Even before the recent Twitter takeover, Elon Musk has been the talk of the town for a long time now. His great wealth, entrepreneurial abilities, establishment and takeover of multibillion companies, and more, the internet and journals have all been gushing over Elon Musk. Today, Edureify brings to you some insights about Elon Musk, the man of the hour.
Childhood and Early Life
Elon Reeve Musk was born on June 28, 1971, in one of the three capital cities of South Africa, Pretoria. Elon is the eldest of the three siblings. After his parent’s separation, he mostly lived with his father, and the experience of which was not very good for him.
At the age of 17, to avoid doing compulsory military service in South Africa, Musk moved to Canada. He later obtained Canadian citizenship through his mother. Once there, he enrolled in Queen’s University in Kingston, Ontario. It is here that he met his future wife, Justine Wilson. In 2008 the couple got divorced after having 5 sons twins and triplets.
After two years in Kingston, Musk transferred to the University of Pennsylvania. Once here, he took two majors and then graduated with a Bachelor of Science in Physics and another Bachelor of Arts in Economics from Wharton School.
Beginning of his accomplishments
Musk was 24 when he moved to California to pursue his Ph.D. in applied physics at Stanford University. Given the prodigy that he is, Musk left the Ph.D. program right after two days because of his entrepreneurial ideas. It was around this time that the Internet was exploding and the Silicon Valley was booming. From here on began the self-making and establishment journey of Musk.
X.com
In 1995, Musk began a web software company Zip2. With $28,000 and his youngest brother Kimbal by his side, the idea behind the company was to help newspapers develop online city guides. In 1999, Compaq’s AltaVista web search engine acquired Zip2 in a deal worth $340 million. Musk later used the buyout money of Zip2 to create X.com which was intended to shape the future of banking.
X.com was later merged with a money transfer firm called Confinity, and the new company is now known as PayPal. Before eBay bought the company for $1.5 Billion, Musk was removed from the company. He left with a $180 million worth of stock.
Tesla
In 2004, Musk joined engineers Marc Tarpenning and Martin Eberhard to aid run Tesla Motors. Musk played an integral part in designing the Tesla Roadster, an electric car. In 2007, Musk took over the position of CEO of the company and product architect after ousting Eberhard. Ever since the takeover, Tesla has become one of the world’s most popular and coveted car brands under Elon Musk’s watchful eyes.
SpaceX
With the proceeds of PayPal, Musk founded Space Exploration Technologies Corporation, commonly known as SpaceX. The platform is an interstellar travel company. SpaceX helped Musk land several high-profile contracts with NASA and the U.S Air Force to design rockets and conduct military missions. With SpaceX’s growth and establishment, Musk has been very outspoken about his plans to send astronauts to Mars by 2025 in a collaborative effort with NASA.
Read the daily current affairs to know more about such developments.
The Twitter Takeover
Since the beginning of 2022, Musk had bought major shares of the popular social media platform, Twitter. With his vocal tweets and powerful negotiation skills, Musk took over the platform on April 25th, 2022 at a bid of $44 billion.
Indeed, Elon Musk’s journey is an inspiration for many. A self-made man with highly intellectual and entrepreneurial skills, Musk is through and through the man of the hour.
To know more about such aspiring people, subscribe to Edureify.
