work. Despite this, they parted as friends.
As for Grimes, she posed for the digital cover of Garage Magazine in March 2020 and gave an interview where she talked about her latest album, pregnancy and the decision to have a baby. She promised that she would not stop working on new material even after the birth of her child.
In early 2020, Grimes posted nude photos on Twitter and Instagram that allegedly hinted at her pregnancy. The pictures caused a lot of excitement on the network.
At the beginning of May 2020, Elon Musk sent Tesla shares into a fall with one “tweet”. “ Tesla shares are on the fire and very high IMHO, ” he wrote. After this post, shares of the automaker fell 9.35% to $708.77. At the moment, their value dropped to $683.04.
That same evening, Musk posted several more controversial posts. He said that he was selling all his property and that he would not have his own house, and also demanded that people return their freedom and said that his girl friend, Rockstar Grimes, was angry with him.
Breakup with singer Grimes
Singer Grimes and Elon Musk broke up in September 2021, but maintained a warm relationship and see each other often.
Birth of twins
In early July 2022, Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk, and the richest man in the world, fathered twins in 2021. His mother is Shivon Zilis, director of special projects at the Neuralink company he founded.
According to Business Insider, the halves were born in November 2021. Siobhan Zilis has filed a petition to change the names of her two children so she can legally take the last name Musk and use Zilis as her middle name. On April 25, 2022, papers were filed with the court to change their names, based on the fact that Elon Musk recognized these children and gave his last name. In May 2022, approval was granted, making the twins the 9th and 10th children in the Musk clan.
Siobhan Zilis is Director of Operations and Special Projects at a neurotech company, Neuralink is involved in machine-assisted brain implantation of patients. For July, 2022 Elon Musk is the co-founder and the CEO of Neuralink.
Zilis and Musk have been working together since April 2016, when Siobhan Zilis became an advisor at OpenAI. Zilis also worked for both Tesla and Neuralink. At Neuralink, Zilis is developing an implantable computer chip for the human brain. Previously, she worked for Bloomberg venture fund , as well as for IBM .
Musk already has seven children as of July 2022: five with ex-wife Justine Wilson and two with ex-lover, singer Grimes. Moreover, the youngest daughter from Grimes was born a few weeks after the twins from Siobhan Zilis were born.
Ex-SpaceX employee accused Musk of sexual harassment and received $ 250 thousand. In May 2022, it became known that SpaceX paid a former employee $250,000 to settle a sexual harassment lawsuit filed against company founder Elon Musk in 2018.
The woman worked as a flight attendant in the SpaceX corporate jet fleet. According to the documents, she admitted to a friend that after she got the job, she was advised to get a license as a masseuse in order to massage Musk.
According to the victim, in 2016, during a Gulfstream G650ER flight, Musk invited her to a private cabin “for a full body massage.” When the woman arrived, Musk "was completely naked except for the lower half of his body, which was covered by a sheet." During the massage, the plaintiff said in a statement, Musk “exposed his genitals” and then “ touched her and offered to buy her a horse the woman is a horse rider. if she “does more,” meaning sexual intercourse."
The documents say the woman refused. After that, after some time, she noticed that the number of her work shifts was sharply reduced. The case never went to court because in November 2018, Musk, SpaceX, and the plaintiff entered into a severance pay agreement, according to which she was paid $250,000 in exchange for a promise not to sue.
Transgender daughter applies for name change
In mid-June 2022, American entrepreneur Elon Musk's transgender child Xavier Alexander Musk filed a name change petition with Los Angeles Superior Court . Upon reaching the age of 18, the businessman's child stated that he wanted to be a girl and refused to have anything in common with his biological father.
By June 2022, Elon Musk also has two children with singer Grimes. As of June 2022, Musk is dating Australian actress Natasha Bassett.
Twitter sues Elon Musk for refusing for buy the social network
Twitter , which owns the social network of the same name, has filed a lawsuit to force billionaire Elon Musk to complete a deal to buy the company. This became known on July 13, 2022.
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