Elon Musk is an inventor, businessman and life-changing person. Elon Musk: biography, photo. What did Elon Musk invent? Elon musk biography
Canadian-American inventor, engineer, entrepreneur and investor Elon Musk is not only the real image of Tony Stark from the movie "Iron Man". This brilliant inventor and leader managed to bring the fantastic future closer and accelerate the path to it.
Brief biography of Elon Musk
Elon Musk (full name - Elon (Elon) Reeves Musk) was born June 28, 1971 in Pretoria, South Africa. His father - Errol Musk, African engineer and entrepreneur. His mother - May Haldman, a popular Canadian nutritionist.
Young programmer
At the age of ten, Elon received his first computer as a gift and learned to program on it. At the age of 12 he sold his first program for $ 500 - a video game called Blast star, in which the player fired a laser cannon at the ranks of aliens.
Moving to Canada
After graduating from high school in South Africa, Elon Musk decides to leave for Canada, contrary to the opinion of his parents. For the first time he had money for an independent life - he already at that time successfully invested in pharmaceuticals.
Elon settled in Canada with his mother's relatives in 1989... Having received Canadian citizenship, Elon Musk goes to Montreal, where at first, he agrees to any job and for almost a year teeters on the brink of poverty.
Moving to the USA
In 1992 Elon Reeves Musk finally realizes his dream and moves to the United States, receiving a scholarship to study at the University of Pennsylvania. The next year he received his bachelor's degree in business, but decided to stay at the university for one more year to obtain a bachelor's degree in physics.
Main question
Each person in life has a number of questions about his destiny and the future of all mankind. Elon Musk asked the same question. And in the end I decided that the future of humanity will be influenced by:
... the Internet, the transition to renewable energy sources
and the resettlement of people to other planets ...
He decided to try to contribute in each of these directions. But first he needed money.
Zip2 success
In 1995, Musk founded the company with his brother. Zip2, which specialized in software for news companies. In 1999, Zip2 was acquired Compaq for $ 308 million. Elon received 7% of the sale amount - $ 22 million.
At the time of the company's creation, the global web was developing rapidly, but no one has yet been able to really make money on the Internet.Zip2 was one of the first to do this.
X.com and PayPal
After the sale of the first company, Elon Musk decides to master electronic payments and creates his own startup X.com... In March 2000, X.com merged with a competing company on a parity basis. Confinity Peter Thiel and Max Levchin.
This merger subsequently leads to the emergence of the now known payment system - PayPal... In 2002, a popular service buys an eBay online auction for $ 1.5 billion... Elon received $ 180 million from the deal.
Investing and managing Tesla Motors
In 2004, Elon, who has cash after the PayPal sale, invests $ 70 million in the project TeslaMotors... The company attracted his attention by developing electric vehicles. Alternative energy sources were in the spirit of Musk's principles.
The main driver of Tesla's financial success is a luxury sedan Model S with a 426 km battery charge, striking design and unique speed characteristics (acceleration to 96 km / h in 3.9 s). The model was launched in mass production at a price of $ 69,900 and received a high rating in the Consumer Reports rating.
SpaceX founded
An ambitious entrepreneur and inventor, at the turn of the millennium, thought about creating a flying ship that could reuse for people traveling to space, to other planets.
At the moment when Elon Musk's financial condition increased, he decided to start making this dream come true. His brainchild in this area was the company Spacex(full name - Space Exploration Technologies Company). The company was founded in 2002.
He invested more than $ 100 million in the project. The entrepreneur considered the cost of proposals on the market - from $ 15 million for a rocket in Russia to $ 65 million in the United States - to be multiply overestimated. That is why he decided to build his own spacecraft.
SpaceX's first successes
Despite all the difficulties and setbacks, SpaceX has managed to create two types of potentially reusable launch vehicles: Falcon 1 and Falcon 9 as well as a reusable spacecraft Dragon.
Contract with NASA
December 2008 NASA has signed a contract with the company in the amount of $ 1.6 billion for 12 launches of the Falcon 9 carrier and the Dragon spacecraft to the ISS, as a replacement for ships Space shuttle after the termination of their launch program in 2011.
Expedition to Mars
For Elon Musk, all the current achievements of SpaceX are just preparation for the realization of the main dream - expeditions to Mars... Until the end of his life, the billionaire wants to become a pioneer colonizer of the "red" planet. To do this, SpaceX is developing a project Mars Colonial Transporter(MCP).
Musk's engineers are working on innovative rocket engines and spaceships to transport people from Earth to Mars. An ambitious entrepreneur announced that he will carry out his expedition in 2020-25.
On the basis of Falcon, it is planned to create a Grasshoper rocket that can land vertically, and the second generation of Dragon is technically already capable of reaching Mars, says Musk.
Using the example of Elon Musk, one can trace the path of a person, who made childhood dreams come true, because many people in childhood wanted to fly into space, and soon this can be done.
Business has come to astronautics, and many will benefit from this, because space tourism will soon become a reality, also thanks to Elon Musk.
Elon Musk is an American entrepreneur and engineer. He took part in the creation of the PayPal payment system, which was sold to EBay in 2002 for $ 1.5 billion. Chairman of the Board of Directors of SolarCity and Tesla Motors. According to Forbes, Musk is worth $ 2.4 billion.
short biography
Musk was born in Pretoria in 1971. The place where Elon Musk was born is an administratively developed scientific city. His father was an engineer and his mother, a former Canadian model who later worked as a nutritionist, lived there. The family had three children.
At the age of 10, Musk is given his first computer, and at the age of 12 he sells his first game for $ 500. The teenager invests the money in a pharmaceutical company, which he followed in the newspapers. He later sold the shares for several thousand dollars. At the age of 17, Musk moved to Canada with this money, where he learned what poverty is. For example, he tried to live on $ 1 a day without getting an upset stomach.
In 1992, Musk moved to the United States and entered the University of Pennsylvania, where he studied physics and business. He writes his doctorate at Stanford University, but does not attend lectures. Together with his student friends, the future entrepreneur founds the Zip2 company. In 1999, it was bought by Compaq Computer for $ 307 million, of which Musk receives $ 20 million. With this he buys a McLaren F1 jet and moves to a condominium.
Solar power plant for everyone
Elon Musk, whose biography is full of amazing events, founded X.com in 1999. In 2001, the company was renamed PayPal, which was sold a year later for $ 1.5 billion. The entrepreneur owned 11.7% of the shares.
In 2006, Musk opens SolarCity, a company he still owns and engineer. The company is engaged in the installation of small power plants for personal use on the roofs of houses and companies. However, the main idea is not to create power plants on our own, but to lease them on a long-term basis. The client can calculate the benefits of using such a power plant and receives a personal solar power plant almost free of charge. The buyers are usually ordinary Americans.
Elon Musk, whose biography contains both ups and downs, got to the point with an innovative idea. Nowadays, the company is growing faster than its competitors. It has more than 30 US operations centers, a new customer every five minutes, and a huge queue of solar-powered customers. SolarCity has already installed such panels in tens of thousands of buildings and is considered the largest company in this segment.
The path to colonization of Mars
Elon Musk, whose biography teaches not to give up, opens the rocket company SpaceX in 2002, the main goal of which is to reduce the cost of space flights and the company has already developed several space rockets and the Dragon spacecraft.
In 2010, Dragon was the first spacecraft to be successfully launched, placed into orbit, and returned. Later, in 2015, it became the first spacecraft docked to the International Space Station.
In 2006, the company won the NASA competition for the delivery of cargo to space stations and received a prize fund of $ 278 million. At the moment, five successful flights have already been completed.
Other achievements and awards
In 2010, Tesla Motors, which has never shown a profit since its inception, was put up for public sale. However, the offer turned out to be so successful that on the first day of trading, the share price skyrocketed by 41%. Forbes named them the most profitable stock of the year.
Many awards have been given for being invented by Elon Musk. In 2008, Musk was named one of the 75 most influential people of the year by Esquire magazine. In 2011 he received the Heinlein Prize for Excellence in Space Commercialization. In the same year, Forbes added him to the list of 20 Most Influential Young CEOs.
Elon Musk is the second businessman to have created three companies worth more than $ 1 billion. Many have tried to repeat this success. It seems that the entrepreneur lives by different rules. However, the businessman does not hide the fact that there are several simple points that he follows.
Ask the right questions
As a teenager, Musk read a lot of philosophical and religious literature. However, he was most influenced by The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. According to the entrepreneur, he realized that he needed to ask the right questions. When Musk entered college, he wondered exactly how he wanted to influence the fate of humanity. There he decided that he would be engaged in the resettlement of people from Earth to other planets. The businessman decided that he would do his best to contribute to this industry. And he started looking for money.
Dissect reality
Elon Musk, whose biography teaches us not to be like everyone else, believes that innovation is hampered by the ability of people to think in analogies. Therefore, they do not create something new, but try to improve the existing one. The entrepreneur believes that it is necessary to dissect reality to the ground and create something fundamentally different.
For example, space seems out of reach for business. To master it, you need a huge budget. However, Musk is confident that costs can be greatly reduced if a new flight goal is set. Therefore, he founded SpaceX, which aims to colonize. The businessman says that if you need to relocate the population of the Earth to another planet, you need to do it economically.
I don’t think he’s lying, but I don’t believe him.
In 2012, Musk expressed confidence that all cars would be electric in a few decades. He started working in this direction and in 2008 released the first electric car, which went into mass production. Analysts, however, are skeptical about Musk's claim that the entrepreneur is not at all embarrassed.
The mask is often compared to Steve Jobs. The latter used the term "reality distortion field", convincing himself and others that the impossible is possible. Musk's colleagues assure that he selects the facts so that they correspond to his reality. Many people say that the entrepreneur does not seem to be lying, but it is impossible to believe him.
His company Tesla Motors has often found itself on the brink of bankruptcy, although it has achieved admirable success in Elon Musk's business. The biography of Tesla, the creator, shows that the entrepreneur tried in every way to keep the company afloat. Things got better over time. According to the businessman, the world is too dependent on oil. This is driving climate change, and Musk believes using electricity will fix the situation.
One of the company's accomplishments is Gemeral Motors' decision to create the Chevy Volt. It is a small car with electric charging capability. In electric vehicle mode, it can travel 65 km. At the time of graduation, 33 thousand people signed up to buy this car.
Elon Musk, whose photos are always cheerful, has become successful, embodying ideas that seem crazy at first glance. He not only became independent and provided for his family, but also went down in history. The entrepreneur strives to change life for the better and works on projects that can save humanity in the future.
At the moment, however, he is pleased that with his help many changes have occurred in the field of energy, automotive and rocketry.
Musk even acted in films. In 2008, the film "Iron Man" was released, the prototype of which was Elon Musk. Later, in 2013, he played a small role in Machete Kills, but his name is not in the credits. He also played himself in episode 9 of season 9 of The Big Bang Theory.
The Western world is supported by active, lively, smart, a little adventurous people who create their own business. And even if there were hundreds of losers for one successful businessman, it was they who became the engine and brand of the West. And one of them was Elon Musk.
Childhood
Elon Musk's biography is very similar to similar stories about the lives of the same businessmen, politicians, famous actors and scientists. Moreover, often all these professions were combined in the same people. Musk is not Native American - he was born in Pretoria, South Africa in the early seventies. The city in which Elon Musk was born was formed as the administrative capital of the country, which was also considered a scientific center. His parents worked there - dad (an engineer by profession) and mom - in their youth, a Canadian model, and then a nutritionist. In the family, besides Elon, two more children grew up.
At ten years old, Elon was handed the first computer, which allowed him to actively engage in new technologies. At the age of twelve, he managed to realize his first computer game for $ 500. The teenager invested the proceeds in a pharmaceutical company and after a while earned several times more for shares. With this money, Musk moved to Canada at the age of 17. There he learns a new life, including learning what poverty is. So, he learned to exist on $ 1 a day, fortunately, without getting an illness of the alimentary tract.
Formation of a worldview
In his youth, Musk literally devoured philosophical and religious books. But the most significant impact on him was made by science fiction, for example, the book "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy." According to the future businessman, it was then that he decided that it was necessary, first of all, to be able to ask the right questions. And when he got a job in college, he already understood how to influence the development of civilization - he would work on resettlement of earthlings to new planets. The entrepreneur set himself the task of making science fiction real in order to contribute to the development of the space industry. And he began to look for funds.
First steps in business
In the early nineties, Musk changes his place of residence and stops in the United States, where he gets a job at the University of Pennsylvania and begins to study such opposite subjects as physics and business. He writes his doctoral dissertation at Stanford University, but does not attend classes. Together with his fellow students like him, Musk creates the firm Zip2. At the end of the twentieth century, this campaign was bought by Compaq Computer for $ 307 million, of which the young man received $ 20 million. With this money, he got a McLaren F1 plane and moved to elite housing.
From X.com to SolarCity
The businessman did not stay still. Elon Musk, whose biography is full of a variety of, often just wonderful, phenomena, creates a new company at the end of the twentieth century immediately after he sold the previous one. X.com was successful at first, but then there were problems. A couple of years later, the company was renamed PayPal, merging with the latter.
Both structures worked on the development of individual electronic money transfers via e-mail, and the result of the commercial transaction was the merger of payment systems. In practice, however, this did not work out that way. Musk stood firm behind the X.com brand without renaming it PayPal. Colleagues thought differently. This led to a split in the leadership of the campaign.
The development of events ended with the departure of Musk by decision of the board of directors. But the very idea of Elon to form a new company by merging the two firms, together with the rapid development of a computerized online payment system, contributed to the growth of the company's image in record time. The firm has already been irrevocably converted to PayPal. Significant changes and growth in value made it possible to place the securities on the exchange in early 2002. In the same year, PayPal was acquired by eBay for $ 1.5 billion. Given that Musk owned 11.7% of the firm, he received $ 175 million.
New business
In 2006, Musk formalized SolarCity, the firm he still owns and maintains. This organization is working to create compact power plants for individual use on the roofs of buildings. But the leading principle was not to build power plants for the owners of houses on their own, but to get them on lease for a long period. The buyer can himself analyze the commercial benefits of the implementation of such a project, because he buys his individual solar power plant for a very low price. Ordinary Americans usually become their masters. The business turned out to be successful.
But Elon Musk himself was already moving towards other projects.
Happy end American style
Here you need to make a short pause. Elon Musk, whose biography has both turbulent success and fiasco, has been very lucky when it comes to innovative ideas. In recent years, his firm has been doing better than its rivals. In the structure of more than 30 operating centers in the United States, another client comes in every five minutes, and there is a large queue of those who wish to work with solar energy ahead. SolarCity has already installed similar equipment in more than tens of thousands of homes and is now ranked as one of the largest.
Hence, serious shifts in the fate of Musk himself. Elon Musk's fortune is estimated at $ 10.7 billion on the Forbs list of billionaires in 2016.
In December of the same year, he was among the members of the Presidential Forum on Strategy and Policy under President Trump, a small group of 16 American businessmen assembled to develop solutions for the 45th President of the United States on economic issues.
Elon Musk has received a large number of awards during his not yet very long life for what he was able to invent. In 2008, he was named the 75 Most Significant People of the Year by Esquire magazine. In 2011, the businessman accepts the Heinlein Prize for great achievements in the commercialization of space. At the same time, Forbes included him in the list of the 20 most influential young big businessmen.
Elon Musk was the second entrepreneur to form three firms worth over $ 1 billion each. After that, a large number of businessmen wanted to reproduce such a success. However, they were in for a fiasco. It seems that the businessman worked under different laws. Or he was born under the wing of fortune.
Spacewalk
Elon Musk, whose biography shows that in any case it is impossible to stop, created a rocket company in 2002. At the same time, it was immediately announced that the main task was to reduce the cost of space flights and the exploration of Mars. Elon Musk (SpaceX - his brainchild) is defined as a private author, manufacturer of a number of launch vehicles and a commercial operator of space structures.
And success awaited him again. In the same year, NASA entered into a $ 1.6 billion contract with the company for 12 launches of the Falcon 9 rocket and the Dragon spacecraft to the International Space Station to replace obsolete carriers.
Such great interest was aroused, according to the recollections of Elon himself, not only by the desire for profit, but also by the ideas of major science fiction writers, in particular, Isaac Asimov's novels with his ideas for the widespread development of the universe. The businessman believed that the expansion of the possessions of mankind on several planets would be a good defense against the danger of the elimination of civilization.
To date, SpaceX has made a number of space rockets and the Dragon spacecraft. In 2010, it turned out to be the first spacecraft to be successfully launched, launched into orbit, and returned. Later, in 2015, it was the first spacecraft to join the ISS.
In 2006, Musk's firm managed to take first place in the NASA competition for grants for space objects and earned $ 278 million from this. Five successful flights have already been completed.
Tesla
Elon Musk's name is forever associated with another company - Tesla Motors. In 2010, the shares of the firm, which never showed normal returns, were put up for public sale. And the moment was so successful that at once the price of the shares in the auction rose by 41%. Forbes dubbed them the most profitable stocks of the year.
In 2012, Musk expressed confidence that in half a century all cars will be electric. He began to work on this line, and in 2008 Elon Musk still created the Tesla Roadster - this is the first electric car put into mass production.
Business plan
The mask is often likened to Steve Jobs. He used the phrase "the field of distortion of reality", convincing everyone that the impossible is possible. Musk's comrades at work claim that he collects material so that technology evolves within the framework of his reality.
His company Tesla Motors was often on the verge of ruin, although Elon Musk himself achieved great results in business. The biography of Tesla, the creator, makes it clear that the businessman by all means tried to keep the company afloat. The situation has improved over the years.
A little about personal
Elon Musk's personal life is not original compared to other famous people. The first wife, Justin Musk, studied with Elon at the same university in Canada. Their marriage took place in 2000, they have five sons. But in the fall of 2008, the couple decided to separate, since Musk began dating English actress Taluda Riley. The second marriage took place in 2010 and was unsuccessful - the couple divorced several times, then converged again, until in 2016 they broke up forever.
At the moment, Elon Musk is dating American actress Amber Heard.
Gotta live differently
Elon Musk, whose biography teaches us to constantly go out of the ordinary, believes that innovation is hampered by the ability of people to think in analogies. Therefore, they do not organize fresh ideas, but try to improve the existing one. The businessman believes that it is necessary to expand reality and organize something fundamentally opposite.
By the way, space seems to be unrealistic for business. It takes a lot of money to implement projects in this area. But Musk is convinced that costs can be drastically reduced by defining a new mission for flights. Because of this, he formed SpaceX, whose goal is to colonize planets. The entrepreneur notes that when it is necessary to relocate the people of the Earth to another planet, it must be done inexpensively.
It's hard to live as an innovator
This is what Elon Musk is all about. One of the firm's successes is General Motors' decision to develop the Chevy Volt. It is a small machine with electrical charging potential. At the level of an electric car, it is able to drive 65 km. During the creation period, 33 thousand people wanted to buy a car.
Elon Musk, whose plans are always optimistic, became successful by implementing seemingly insane ideas. However, he not only became a self-sufficient person, fed his family, he also went down in history. A businessman seeks to improve his life and therefore works on projects that in the coming years will give an opportunity for humanity to develop.
Childhood
The eldest son in the family.
The younger brother, Kimbal, born in 1972, became a millionaire. Owner of The Kitchen, a health food chain. Creator of the free educational program Learning Gardens.
Sister Tosca was born in 1974 and is known as a successful producer, film director, screenwriter and actress.
He spent his childhood and adolescence in South Africa, the family was wealthy.
Grew up as a closed, uncommunicative and awkward boy, who did not like sports activities and ordinary children's entertainment, he was known as a typical "nerd", a classic know-it-all. Curiosity and energy were combined in him with some lethargy and the ability to fully concentrate on solving one problem, fenced off from the world. He was read by comics, science fiction, popular science works, encyclopedias. The second hobby is computers and computer games, programming.
He did not surpass his classmates in school subjects - the disciplines studied at school did not arouse his interest. I changed several schools during my studies.
After graduating from high school, Elon Musk studied physics and mechanical engineering for 5 months at the University of Pretoria. In 1988, at the age of 17, he left the university and left South Africa to live with his mother's relatives in Montreal, Canada. Partly so as not to serve in the South African army and not to participate in the activities of the apartheid regime, but the main thing is to obtain Canadian citizenship and then get to Silicon Valley, emigrate to the United States, which seemed to him a country of endless opportunities for entrepreneurship, ideal for the implementation of his ideas.
Parents
Mother - Maye Musk, Haldeman nee, was born in 1948 in Canada. Canadian-British model, practicing nutritionist - expert in health and nutrition, holds a master's degree.
Father - Errol Musk (Errol Graham Musk), Englishman, native of South Africa, born in 1946. Businessman, civil engineer. A person who is thorough in the depth of knowledge. By nature, shrewd, tough and demanding, at times there was "too much." Strict, one might say - harsh, in matters of raising children. He was rich enough: the approximate level of wealth was at least 20 million US dollars. Errol apparently did not want his children to grow up spoiled. In a republic with a racially segregated system, with black workers, servants and the idle life of the white population, this could have happened very easily. Became quite wealthy through his own engineering and consulting practice, as well as the development of real estate and infrastructure related to the extraction of minerals and natural resources. Errol at one time also received a share in the emerald mine (near Lake Tanganyika, Zambia). He owned thoroughbred horses, a yacht, several residential buildings. He was fond of sailing and piloting. He retired early.
The parents had known each other since adolescence, they lived in Pretoria in the same area. In the relationship of parents, and later in the family, the father played a dominant role. Having been married for 9 years, they divorced in 1980.
Education
In 1989 in Canada he entered the University (Queen's University, Kingston, Ontario). He received a scholarship from the University of Pennsylvania, an Ivy League Top 20, and moved to the United States in 1992 to pursue a BA in Economics and Physics. In 1995, Elon came to Stanford (Palo Alto, California) to continue his studies and perform scientific qualification work in applied physics, however, he soon dropped out. Having chosen the Internet, alternative energy and space, all went into entrepreneurial projects.
A family
He was married several times. Has 5 sons. She actively participates in their upbringing.
Elon met Justin Wilson at Kingston University. She subsequently became a writer. They got married in 2000. After 8 years, Elon filed for divorce, and in June 2008 the divorce proceedings ended. I. Musk considered the divorce as another business project and defended the most financially secure result for himself, sought to minimize spending. And this despite the fact that Justin gave birth to Mask of 6 sons.
In the period from 2010 to 2016. He was twice married to Talulah Riley, a famous British actress. The story of love relationships and partings is not easy. In September 2010, there was the first wedding ceremony, in 2012 - their first divorce. In the summer of 2013 - remarriage. In December 2014, Musk began divorce proceedings, but then withdrew the documents. In March 2016, Talulah filed for divorce, and in October the divorce took place.
Entrepreneurship Elon Musk
In 1995, together with Kimbel Musk, he created Zip2, specializing in writing software and maintaining websites for newspaper publishing.
X.com, a 1999 startup focused on providing online financial services and direct payment via email, became the next Internet project. A year later, there was a merger with a competitor company Confinity - the management company PayPal. By the time EBay acquired PayPal in 2002, Elon Musk owned almost 12% of PayPal.
In June 2002, Elon Musk founded Space Exploration Technologies (SpaceX, Hawthorne, California), whose activities are aimed at protecting humanity as a biological species and realizing the dream of mastering Mars and populating a distant planet with people. Company objectives:
- development and production of fully reusable launch vehicles for transporting goods to the international space station, as well as spaceships for interplanetary transport of people;
- increasing the reliability and reducing the cost of human space flights;
- to ensure the possibility of human settlement on the red planet.
Since 2003, Elon Musk is a co-founder of the company, director, designer, chairman of the board of directors of Tesla Motors. In February 2017, Tesla Motors Inc., an electric vehicle manufacturer, announced the name change to Tesla Inc., due to the company's desire to be associated with the production of more than electric vehicles.
Since 2006, Elon Musk has been a co-founder and shareholder of SolarCity, which places solar panels on the roofs of residential buildings, which in ten years has become the 2nd largest supplier of these energy systems in the United States.
Achievements
He became a millionaire at the age of 28: his first company, Zip2, was sold 4 years after its foundation for about $ 350 million, and Musk's share was almost $ 22 million.
Over the course of seven years, his private space company, backed by government investment, developed the Falcon series of launch vehicles and the multi-functional Dragon spacecraft from scratch.
Commercial electric cars - the sporty Tesla Roadster, the Tesla Model S sedan and the Model X SUV, the increased range, the production and sale of electric powertrain systems - are evidence of undeniable achievements and significant contributions to the development of environmentally friendly transportation.
The billionaire, whose life path and scientific and technical creativity is told in the book “Elon Musk. Tesla, SpaceX and the road to the future ”(2016).
Member of the Presidential Forum on Strategy and Policy, consisting of sixteen of the most influential US businessmen, whose function is to advise the President (since December 2016).
- Agreed to donate US $ 1 million for the preservation of Nikola Tesla's heritage, the organization of the Tesla Science Center at Wardenclyffe.
- Donated a $ 250,000 solar power plant in 2011 to the city of Soma in Fukushima Prefecture, destroyed by the tsunami.
- He joined the charity project The Giving Pledge with a promise to donate at least half of his capital to charity (2012).
- In 2015, his charity Musk Foundation donated $ 10 million to the Institute for the Future of Humanity to conduct research on the control of artificial intelligence.
- Together with his sons, he goes hiking in the forest, considering it necessary to teach them to be independent and not be afraid of difficulties.
- When asked about his beloved animal, he answered - Beast Beetle from the planet Traal.
A journey from a victim of a school bully to the CEO of two companies making science fiction a reality.
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Musk became CEO of the new company. However, this did not last long: in October, he advocated the transfer of the company's servers from the free Unix operating system to Microsoft Windows, faced with misunderstandings from other co-founders. His main opponent in this matter was the technical director Max Levchin.
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At the end of 2000, Musk took a vacation. On a flight to Australia, PayPal's board of directors fired him and appointed Thiel as the new CEO. Years later, in an interview with Fortune magazine, Musk said, "That's the problem with vacations."
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But things turned out not so bad - Musk remained the largest shareholder of PayPal, which brought him $ 165 million of the 1.5 billion paid by eBay (NASDAQ: EBAY) for PayPal in late 2002.
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But even before the sale of PayPal, Musk was busy with another business: a science fiction aficionado, he had a crazy plan to send mice or plants to Mars. For this, Musk even tried to buy decommissioned Soviet missiles. But Russian sellers asked for $ 8 million each, and Musk decided it would be cheaper to create his own.
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So in early 2002, Space Exploration Technologies, or SpaceX, was founded. Musk's goal is to reduce the cost of space travel by 10 times.
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SpaceX's first vehicles were the Falcon 1 and 9, named after the Millennium Falcon spacecraft from Star Wars ...
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... And the SpaceX Dragon spacecraft, named after the song "Magic Dragon Puff". Musk chose this name to once again pin up skeptics who believe that SpaceX will never be able to send spacecraft into space.
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In the meantime, Musk took up the fate of the Earth. In 2004, he made his first investment in Tesla Motors, an electric vehicle company founded by veteran venture capitalist Martin Eberhard. Musk's total investment in Tesla will eventually exceed $ 70 million.
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Musk took an active part in the development of the final product and was the chairman of the board of directors of the company. He helped develop the first all-electric Tesla Roadster, unveiled to the public in 2006.
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As if all that weren't enough, Musk founded SolarCity in 2006, a solar energy company dedicated to fighting global warming. He donated working capital to his cousins Peter and Lyndon Reeve to help develop SolarCity.
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Things weren't going well at Tesla itself, however. Under Eberhard's leadership, the company spent far more money than it earned. In 2007, Musk staged a coup on the board of directors and overthrew Eberhard.
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In 2008, at the height of the financial crisis, which significantly limited his opportunities, Musk invested $ 40 million in the company and provided a loan for another 40 million to save Tesla from bankruptcy. Unsurprisingly, that same year, he became its CEO.
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Torn between SpaceX, Tesla and SolarCity, Musk himself went bankrupt. He describes 2008 as "the worst year of his life" - Tesla continued to lose money, and SpaceX faced difficulties in launching the Falcon 1 rocket. By the beginning of 2009, Musk was forced to live off personal loans.
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Around the same time, the founder of SpaceX and SolarCity is going through a divorce from his wife Justin Musk, a Canadian writer, with whom he had six sons.
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