Musk, Elon
[key], 1971–, American business executive and entrepreneur, b.
Pretoria, South Africa, studied Queen's Univ., Ontario (1989–92),
grad. Univ. of Pennsylvania (B.S., B.A., 1995). He and his brother founded
Zip2 (1995), which developed online city maps for newspapers. After it was
sold in 1999, he founded X.com, an online financial services firm, which
acquired the electronic money-transfer service PayPal (2000) and was itself
acquired by eBay (2002). He then founded Space Exploration Technologies
(SpaceX), which has developed and manufactured rockets (including a reusable
one) and spacecraft to transport cargo and crews to the International Space
Station and place satellites in orbit. Musk also became (2004) an investor
in Tesla, an electric car and solar panel company, becoming CEO in 2008, and
has delved into high-speed transportation (Hyperloop, 2013), artificial
intelligence (Open AI, 2015), neurotechnology (Neurolink, 2016), and tunnel
boring (The Boring Company, 2016). Musk's false suggestions in tweets in
2018 that he had secured funding to take Tesla private led to his settling
with the SEC, agreeing to pay a $20 million fine and stepping down from
chairman of the firm for three years (although keeping his title as CEO). In
2002, he founded the Musk Foundation which has made over 350 contributions
to scientific research and educational nonprofits. Musk has also embraced
several controversial positions, including questioning the lethality of COVID-19 and
promoting questionable therapies including the use of choloroquine to treat
it. The value of his Tesla stock has made him one of the wealthiest persons
in the world.
See A. Vance, Elon Musk: Tesla, SpaceX, and the Quest for a Fantastic Future (2015).
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