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Elon Reeve Musk FRS (born June 28, 1971) is a South African-born American businessman. He moved to Canada and later became a U.S. citizen. He became rich through several technology projects, including an online finance company which merged with PayPal in the year 2000.[2] Musk is the wealthiest person in the world, according to both the Bloomberg Billionaires Index and Forbes's real-time billionaires list.[3][4] In 2021, he was Time Person of the Year.
Elon Musk | |
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_(cropped)_(b).jpg) Musk in 2023 | |
| Co-Commissioner of the Department of Government Efficiency[1] | |
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| President | Donald Trump (elect) |
| Preceded by | Position established |
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| Born | Elon Reeve Musk June 28, 1971 Pretoria, Transvaal, South Africa |
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| Children | 12 |
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| Education | |
| Awards | Full list |
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Musk is the current CEO & Chief Product Architect of Tesla, Inc., a company that makes electric vehicles. He is also the CEO of Solar City, a company that makes solar panels, and the CEO & CTO of SpaceX, an aerospace company. In 2022, he became the owner of the social media site Twitter which he later gave a new name known as X after buying it for USD $44 billion.[5]
In November 2024, U.S. President-elect Donald Trump said that Musk would become a leader of the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE).
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Elon Musk was born to a Canadian mother and a South African-born father in Pretoria, South Africa on June 28, 1971.[6] His parents divorced in 1981 and he mainly lived with his father in different places in South Africa.[7] He went to Waterkloof House Preparatory School and graduated from Pretoria Boys High School. He then moved to Canada in 1988 when he was 17 after obtaining Canadian citizenship through his mother. He got it before his South African military service was to begin. He felt that it would be easier to emigrate to the United States from Canada than from South Africa. Musk and his brother started Zip2, a software company, in 1995. In 1999 he sold it and became a millionaire. He then started X.com, which merged with the company Confinity to make PayPal. X.com was then renamed to PayPal, and he focused on the growing part of the company.[8][9] He then started SpaceX and became the CEO of Tesla.
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He spent two years at the Queen's School of Business in Kingston, Ontario. He moved to the University of Pennsylvania where he earned a bachelor's degree in economics from the Wharton School. He stayed a year to finish his second bachelor's degree in physics. Then he moved to California to attempt to get a PhD in applied physics at Stanford but he left the program after only two days because he wanted to pursue his entrepreneurial aspirations. These were to start businesses in the internet, renewable energy and outer space.[10] He became an American citizen in 2002.[11]
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At the end of 2017, Musk founded The Boring Company which focuses on tunneling and infrastructure. He mentioned Los Angeles traffic as the reason for starting this company. In March 2017 Elon Musk announced he had started another company that aimed to merge human brains with computers called Neuralink.
In April 2018 he was worth over $10 billion, making him the 37th most wealthy American.[12] Musk is also known for helping design and create the Falcon Heavy rocket, which successfully launched on February 6, 2019.
In 2022, Musk bought Twitter after complaining about Internet censorship and criticizing Twitter for suspending the Babylon Bee. During his first few weeks as CEO, he has attracted criticism from some people. Many of them criticize him for laying off many employees at once, as well as appearing to have no interest in moderating hate speech.[13]
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In November 2024, U.S. President-elect Donald Trump announced that Musk would become a leader of the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), a governmental advisory body, with Vivek Ramaswamy.[14]
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