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Family
Elon Musk was born in South Africa to Maye Musk and Errol Musk, who later got divorced when he was 10. He was born on June 28, 1971. He has a younger brother named Kimbal and a younger sister named Tosca. His mother worked five jobs to support her family. His father was a wealthy engineer. -
Canada
He moved to Canada at age 17 to attend Queen's University. He went to Queen's University to avoid serving in the South African military. He gained citizenship there in 1989, the same year he moved there. He then decided to leave Canada and go to America. -
America
He came to America to study at the University of Pennsylvania. He received an undergraduate degree in economics and stayed for a second bachelor’s degree in physics. He then went to Stanford to get a Ph.D. in energy physics. He then dropped out two days after joining to start his first business. He became a citizen in 2002 -
Zip2 Corporation
He started Zip2 Corporation with his brother, Kimbal. Zip2 was an online city guide, Zip2 was soon providing content for the new websites of both The New York Times and the Chicago Tribune. In 1999, a division of Compaq Computer Corporation bought Zip2 for $307 million in cash and $34 million in stock options. -
Paypal
With the profits from Zip2 Corporation, Elon and Kimbal started X.com. X.com was an online financial services/payments company. X.com later became what is now Paypal. In October Elon made a billion dollars when PayPal was acquired by eBay for $1.5 billion in stock. Before the sale, Musk owned 11 percent of PayPal stock. -
First Marriage
Elon married Justine Wilson in 2000, and the couple had six children together. In 2002, their first son died at 10 weeks old from sudden infant death syndrome. Musk and Wilson had five additional sons together: twins Griffin and Xavier (born in 2004), and triplets, Kai, Saxon and Damian (born in 2006). -
SpaceX
Elon founded SpaceX in 2002 with the goal of commercial space travel. In 2008, NASA granted permission for SpaceX to handle cargo transport for the International Space Station. In 2012 SpaceX made history when the company launched its Falcon 9 rocket into space with an unmanned capsule. The vehicle was sent to the International Space Station with 1,000 pounds of supplies for the astronauts stationed there. -
Tesla
Tesla was formed in 2003. Tesla is dedicated to producing affordable, mass-market electric cars as well as battery products and solar roofs. In 2008, Tesla unveiled the Roadster, a sports car capable of accelerating from 0 to 60 mph in 3.7 seconds, as well as traveling nearly 250 miles between charges. In 2017, Tesla announced that it surpassed General Motors to become the most valuable U.S. carmaker. -
Flamethrower
In January of 2018, The Boring Company (another business ran by Elon Musk) created a flamethrower. Elon reported that he sold 10,000 in just one day of them being released. He sold them for $500 apiece. -
Girlfriend
Musk is currently dating musician Grimes. That month, Grimes announced that she had changed her name to “c,” the symbol for the speed of light, reportedly on the encouragement of Musk. Fans criticized the feminist performer for dating a billionaire whose company has been described as a “predator zone” among accusations of sexual harassment.
