If you pay attention to science, space, technology, online payment, and more specifically, cryptocurrency, you should know the name Elon Musk. TechTrends aimed to bring everything you need to know about Elon Musk biography.
“Cryptocurrency is promising, but please invest with caution,” says Elon Musk, one of the most prominent visionary and entrepreneurial innovators of our time. Cryptocurrencies had a blockbuster year in 2021 in every aspect. Tech billionaire Musk has always shown his support for cryptocurrency; therefore, he is highly influential when it comes to crypto and investing. When he talks about this industry, the world pays attention to what he has to say. But before getting into Elon Musk being a strong proponent in the surge of crypto, let’s learn who he is, what his net worth is, and everything you might not know about him.
Elon Musk Biography
Elon Musk nationality is South African, and he is well-known for being the charismatic founder of Tesla Motors, Pay Pal, SpaceX, Neuralink, and The Boring Company.
Who Is Elon Musk?
Having been born on June 28, 1971, Elon Musk age is 50. He is a South African-born American entrepreneur and businessman. In 1999, he co-founded the electronic-payment firm X.com, which was later named PayPal. He then went on to form SpaceX in 2002 and Tesla Motors in 2003. In his late 20s, Musk managed to become a multimillionaire, and in 2012, he launched a rocket with SpaceX, which was the first commercial vehicle in the International Space Station. With his impressive success, people soon compared him with other visionary businessmen of his era, like Steve Jobs, Howard Hughes, Henry Ford, and Bill Gates. As per the reports, in 2021, Elon Musk net worth is $151 billion, and his wealth surpassed Jeff Bezos, making him the richest man in the world.
Now, let’s get into some details in Elon Musk biography as he was the man behind a string of companies.
Early Life and Family
Musk’s father, Errol Musk, is a South African engineer, while his mother, Maye Musk, is a Canadian model. Early in his childhood, Musk was eager about inventions and would often daydream about them so that his parents and doctors got concerned. When he was growing up, at one point, he was working five jobs to take care of his family while living with his brother Kimbal and sister Tosca in South Africa.
When his parents got divorced, the 10-year-old Musk started to show an interest in computers and went on to teach himself how to program. In line with his early talent in entrepreneurship, at the age of 12, he was able to sell his first software, which was a video game he created called Blaster.
During grade school, Musk was small in height and an introverted kid, which led to him being bullied until the age of 15. However, he underwent a growth spurt when he learned to take care of himself with karate and wrestling lessons.
Education
This part focuses on the education details of Elon Musk Biography. When Musk reached the age of 17, he moved to Canada to avoid compulsory military service and go to Queen’s University. That year, he got his Canadian citizenship as he assumed that getting American citizenship would be easier that way.
Musk moved to the United States to study business and physics at the University of Pennsylvania. After getting his undergraduate degree in economics, Musk decided to get his second bachelor’s degree in physics. “Physics is a good framework for thinking,” he would say later. “Boil things down to their fundamental truths and reason up from there.”
To pursue his study in energy physics for a Ph.D., he went to Stanford University in California. In the mid-90s, when the dot-com boom was rising, he made his move which was perfect timing as he left Stanford after two days to launch his first company Zip2 Corporation. In 2002, Musk became a citizen of the U.S.
Elon Musk relationship history
Wives and Children
The next part of Elon Musk biography is his relationship history, which reveals that he has been married twice. When Musk enrolled in Queen’s University in Kingston, Ontario, he met with Justine Wilson, and the duo tied the knot in 2002. They had six children together, but Elon Musk’s first-born son died after ten weeks due to SIDS, Sudden Infant Death Syndrome. Their other children are twins Griffin and Xavier, born in 2004, and triplets Kai, Saxon, and Damian, born in 2006. However, they got divorced in 2008. Musk married actress Talulah Riley two years later, but they did not last more than two years. After splitting up in 2012, they got back together in 2013. However, their relationship was officially over in 2016 when they filed a divorce.
Girlfriends
Elon Musk and Amber Heard started going out in 2016 when Musk finalized his divorce with his second wife, and so did Heard with Johnny Depp. Elon Musk and Amber Heard were accused of having an affair while Heard was still married. However, they both denied the accusations. However, the two didn’t stay a couple for long given their hectic schedules, and in 2017 they broke up. A few months later, they decided to patch things up only for another split one month later.
Another woman making it to Elon Musk relationship history is musician Grimes, and they started dating in 2018. In May, Musk’s girlfriend revealed that she decided to change her name to “c”, the symbol for the speed of light, with Musk’s encouragement. Despite the many criticisms the couple had received, they talked about the love they share for one another in a March 2019 feature in the Wall Street Journal Magazine.
In 2020, Grimes and Musk had a son, and they decided to name him “X Æ A-12.”. With the State of California rejecting a name with a number in it, they changed his name to “X Æ A-Xii.”
Elon Musk Career History
Getting deeper into Elon Musk Biography, we can see his many notable accomplishments. As mentioned earlier in the article, during the rise of the Internet, Musk came up with entrepreneurial visions. He decided to leave the Ph.D. program at Stanford University within two days. The followings are companies he founded or bought.
Zip2 Corporation
The first thing to mark in Elon Musk career history is launching his first company Zip2 Corporation in 1995 with his younger brother Kimbal beside him. Zip2 was a web software company helping newspapers with an online city guide. In 1999, Compaq’s AltaVista web search engine acquired Zip2 for $340 million. With the money he got from the Zip2 buyout, he created X.com, which aimed to change the future of banking. This was one of the first accomplishments in Elon Musk Biography.
PayPal
X.com and Confinity, a money transfer firm, merged and created the well-known PayPal. In 2002, eBay bought PayPal for $1.5 billion, helping Musk earn his first billion. However, Musk sold it with $180 million in stock.
SpaceX
Musk has always thought that humanity should be multiplanet species, and the significant expenses behind rocket launchers have dissatisfied him. Therefore, he founded his third company, Space Exploration Technologies Corporation, known as SpaceX. His purpose was to make spacecraft for commercial space travel that was affordable. He established the company as well as he could, and NASA offered them a contract to control cargo transport for the International Space Station. The Falcon 1, launched in 2006, and the larger Falcon 9, launched in 2010, were its first two rockets. The third one, the Falcon Heavy, launched in 2018, was created in a way that it could carry 53,000 kg to orbit that was not only twice as much as its biggest competitor called Delta IV Heavy, but it also was one-third less expensive.
SpaceX went on to develop the Dragon spacecraft that can carry supplies to the ISS. Dragon is capable of carrying seven astronauts. In 2020, it had a crewed flight to the ISS with astronauts Doug Hurley and Robert Behnken on board. In order to lessen the money used for creating rockets, Musk developed a reusable one that could lift off and then come back. SpaceX’s Grasshopper rocket went on some test flights to test this technology and whether it would work.
Tesla
Another main accomplishment in Elon Musk career history is Tesla. Musk had been eager to make electric cars a possibility. In 2004, he became the co-founder, CEO, and architect at Tesla Motors. It is yet another accomplishment highlighted in Elon Musk Biography. The Roadster, Tesla’s first car, was introduced two years later. It was able to go 245miles (394 km) on only one single charge. In addition, what made it interesting was that it was a sports car. It was capable of accelerating from 0 to 60 miles per hour in 3.7 seconds. Tesla earned $226 million during its first public offering in 2010. After that, they developed the Model S sedan, Model X luxury SUV, Model 3, Semi Truck, and Model Y.
SolarCity
Musk was long trying to make progress in sustainable energy and products for a more extensive consumer base. In 2016, he successfully combined his electric car and solar energy companies with a $2.6 billion deal. They announced that Tesla purchased SolarCity corporation, which his cousins founded in 2006.
“Solar and storage are at their best when they’re combined. As one company, Tesla (storage) and SolarCity (solar) can create fully integrated residential, commercial and grid-scale products. This can improve the way that energy is generated, stored and consumed,” read a statement on Tesla’s website about the deal.
Neuralink
This corporation developed implantable Brain-Machine Interfaces (BMIs), and Elon Musk co-founded and launched it in 2016. It hired many neuroscientists from different universities. It is working on a “sewing machine-like” device capable of implanting thin threads into the brain, making a system able to read data.
The Boring Company
Musk, whose innovative thirst didn’t seem to be near finished, launched The Boring Company in 2017. It contributed to tunnel boring and building to decrease street traffic. His test dig started in Los Angeles on the SpaceX property.
Elon Musk Net worth
In comparison with other billionaires, Musk became rich in a different way. He had not just one but several amazing ideas, and instead of making a bunch of safe investments, he took a lot of risks.
With $277 billion, as of December 29, 2021, Elon Musk net worth has made him the richest man on the planet, who had briefly seen his net worth cross $300 billion. This is one of the facts making Elon Musk biography quite fascinating.
Elon Musk and Cryptocurrency
Now we get into the essential part of Elon Musk biography, which is about his influence on the cryptocurrency market. The Tesla billionaire has both boosted and crashed the Bitcoin, Ethereum, and Dogecoin prices in 2021
The tech multibillionaire has often expressed his support for crypto, tweeting about virtual coins. When he does that, everyone in the market pays attention as he has amassed a large fanbase there with his Twitter.
The first time the name Elon Musk and Cryptocurrency came together was in 2014 when they asked him to share his idea on crypto. He replied: “Well, now that Satoshi Nakamoto has been discovered, I guess it is case closed.” Here was when speculations suggested that he may be Satoshi Nakamoto, who introduced Bitcoin in an article in 2008. However, this claim was later denied by the actual man, whose name is Dorian Nakamoto.
Later that year, Musk first called Bitcoin “probably a good thing” when asked about it. However, he believed it would end up “primarily a means of doing illegal transactions.”
Elon Musk’s relationship with this world has been complicated over the years, just like the crypto market itself. There were some significant ups and downs, but events turned for the better in 2019. Musk began considering cryptocurrencies more seriously when it came to both technology and business models.
In February 2019, Musk referred to Bitcoin structure as “quite brilliant,” also stating that “there’s some merit to Ethereum.”
About Dogecoin, it was April 2019 when Elon Musk mentioned its name for the first time on Twitter: “Dogecoin might be my fav cryptocurrency. It’s pretty cool.” Having said that, Dogecoin’s price raised from $0.002 on April 1 to $0.004 on April 4.
Musk continued with his flirtatious tweeting about DOGE in 2020 and is doing so up to now. Each of his posts is provoking or influential in significant swings in price.
Final Thoughts
To sum up Elon Musk biography, he is a man full of surprises. As he undoubtedly continues to innovate, the list of the things he’ll influence will only grow. As his famous quote says: “A failure is an option; if things are not failing, you are not innovating enough.”