He is a business magnate, industrial designer, and engineer. 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; cofounder of Neuralink; and cofounder and initial co-chairman of OpenAI. He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society (FRS) in 2018. That same year, he ranked 25th on the Forbes list of the world’s most powerful people and was ranked first on the Forbes list of the most innovative leaders of 2019. Musk’s net worth surged by $7 billion after late November 2020. As of December 8, 2020, Forbes estimated his net worth at $144.1 billion, making him the second-richest person in the world, behind Jeff Bezos. As CEO of Tesla, he is the longest-serving CEO in the history of any global automaker.
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 at age 17 to attend Queen’s University. Two years later, he transferred to the University of Pennsylvania, where he earned dual bachelor’s degrees in economics and physics. He moved to California in 1995 to begin a PhD in applied physics and materials science 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, where he serves as CEO and chief designer.
He joined Tesla Motors, Inc. (now Tesla, Inc.), an electric vehicle manufacturer, in 2004, a year after its founding, becoming its product architect that year and CEO in 2008. In 2006, he helped create SolarCity, a solar energy services company (now a subsidiary of Tesla). In 2015, he 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 optimizing tunnels for electric vehicles. In addition to his primary business pursuits, he envisioned an open-source high-speed transportation system known as the Hyperloop, based on the vactrain concept.