Early Life
Elon Reeve Musk was born on June 28, 1971, in Pretoria, South Africa. His father, Errol Musk, is a South African electromechanical engineer and entrepreneur; his mother, Maye Musk, is a Canadian model and dietitian. He has a younger brother, Kimbal, and a younger sister, Tosca. His parents divorced when he was nine, and he subsequently lived primarily with his father.
An avid reader from an early age, Musk taught himself to code and, at age 12, sold his first commercial software—a space-themed game called Blastar—for approximately $500. He endured significant bullying at school and was, by his own account, deeply unhappy during his South African childhood. He moved to Canada at age 17 to attend Queen’s University in Ontario, partly to avoid mandatory service in the South African military.
Zip2 and PayPal
After two years at Queen’s University, Musk transferred to the University of Pennsylvania, where he earned bachelor’s degrees in economics and physics. He was accepted into Stanford University’s Ph.D. programme in energy physics in 1995 but withdrew after just two days to pursue his entrepreneurial ambitions during the nascent dot-com boom.
With his brother Kimbal, Musk co-founded Zip2, a web software company providing business directories and maps to newspapers. Compaq acquired Zip2 in 1999 for approximately $307 million, netting Musk roughly $22 million. He immediately co-founded X.com, an online payment company, which merged with Confinity to form PayPal. eBay acquired PayPal in 2002 for $1.5 billion in stock; Musk, as the largest shareholder, received $176 million.
SpaceX
Musk founded Space Exploration Technologies Corp. (SpaceX) in 2002 with the stated goal of reducing space transportation costs and enabling the colonisation of Mars. The company’s early years were nearly catastrophic: the first three launches of its Falcon 1 rocket failed. A fourth successful launch in September 2008 saved the company, and SpaceX subsequently won a $1.6 billion NASA contract to resupply the International Space Station.
SpaceX went on to develop the Falcon 9, the world’s first orbital-class reusable rocket, dramatically reducing launch costs. In 2020, SpaceX’s Crew Dragon became the first commercially built and operated spacecraft to carry astronauts to the ISS. SpaceX’s Starship, the most powerful rocket ever built, is central to NASA’s Artemis lunar landing programme and Musk’s ambitions to establish a self-sustaining city on Mars.
Tesla
Musk joined Tesla Motors (now Tesla, Inc.) in 2004 as chairman of the board and lead investor, becoming CEO in 2008. Under his leadership, Tesla pioneered the mass-market electric vehicle with the Model S, Model 3, Model X, and Model Y. Tesla became the world’s most valuable automaker by market capitalisation in 2020 and has been credited with accelerating the global transition to electric vehicles by proving their commercial viability.
Musk’s management style at Tesla has been controversial, marked by ambitious—critics say unrealistic—production targets, erratic public statements, and conflicts with regulators. Nevertheless, Tesla’s success transformed the automotive industry; virtually every major carmaker has since committed to electrification.
X (formerly Twitter), xAI, and Other Ventures
Musk acquired Twitter for $44 billion in October 2022, rebranding it as X. The acquisition was contentious, involving mass layoffs, sweeping policy changes, and significant advertiser exodus. He also founded xAI, an artificial intelligence company, in 2023, and the Boring Company, a tunnel construction firm, in 2016. He co-founded Neuralink, a neurotechnology company developing brain–computer interfaces, in 2016.
Musk’s political profile rose sharply in 2024, when he became a prominent supporter of and adviser to US President Donald Trump, founding the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) advisory body. His political activism drew as much global attention as his business ventures, making him one of the most polarising public figures of the 2020s.