Elon Musk is a South African-born Canadian-American businessman, inventor, and investor. He is the founder, CEO, CTO, and chief 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. Also that year, he was ranked 25th 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
When Elon’s net worth topped $70 billion for the first time on July 10, 2020, roughly $15 billion was attributable to the privately-held SpaceX and the remaining $55 billion was from Tesla. On July 13, 2020 when Elon’s net worth hit $80 billion for the first time, $15 billion came from SpaceX and $65 billion came from Tesla.
In August 2020 two important factors pushed Elon’s net worth above $90 billion for the first time. First, in mid-August Tesla shares hit an all-time high of $1,900. At that level, the company’s total market cap was $350 billion. Elon’s 20% stake was worth $70 billion. The second factor was an increased valuation of SpaceX which was officially confirmed on August 18, 2020. The fundraising round increased SpaceX’s private valuation to $46 billion, up from $36 billion. At a valuation of $46 billion, Elon’s 48% stake adds $22 billion in pre-tax wealth to Elon’s net worth.
Musk was born to a Canadian mother and South African father 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 dual bachelor’s degrees in economics and physics. He moved to California in 1995 to begin a Ph.D. in applied physics and material sciences at Stanford University, but dropped out after two days to pursue a business career. He co-founded Zip2, a web software company, which was acquired by Compaq for $307 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, became its product architect, and became its CEO in 2008. 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 envisioned an open-source high-speed transportation system known as the Hyperloop based on the concept of a vactrain.
