fbpx
Wikipedia

Elon Musk

December 02, 2023

For other uses, see Elon Musk (disambiguation).

Elon Reeve Musk (/ˈiːlɒn/ EE-lon; born June 28, 1971) is a businessman and investor. Musk is the founder, chairman, CEO and chief technology officer of SpaceX; angel investor, CEO, product architect and former chairman of Tesla, Inc.; owner, chairman and CTO of X Corp.; founder of the Boring Company and xAI; co-founder of Neuralink and OpenAI; and president of the Musk Foundation. He is the wealthiest person in the world, with an estimated net worth of US$219 billion as of November 2023, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index, and $241 billion according to Forbes, primarily from his ownership stakes in Tesla and SpaceX.[5][6]

Elon Musk

FRS
Musk in 2022
Born
Elon Reeve Musk

(1971-06-28) June 28, 1971 (age 52)
Pretoria, Transvaal, South Africa
Citizenship
  • South Africa
  • Canada
  • United States
EducationUniversity of Pennsylvania (BA, BS)
Title
Spouses
  • ​
    ​
    (m. 2000; div. 2008)​
  • ​
    ​
    (m. 2010; div. 2012)​
    ​
    ​
    (m. 2013; div. 2016)​
Partners
Children11[a][4]
Parents
Relatives
FamilyMusk family
Signature

A member of the wealthy South African Musk family, Elon Musk was born in Pretoria and briefly attended the University of Pretoria before immigrating to Canada at age 18, acquiring citizenship through his Canadian-born mother. Two years later, he matriculated at Queen's University at Kingston in Canada. Musk later transferred to the University of Pennsylvania, and received bachelor's degrees in economics and physics there. He moved to California in 1995 to attend Stanford University. However, Musk dropped out after two days and, with his brother Kimbal, co-founded online city guide software company Zip2. The startup was acquired by Compaq for $307 million in 1999, and with $12 million of the money he made, that same year Musk co-founded X.com, a direct bank. X.com merged with Confinity in 2000 to form PayPal.

In October 2002, eBay acquired PayPal for $1.5 billion, and that same year, with $100 million of the money he made, Musk founded SpaceX, a spaceflight services company. In 2004, he became an early investor in electric vehicle manufacturer Tesla Motors, Inc. (now Tesla, Inc.). He became its chairman and product architect, assuming the position of CEO in 2008. In 2006, Musk helped create SolarCity, a solar-energy company that was acquired by Tesla in 2016 and became Tesla Energy. In 2013, he proposed a hyperloop high-speed vactrain transportation system. In 2015, he co-founded OpenAI, a nonprofit artificial intelligence research company. The following year, Musk co-founded Neuralink—a neurotechnology company developing brain–computer interfaces—and the Boring Company, a tunnel construction company. In 2022, he acquired Twitter for $44 billion. He subsequently merged the company into newly created X Corp. and rebranded the service as X the following year. In March 2023, he founded xAI, an artificial intelligence company.[7]

Musk has expressed views that have made him a polarizing figure.[8][9][10] He has been criticized for making unscientific and misleading statements, including COVID-19 misinformation, transphobia[11][12][13] and antisemitic conspiracy theories.[8][14][15][16] His Twitter ownership has been similarly controversial, including laying off a large number of employees, an increase in hate speech on the website,[17][18] and changes to Twitter Blue verification.[19][20] In 2018, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) sued him for falsely tweeting that he had secured funding for a private takeover of Tesla. To settle the case, Musk stepped down as the chairman of Tesla and paid a $20 million fine.

Early life and education

Childhood and family

Further information: Musk family

Elon Reeve Musk was born on June 28, 1971, in Pretoria, South Africa's administrative capital.[21][22] He has British and Pennsylvania Dutch ancestry.[23][24] His mother, Maye Musk (née Haldeman), is a model and dietitian born in Saskatchewan, Canada, and raised in South Africa.[25][26][27] His father, Errol Musk, is a South African electromechanical engineer, pilot, sailor, consultant, and property developer, who partly owned a Zambian emerald mine near Lake Tanganyika, as well as a rental lodge at the Timbavati Private Nature Reserve.[28][29][30][31] Musk has a younger brother, Kimbal, and a younger sister, Tosca.[27][32]

Musk's family was wealthy during his youth.[31] His father was elected to the Pretoria City Council as a representative of the anti-apartheid Progressive Party and has said that his children shared their father's dislike of apartheid.[21] His maternal grandfather and namesake, Joshua Elon Haldeman, was an American-born Canadian who took his family on record-breaking journeys to Africa and Australia in a single-engine Bellanca airplane.[33][34][35][36] Haldeman was a member of the Social Credit Party of Canada, possessed antisemitic beliefs, and supported the Technocracy movement.[37] After his parents divorced in 1980, Musk chose to live primarily with his father.[23][28] Musk later regretted his decision and became estranged from his father.[38] He has a paternal half-sister and a half-brother.[33][39]

Musk was often bullied. In one incident, after calling a boy whose father had committed suicide "stupid", Musk was severely beaten and thrown down concrete steps.[40] He was also an enthusiast reader of books, attributing his success in part to having read Benjamin Franklin: An American Life, Lord of the Flies, the Foundation series, and The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy.[41][42] At age ten, he developed an interest in computing and video games, teaching himself how to program from the VIC-20 user manual.[43] At age twelve, Musk sold his BASIC-based game Blastar to PC and Office Technology magazine for approximately $500.[44][45]

Education

 
Musk graduated from Pretoria Boys High School in South Africa

Musk attended Waterkloof House Preparatory School, Bryanston High School, and Pretoria Boys High School, from where he graduated.[46] Musk was a good but not exceptional student, earning a 61 in Afrikaans and a B on his senior math certification.[47] Musk applied for a Canadian passport through his Canadian-born mother,[48][49] knowing that it would be easier to immigrate to the United States this way.[50] While waiting for his application to be processed, he attended the University of Pretoria for five months.[51]

Musk arrived in Canada in June 1989 and lived with a second cousin in Saskatchewan for a year,[52] working odd jobs at a farm and lumber mill.[53] In 1990, he entered Queen's University in Kingston, Ontario.[54][55] Two years later, he transferred to the University of Pennsylvania (UPenn), where he completed studies for a Bachelor of Arts degree in physics and a Bachelor of Science degree in economics from the Wharton School.[56][57][58][59] Although Musk said he earned the degrees in 1995, UPenn maintains it awarded them in 1997.[60] He reportedly hosted large, ticketed house parties to help pay for tuition, and wrote a business plan for an electronic book-scanning service similar to Google Books.[61]

In 1994, Musk held two internships in Silicon Valley: one at energy storage startup Pinnacle Research Institute, which investigated electrolytic ultracapacitors for energy storage, and another at Palo Alto–based startup Rocket Science Games.[62][63] In 1995, he was accepted to a PhD program in materials science at Stanford University.[64][65] However, Musk decided to join the Internet boom, dropping out two days after being accepted and applied for a job at Netscape, to which he reportedly never received a response.[66][48]

Business career

Zip2

Main article: Zip2
External videos
  Musk speaks of his early business experience during a 2014 commencement speech at USC on YouTube

In 1995, Musk, his brother Kimbal, and Greg Kouri founded Global Link, later renamed to Zip2.[67][68] The company was financed mainly through a financing round of US$200,000, of which 10% was contributed by his father Errol Musk.[69] The company developed an Internet city guide with maps, directions, and yellow pages, and marketed it to newspapers.[70] They worked at a small rented office in Palo Alto,[71] with Musk coding the website every night.[71] Eventually, Zip2 obtained contracts with The New York Times and the Chicago Tribune.[61] The brothers persuaded the board of directors to abandon a merger with CitySearch;[72] however, Musk's attempts to become CEO were thwarted.[73] Compaq acquired Zip2 for $307 million in cash in February 1999,[74][75] and Musk received $22 million for his 7-percent share.[76]

X.com and PayPal

Main articles: X.com (bank), PayPal, and PayPal Mafia

Later in 1999, Musk co-founded X.com, an online financial services and e-mail payment company with $12 million of the money he made from the Compaq acquisition.[77] X.com was one of the first federally insured online banks, and over 200,000 customers joined in its initial months of operation.[78] Even though Musk founded the company, investors regarded him as inexperienced and replaced him with Intuit CEO Bill Harris by the end of the year.[79]

In 2000, X.com merged with online bank Confinity to avoid competition,[71][79][80] as the latter's money-transfer service PayPal was more popular than X.com's service.[81] Musk then returned as CEO of the merged company. His preference for Microsoft over Unix-based software caused a rift among the company's employees, and eventually led Confinity co-founder Peter Thiel to resign.[82] With the company suffering from compounding technological issues and the lack of a cohesive business model, the board ousted Musk and replaced him with Thiel in September 2000.[83][b] Under Thiel, the company focused on the money-transfer service and was renamed PayPal in 2001.[85][86]

In 2002, PayPal was acquired by eBay for $1.5 billion in stock, of which Musk—PayPal's largest shareholder with 11.72% of shares—received $175.8 million.[87][88] In 2017, more than 15 years later, Musk purchased the X.com domain from PayPal for its "sentimental value".[89][90] In 2022, Musk discussed a goal of creating "X, the everything app".[91]

SpaceX

Main article: SpaceX
 
Then-NASA Administrator Charles Bolden congratulating Musk by the SpaceX Dragon following its 2012 mission

In early 2001, Musk became involved with the nonprofit Mars Society and discussed funding plans to place a growth-chamber for plants on Mars.[92] In October of the same year, he traveled to Moscow with Jim Cantrell and Adeo Ressi to buy refurbished intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs) that could send the greenhouse payloads into space. He met with the companies NPO Lavochkin and Kosmotras; however, Musk was seen as a novice[93] and the group returned to the United States empty-handed. In February 2002, the group returned to Russia with Mike Griffin (president of In-Q-Tel) to look for three ICBMs. They had another meeting with Kosmotras and were offered one rocket for $8 million, which Musk rejected. He instead decided to start a company that could build affordable rockets.[93] With $100 million of his own money,[94] Musk founded SpaceX in May 2002 and became the company's CEO and Chief Engineer.[95][96]

SpaceX attempted its first launch of the Falcon 1 rocket in 2006.[97] Though the rocket failed to reach Earth orbit, it was awarded a Commercial Orbital Transportation Services program contract from NASA Administrator (and former SpaceX consultant[98]) Mike Griffin later that year.[99][100] After two more failed attempts that nearly caused Musk and his companies to go bankrupt,[97] SpaceX succeeded in launching the Falcon 1 into orbit in 2008.[101] Later that year, SpaceX received a $1.6 billion Commercial Resupply Services contract from NASA for 12 flights of its Falcon 9 rocket and Dragon spacecraft to the International Space Station, replacing the Space Shuttle after its 2011 retirement.[102] In 2012, the Dragon vehicle docked with the ISS, a first for a commercial spacecraft.[103]

 
Musk examining F9R Dev1 debris in 2014

Working towards its goal of reusable rockets, in 2015 SpaceX successfully landed the first stage of a Falcon 9 on an inland platform.[104] Later landings were achieved on autonomous spaceport drone ships, an ocean-based recovery platform.[105] In 2018, SpaceX launched the Falcon Heavy; the inaugural mission carried Musk's personal Tesla Roadster as a dummy payload.[106][107] Since 2019,[108] SpaceX has been developing Starship, a fully-reusable, super-heavy-lift launch vehicle intended to replace the Falcon 9 and the Falcon Heavy.[109] In 2020, SpaceX launched its first crewed flight, the Demo-2, becoming the first private company to place astronauts into orbit and dock a crewed spacecraft with the ISS.[110]

Starlink

Main article: Starlink
See also: Starlink in the Russo-Ukrainian War
 
50 Starlink satellites shortly before deployment to low Earth orbit, 2019

In 2015, SpaceX began development of the Starlink constellation of low-Earth-orbit satellites to provide satellite Internet access,[111] with the first two prototype satellites launched in February 2018. A second set of test satellites, and the first large deployment of a piece of the constellation, occurred in May 2019, when the first 60 operational satellites were launched.[112] The total cost of the decade-long project to design, build, and deploy the constellation is estimated by SpaceX to be about $10 billion.[113][c] Some critics, including the International Astronomical Union, have alleged that Starlink blocks the view of the sky and poses a collision threat to spacecraft.[116][117][118]

During the Russian invasion of Ukraine, Musk sent Starlink terminals to Ukraine to provide Internet access and communication.[119] However, Musk refused to block Russian state media on Starlink, declaring himself "a free speech absolutist".[120][121] In October 2022, Musk stated that about 20,000 satellite terminals had been donated to Ukraine, together with free data transfer subscriptions, which cost SpaceX $80 million. After asking the United States Department of Defense to pay for further units and future subscriptions on behalf of Ukraine,[122] Musk publicly stated that SpaceX would continue to provide Starlink to Ukraine for free, at a yearly cost to itself of $400 million.[123][124][125]

Tesla

Main article: Tesla, Inc.
 
Musk next to a Tesla Model S, 2011

Tesla, Inc., originally Tesla Motors, was incorporated in July 2003 by Martin Eberhard and Marc Tarpenning, who financed the company until the Series A round of funding. Both men played active roles in the company's early development prior to Musk's involvement.[126] Musk led the Series A round of investment in February 2004; he invested $6.5 million, became the majority shareholder, and joined Tesla's board of directors as chairman.[127] Musk took an active role within the company and oversaw Roadster product design,but was not deeply involved in day-to-day business operations.[128]

Following a series of escalating conflicts in 2007, and the financial crisis of 2007–2008, Eberhard was ousted from the firm.[129][page needed][130] Musk assumed leadership of the company as CEO and product architect in 2008.[131] A 2009 lawsuit settlement with Eberhard designated Musk as a Tesla co-founder, along with Tarpenning and two others.[132][133] As of 2019, Musk was the longest-tenured CEO of any automotive manufacturer globally.[134] In 2021, Musk nominally changed his title to "Technoking" while retaining his position as CEO.[135]

 
Musk before a Model X at the 2014 Tesla Inc. annual shareholder meeting

Tesla began delivery of an electric sports car, the Roadster, in 2008. With sales of about 2,500 vehicles, it was the first serial production all-electric car to use lithium-ion battery cells.[136] Tesla began delivery of its four-door Model S sedan in 2012.[137] A cross-over, the Model X was launched in 2015.[138] A mass-market sedan, the Model 3, was released in 2017.[139] The Model 3 is the all-time bestselling plug-in electric car worldwide, and in June 2021 it became the first electric car to sell 1 million units globally.[140][141] A fifth vehicle, the Model Y crossover, was launched in 2020.[142] The Cybertruck, an all-electric pickup truck, was unveiled in 2019.[143] Under Musk, Tesla has also constructed multiple lithium-ion battery and electric vehicle factories, named Gigafactories.[144]

Since its initial public offering in 2010,[145] Tesla stock has risen significantly; it became the most valuable carmaker in summer 2020,[146][147] and it entered the S&P 500 later that year.[148][149] In October 2021, it reached a market capitalization of $1 trillion, the sixth company in U.S. history to do so.[150] In November 2021, Musk proposed, on Twitter, to sell 10% of his Tesla stock, since "much is made lately of unrealized gains being a means of tax avoidance".[151] After more than 3.5 million Twitter accounts supported the sale, Musk sold $6.9 billion of Tesla stock within a week,[151] and a total of $16.4 billion by year end, reaching the 10% target.[152] In February 2022, The Wall Street Journal reported that both Elon and Kimbal Musk were under investigation by the SEC for possible insider trading related to the sale.[153] In 2022, Musk unveiled a robot developed by Tesla, Optimus.[154] On June 20, 2023, Musk met with Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi in New York City, suggesting that he might be interested in investing in India "as soon as humanly possible".[155]

SEC and shareholder lawsuits regarding tweets

In 2018, Musk was sued by the SEC for a tweet stating that funding had been secured for potentially taking Tesla private.[156][d] The lawsuit characterized the tweet as false, misleading, and damaging to investors, and sought to bar Musk from serving as CEO of publicly traded companies.[156][160][161] Two days later, Musk settled with the SEC, without admitting or denying the SEC's allegations. As a result, Musk and Tesla were fined $20 million each, and Musk was forced to step down for three years as Tesla chairman but was able to remain as CEO.[162] Musk has stated in interviews that he does not regret posting the tweet that triggered the SEC investigation.[163][164] In April 2022, the shareholder who sued Musk over the tweet, along with several Tesla shareholders, said that a federal judge had ruled that the tweet was false, although the ruling in question has not been unsealed.[165] In February 2023, the jury found Musk and Tesla not liable.[166]

In 2019, Musk stated in a tweet that Tesla would build half a million cars that year.[167] The SEC reacted to Musk's tweet by filing in court, asking the court to hold him in contempt for violating the terms of a settlement agreement with such a tweet; the accusation was disputed by Musk. This was eventually settled by a joint agreement between Musk and the SEC clarifying the previous agreement details.[168] The agreement included a list of topics that Musk would need preclearance before tweeting about.[169] In 2020, a judge prevented a lawsuit from proceeding that claimed a tweet by Musk regarding Tesla stock price ("too high imo") violated the agreement.[170][171] FOIA-released records showed that the SEC itself concluded Musk has subsequently violated the agreement twice by tweeting regarding "Tesla's solar roof production volumes and its stock price".[172]

SolarCity and Tesla Energy

Main articles: SolarCity and Tesla Energy
 
SolarCity solar-panel installation vans in 2009

Musk provided the initial concept and financial capital for SolarCity, which his cousins Lyndon and Peter Rive founded in 2006.[173] By 2013, SolarCity was the second largest provider of solar power systems in the United States.[174] In 2014, Musk promoted the idea of SolarCity building an advanced production facility in Buffalo, New York, triple the size of the largest solar plant in the United States.[175] Construction of the factory started in 2014 and was completed in 2017. It operated as a joint venture with Panasonic until early 2020.[176][177]

Tesla acquired SolarCity for over $2 billion in 2016 and merged it with its battery unit to create Tesla Energy. The deal's announcement resulted in a more than 10% drop in Tesla's stock price. At the time, SolarCity was facing liquidity issues.[178] Multiple shareholder groups filed a lawsuit against Musk and Tesla's directors, stating that the purchase of SolarCity was done solely to benefit Musk and came at the expense of Tesla and its shareholders.[179][180] Tesla directors settled the lawsuit in January 2020, leaving Musk the sole remaining defendant.[181][182] Two years later, the court ruled in Musk's favor.[183]

Neuralink

Main article: Neuralink
 
Musk discussing a Neuralink device during a live demonstration in 2020

In 2016, Musk co-founded Neuralink, a neurotechnology startup company, with an investment of $100 million.[184][185] Neuralink aims to integrate the human brain with artificial intelligence (AI) by creating devices that are embedded in the brain to facilitate its merging with machines. Such technology could enhance memory or allow the devices to communicate with software.[185][186] The company also hopes to develop devices with which to treat neurological conditions such as Alzheimer's disease, dementia, and spinal cord injuries.[187]

In 2019, Musk announced work on a device akin to a sewing machine that could embed threads into a human brain.[184] He is listed as the sole author of an October 2019 paper that details some of Neuralink's research,[188] although Musk's being listed as such rankled the Neuralink team's researchers.[189] At a 2020 live demonstration, Musk described one of their early devices as "a Fitbit in your skull" that could soon cure paralysis, deafness, blindness, and other disabilities. Many neuroscientists and publications criticized these claims,[190][191][192] with MIT Technology Review describing them as "highly speculative" and "neuroscience theater".[190] During the demonstration, Musk revealed a pig with a Neuralink implant that tracked neural activity related to smell.[187] In 2022, Neuralink announced that clinical trials would begin by the end of the year.[193]

Neuralink has conducted further animal testing on macaque monkeys at the University of California, Davis' Primate Research Center. In 2021, the company released a video in which a Macaque played the video game Pong via a Neuralink implant. The company's animal trials—which have caused the deaths of some monkeys—have led to claims of animal cruelty. The Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine has alleged that Neuralink's animal trials have violated the Animal Welfare Act.[194] Employees have complained that pressure from Musk to accelerate development has led to botched experiments and unnecessary animal deaths. In 2022, a federal probe was launched into possible animal welfare violations by Neuralink.[195]

In September 2023, the company was approved to intitiate human trials; the company will conduct a six-year study.[196]

The Boring Company

Main article: The Boring Company
 
Musk during the 2018 inauguration of the Boring Test Tunnel in Hawthorne, California

In 2017, Musk founded the Boring Company to construct tunnels, and revealed plans for specialized, underground, high-occupancy vehicles that could travel up to 150 miles per hour (240 km/h) and thus circumvent above-ground traffic in major cities.[197][198] Early in 2017, the company began discussions with regulatory bodies and initiated construction of a 30-foot (9.1 m) wide, 50-foot (15 m) long, and 15-foot (4.6 m) deep "test trench" on the premises of SpaceX's offices, as that required no permits.[199] The Los Angeles tunnel, less than two miles (3.2 km) in length, debuted to journalists in 2018. It used Tesla Model Xs and was reported to be a rough ride while traveling at suboptimal speeds.[200]

Two tunnel projects announced in 2018, in Chicago and West Los Angeles, have been canceled.[201][202] However, a tunnel beneath the Las Vegas Convention Center was completed in early 2021.[203] Local officials have approved further expansions of the tunnel system.[204] In 2021, tunnel construction was approved for Fort Lauderdale, Florida.[205]

Acquisition of Twitter, renaming to X

Further information: Acquisition of Twitter by Elon Musk
 
 Elon Musk Twitter
@elonmusk

I made an offer
https://sec.gov/Archives/edgar...

April 14, 2022[206]

Musk expressed interest in buying Twitter as early as 2017,[207] and had questioned the platform's commitment to freedom of speech.[208][209] Additionally, his ex-wife Talulah Riley had urged him to buy Twitter to stop the "woke-ism".[210] In January 2022, Musk started purchasing Twitter shares, reaching a 9.2% stake by April,[211] making him the largest shareholder.[212][e] When this was publicly disclosed, Twitter shares experienced the largest intraday price surge since the company's 2013 IPO.[214] On April 4, Musk agreed to a deal that would appoint him to Twitter's board of directors and prohibit him from acquiring more than 14.9% of the company.[215][216] However, on April 13, Musk made a $43 billion offer to buy Twitter, launching a takeover bid to buy 100% of Twitter's stock at $54.20 per share.[212][217] In response, Twitter's board adopted a "poison pill" shareholder rights plan to make it more expensive for any single investor to own more than 15% of the company without board approval.[218] Nevertheless, by the end of the month Musk had successfully concluded his bid for approximately $44 billion.[219] This included about $12.5 billion in loans against his Tesla stock and $21 billion in equity financing.[220][221]

Tesla's stock market value sank by over $100 billion the next day in reaction to the deal.[222][223] He subsequently tweeted criticism of Twitter executive Vijaya Gadde's policies to his 86 million followers, which led to some of them engaging in sexist and racist harassment against her.[224] Exactly a month after announcing the takeover, Musk stated that the deal was "on hold" following a report that 5% of Twitter's daily active users were spam accounts.[225] Although he initially affirmed his commitment to the acquisition,[226] he sent notification of his termination of the deal in July; Twitter's Board of Directors responded that they were committed to holding him to the transaction.[227] On July 12, 2022, Twitter formally sued Musk in the Chancery Court of Delaware for breaching a legally binding agreement to purchase Twitter.[228] In October 2022, Musk reversed again, offering to purchase Twitter at $54.20 per share.[229] The acquisition was officially completed on October 27.[230]

Immediately after the acquisition, Musk fired several top Twitter executives including CEO Parag Agrawal;[230][231] Musk became the CEO instead.[232] He instituted a $7.99 monthly subscription for a "blue check",[233][234][19] and laid off a significant portion of the company's staff.[235][236] Musk lessened content moderation, including reinstating accounts like the Bee,[237][238] and in December, Musk released internal documents relating to Twitter's moderation of Hunter Biden's laptop controversy in the leadup to the 2020 presidential election.[239]

Comments on these internal documents by journalists, Matt Taibbi, Bari Weiss, Michael Shellenberger and others were posted at Twitter as the Twitter Files. The United States House Committee on the Judiciary held hearings on the Twitter Files on March 9, 2023, at which Taibbi and Shellenberger gave testimony.[240]

The Southern Poverty Law Center noted that Twitter has verified numerous extremists;[20] hate speech also increased on the platform after his takeover.[17][12]

In late 2022, Musk promised to step down as CEO after a Twitter poll posted by Musk found that majority of user wanted him to do so.[241][242] Five months later, Musk stepped down from CEO and placed former NBCUniversal executive Linda Yaccarino in the position and transitioned his role to executive chairman and chief technology officer.[243]

On November 20, 2023, in a U.S. District Court in Texas, X filed a lawsuit stating that Media Matters "manipulated" the X platform. X stated that Media Matters used accounts that followed accounts for major brands, and "resorted to endlessly scrolling and refreshing" the feed until it found ads next to extremist posts.[244]

Leadership style

 
Musk giving a speech to SpaceX employees in 2012

Musk is often described as a micromanager and has called himself a "nano-manager".[245] The New York Times has characterized his approach as absolutist.[246] Musk does not make formal business plans;[246] instead, he says he prefers to approach engineering problems[non sequitur] with an "iterative design methodology" and "tolerance for failures".[247] He has forced employees to adopt the company's own jargon and launched ambitious, risky, and costly projects against his advisors' recommendations, such as removing front-facing radar from Tesla Autopilot. His insistence on vertical integration causes his companies to move most production in-house. While this resulted in saved costs for SpaceX's rocket,[248] vertical integration has caused many usability problems for Tesla's software.[245]

Musk's handling of employees—whom he communicates with directly through mass emails—has been characterized as "carrot and stick", rewarding those "who offer constructive criticism" while also being known to impulsively threaten, swear at, and fire his employees.[249][250][251] Musk said he expects his employees to work for long hours, sometimes for 80 hours per week.[252] He has his new employees sign strict non-disclosure agreements and often fires in sprees,[253][254] such as during the Model 3 "production hell" in 2018.[254] In 2022, Musk revealed plans to fire 10 percent of Tesla's workforce, due to his concerns about the economy.[255] That same month, he suspended remote work at SpaceX and Tesla and threatened to fire employees who do not work 40 hours per week in the office.[256]

Musk's leadership has been praised by some, who credit it with the success of Tesla and his other endeavors,[245] and criticized by others, who see him as callous and his managerial decisions as "show[ing] a lack of human understanding."[251][257] The 2021 book Power Play contains anecdotes of Musk berating employees.[258] The Wall Street Journal reported that, after Musk insisted on branding his vehicles as "self-driving", he faced criticism from his engineers for putting customer "lives at risk", with some employees resigning in consequence.[259]

Other activities

Musk Foundation

Musk is president of the Musk Foundation he founded in 2001,[260][261] whose stated purpose is to: provide solar-power energy systems in disaster areas; support research, development, and advocacy (for interests including human space exploration, pediatrics, renewable energy and "safe artificial intelligence"); and support science and engineering educational efforts.[262]

As of 2020, the foundation has made 350 donations. Around half of them were made to scientific research or education nonprofits. Notable beneficiaries include the Wikimedia Foundation, his alma mater the University of Pennsylvania, and his brother Kimbal's non-profit Big Green.[263] From 2002 to 2018, the foundation gave $25 million directly to non-profit organizations, nearly half of which went to Musk's OpenAI,[264] which was a non-profit at the time.[265]

In 2012, Musk took the Giving Pledge, thereby committing to give the majority of his wealth to charitable causes either during his lifetime or in his will.[266] He has endowed prizes at the X Prize Foundation, including $100 million to reward improved carbon capture technology.[267]

Vox said "the Musk Foundation is almost entertaining in its simplicity and yet is strikingly opaque", noting that its website was only 33 words in plain-text.[264] The foundation has been criticized for the relatively small amount of wealth donated.[268] In 2020, Forbes gave Musk a philanthropy score of 1, because he had given away less than 1% of his net worth.[263] In November 2021, Musk donated $5.7 billion of Tesla's shares to charity, according to regulatory filings.[269] However, Bloomberg News noted that all of it went to his own foundation, bringing Musk Foundation's assets up to $9.4 billion at the end of 2021. The foundation disbursed $160 million to non-profits that year.[270]

Hyperloop

Main articles: Hyperloop and Hyperloop pod competition
 
A tube part of the 2017 Hyperloop pod competition sponsored by SpaceX

In August 2013, Musk announced plans for a version of a vactrain—a vacuum tube train—and assigned a dozen engineers from SpaceX and Tesla to establish the conceptual foundations and create initial designs.[271] Later that year, Musk unveiled the concept, which he dubbed the hyperloop.[272] The alpha design for the system was published in a whitepaper posted to the Tesla and SpaceX blogs.[273] The document scoped out the technology and outlined a notional route where such a transport system could be built between the Greater Los Angeles Area and the San Francisco Bay Area, at an estimated cost of $6 billion.[274] The proposal, if technologically feasible at the costs cited, would make Hyperloop travel cheaper than any other mode of transport for such long distances.[275]

In 2015, Musk announced a design competition for students and others to build Hyperloop pods, to operate on a SpaceX-sponsored mile-long track, for a 2015–2017 Hyperloop pod competition. The track was used in January 2017, and Musk also announced that the company had started a tunnel project, with Hawthorne Municipal Airport as its destination.[276] In July 2017, Musk said that he had received "verbal government approval" to build a hyperloop from New York City to Washington, D.C., with stops in both Philadelphia and Baltimore.[277] Mention of the projected DC-to-Baltimore leg was removed from the Boring Company website in 2021.[278] The tunnel project to Hawthorne was discontinued in 2022 and is cited to be converted into parking spots for SpaceX workers.[279]

Biographer Ashlee Vance has noted that Musk hoped Hyperloop would "make the public and legislators rethink the high-speed train" proposal current in California at the time and consider more "creative" ideas.[280]

OpenAI and xAI

Main articles: OpenAI and xAI (company)

In December 2015, Musk co-founded OpenAI, a not-for-profit artificial intelligence (AI) research company aiming to develop artificial general intelligence intended to be safe and beneficial to humanity.[281] A particular focus of the company is to democratize artificial superintelligence systems, against governments and corporations.[38] Musk pledged $1 billion of funding to OpenAI.[282] In 2023, Musk tweeted that he had ended up giving a total of $100 million to OpenAI. TechCrunch later reported that, according to its own investigation of public records, "only $15 million" of OpenAI's funding could be definitively traced to Musk. Musk subsequently stated that he had donated about $50 million.[283]

In 2018, Musk left the OpenAI board to avoid possible future conflicts with his role as CEO of Tesla as the latter company increasingly became involved in AI through Tesla Autopilot.[284] Since then, OpenAI has made significant advances in machine learning, producing neural networks such as GPT-3 (producing human-like text),[285] and DALL-E (generating digital images from natural language descriptions).[286]

On July 12, 2023, Elon Musk launched an artificial intelligence company called xAI, which aims to develop a generative AI program that competes with existing offerings like ChatGPT. The company has reportedly hired engineers from Google and OpenAI.[287] The company, which is incorporated in Nevada, purchased 10,000 graphics processing units. Musk was reportedly obtaining funding from investors in SpaceX and Tesla.[288]

Tham Luang cave rescue and defamation case

Further information: Tham Luang cave rescue

In July 2018, Musk arranged for his employees to build a mini-submarine to assist the rescue of children trapped in a flooded cavern in Thailand.[289] Richard Stanton, leader of the international rescue diving team, urged Musk to facilitate the construction of the vehicle as a back-up, in case flooding worsened.[290] Engineers at SpaceX and the Boring Company built the mini-submarine from a Falcon 9 liquid oxygen transfer tube in eight hours and personally delivered it to Thailand.[291][292] By this time, however, eight of the 12 children, had already been rescued, the rescuers employing full face masks, oxygen, and anesthesia; consequently, Thai authorities declined to use the submarine.[289] In March 2019, Musk was later one of the 187 people who received various honors conferred by the King of Thailand for involvement in the rescue effort.[293]

Soon after the rescue, Vernon Unsworth, a British recreational caver who had been exploring the cave for the previous six years and played a key advisory role in the operation, criticized the submarine on CNN as amounting to nothing more than a public relations effort with no chance of success, maintaining that Musk "had no conception of what the cave passage was like" and "can stick his submarine where it hurts". Musk asserted on Twitter that the device would have worked and referred to Unsworth as a "pedo guy".[294] He deleted the tweets,[294] and apologized,[295] and he deleted his responses to critical tweets from Cher Scarlett, a software engineer, which had caused his followers to harass her.[296] In an email to BuzzFeed News, Musk later called Unsworth a "child rapist" and said that he had married a child.[297][298]

In September, Unsworth filed a defamation suit in the District Court for the Central District of California.[299][300] In his defense, Musk argued that "'pedo guy' was a common insult used in South Africa when I was growing up ... synonymous with 'creepy old man' and is used to insult a person's appearance and demeanor".[46] The defamation case began in December 2019, with Unsworth seeking $190 million in damages.[301] During the trial Musk apologized to Unsworth again for the tweet. On December 6, the jury found in favor of Musk and ruled he was not liable.[302][303]

2018 cannabis incident

In September 2018, Musk was interviewed on an episode of The Joe Rogan Experience podcast, during which he sampled a cigar laced with cannabis.[304] In 2022, Musk said that he and other SpaceX employees had subsequently been required to undergo random drug tests for about a year following the incident, as required by the Drug-Free Workplace Act of 1988 for Federal contractors.[305] In a 2019 60 Minutes interview, Musk had said, "I do not smoke pot. As anybody who watched that podcast could tell, I have no idea how to smoke pot."[306]

Music

In April 2019, Musk, through Emo G Records, released a rap track, "RIP Harambe", on SoundCloud.[307] The track, which refers to the killing of Harambe the gorilla and the subsequent Internet sensationalism surrounding the event, was performed by Yung Jake, written by Yung Jake and Caroline Polachek, and produced by BloodPop.[308] The following year, Musk released an EDM track, "Don't Doubt Ur Vibe", featuring his own lyrics and vocals.[309] While Guardian critic Alexi Petridis described it as "indistinguishable... from umpteen competent but unthrilling bits of bedroom electronica posted elsewhere on SoundCloud",[310] TechCrunch said it was "not a bad representation of the genre".[309]

Private jet

Main articles: ElonJet and 2022 Twitter suspensions

In 2003, Musk said his favorite plane he owned was an L-39 Albatros.[311] He uses a private jet owned by Falcon Landing LLC, a SpaceX-linked company, and acquired a second jet in August 2020.[312][313] His heavy use of the jet—it flew over 150,000 miles in 2018—and the consequent fossil fuel usage has received criticism.[312][314]

His flight usage is tracked on social media through ElonJet. The Twitter version of the account was blocked in December 2022, after Musk said that his son X AE A-XII had been harassed by a stalker after the account posted the airport at which his jet had landed.[315][316][317] This led to Musk banning the ElonJet account on Twitter, as well as the accounts of journalists that posted stories regarding the incident, including Donie O'Sullivan, Keith Olbermann, and journalists from The New York Times, The Washington Post, CNN, and The Intercept.[318] Musk equated the reporting to doxxing.[319] The police do not believe there is a link between the account and alleged stalker.[320] Musk later took a Twitter poll on whether the journalists' accounts should be reinstated, which resulted in reinstating the accounts.[321]

Wealth

Net worth

 
Musk's net worth from 2013 to 2023 as estimated by Forbes magazine

Musk made $175.8 million when PayPal was sold to eBay in October 2002.[322] He was first listed on the Forbes Billionaires List in 2012, with a net worth of $2 billion.[323]

At the start of 2020, Musk had a net worth of $27 billion.[324] By the end of the year his net worth had increased by $150 billion, mostly driven by his ownership of around 20% of Tesla stock.[325] During this period, Musk's net worth was often volatile. For example, it dropped $16.3 billion on September 8, the largest single-day plunge in Bloomberg Billionaires Index's history at the time.[326] In November of that year, Musk passed Facebook co-founder Mark Zuckerberg to become the third-richest person in the world; a week later he passed Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates to become the second-richest.[327]

In January 2021, Musk, with a net worth of $185 billion, surpassed Amazon founder Jeff Bezos to become the richest person in the world.[328] Bezos reclaimed the top spot the following month.[329] On September 27, 2021, after Tesla stock surged, Forbes announced that Musk had a net worth of over $200 billion, and was the richest person in the world.[330] In November 2021, Musk became the first person to have a net worth of more than $300 billion.[331]

On December 30, 2022, it was reported that Musk had lost $200 billion from his net worth due to declining stock values in Tesla, becoming the first person in history to lose such a large sum of money.[332][333] In January 2023, Musk was recognized by Guinness World Records for experiencing the "largest loss of personal fortune in history" with regards to his financial losses since November 2021, which Guinness quoted a Forbes estimate of $182 billion.[334]

Musk's personal wealth is managed by his family office called Excession LLC, formed in 2016 and run by Jared Birchall.[335][261]

Sources of wealth

Around 75% of Musk's wealth was derived from Tesla stock in November 2020,[327] a proportion that fell to about 37% as of December 2022,[f] after selling nearly $40 billion in company shares since late 2021.[336] Musk does not receive a salary from Tesla; he agreed with the board in 2018 to a compensation plan that ties his personal earnings to Tesla's valuation and revenue.[325] The deal stipulated that Musk only received the compensation if Tesla reached certain market values.[337] It was the largest such deal ever done between a CEO and a company board.[338] In the first award, given in May 2020, he was eligible to purchase 1.69 million Tesla shares (about 1% of the company) at below-market prices, which was worth about $800 million.[338][337]

Musk paid $455 million in taxes on $1.52 billion of income between 2014 and 2018.[339] According to ProPublica, Musk paid no federal income taxes in 2018.[340] He stated his 2021 tax bill was estimated at $12 billion based on his sale of $14 billion worth of Tesla stock.[339]

Musk has repeatedly described himself as "cash poor",[341][342] and has "professed to have little interest in the material trappings of wealth".[341] In May 2020, he pledged to sell almost all physical possessions.[342] Musk has defended his wealth by saying he is accumulating resources for humanity's outward expansion to space.[343]

Personal views and Twitter (later X) usage

Main article: Views of Elon Musk

Since joining Twitter (now known as X) in 2009,[344] Musk has been an active user and has over 163 million followers as of November 2023.[345] He posts memes, promotes business interests, and comments on contemporary political and cultural issues.[346] Musk's statements have provoked controversy, such as for mocking preferred gender pronouns[347][348] and comparing Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau to Adolf Hitler.[349] The New York Times describes his contributions to international relations as "chaotic", and critics of Musk argue that there is a lack of separation between his opinions and his business interests.[350] As CEO of Twitter, Musk emerged as a source of misinformation and right-wing conspiracy theories, for example by suggesting online details about mass murderer Mauricio Garcia's apparent interest in Nazism could have been planted as part of a psyop.[351] Allegations of him being transphobic appeared as well in response to actions taken by Twitter under his guidance.[352][353]

Accusations of antisemitism

The Israel government and several media outlets accused Musk of antisemitism due to him spreading George Soros conspiracy theories,[354] although some Israeli officials defended Musk.[355] A tweet of his in November 2023 supported white nationalist ideology[356] and affirmed another antisemitic conspiracy theory that Jews push "hatred against Whites."[357][358] The following day, Musk made a tweet supporting white pride.[359][360] Advertisers distanced themselves from his tweets.[361] Musk wrote that he doesn't believe that "all Jewish communities" hate white people, but specifically took aim at the Anti-Defamation League.[362] He also tweeted that his criticism of Jews applies to more groups than just the ADL, “You right that this does not extend to all Jewish communities, but it is also not just limited to ADL”.[363]

At the DealBook Summit on November 29, 2023, after comments from Disney CEO Bob Iger explaining his decision to stop advertising on X after Musk's recent post, journalist Andrew Ross Sorkin questioned Musk about the withdrawal of advertisers. Musk said in response, "I hope they stop. Don’t advertise" and "If somebody is going to try to blackmail me with advertising, blackmail me with money, go fuck yourself. Go fuck yourself. Is that clear? I hope it is."; Musk singled out Iger, saying "Hey Bob, if you’re in the audience."[364][365]

Existential threats

 
Musk giving details about Falcon 9 and Dragon spacecraft at the 2006 Mars Society Conference

Musk has been described as believing in longtermism, emphasizing the needs of future populations.[366] Accordingly, Musk has stated that artificial intelligence poses the greatest existential threat to humanity.[367][368] He has warned of a "Terminator-like" AI apocalypse and suggested that the government should regulate its safe development.[369][370] In 2015, Musk was a cosignatory, along with Stephen Hawking and hundreds of others, of the Open Letter on Artificial Intelligence, which called for the ban of autonomous weapons.[371] Musk's AI stances have been called alarmist and sensationalist by critics such as computer scientist Yann LeCun and Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg,[372][373] and led the think tank Information Technology and Innovation Foundation to award Musk its Annual Luddite Award in 2016.[374]

Musk has described climate change as the greatest threat to humanity after AI,[375] and has advocated for a carbon tax.[376] Musk was a critic of President Donald Trump's stance on climate change,[377][378] and resigned from two presidential business advisory councils following Trump's 2017 decision to withdraw the United States from the Paris Agreement.[379]

Musk has long promoted the colonization of Mars and argues that humanity should become a "multiplanetary species".[380] He has suggested the use of nuclear weapons to terraform Mars.[381][382] He envisioned establishing a direct democracy on Mars, with a system in which more votes would be required to create laws than remove them.[383] Musk has also voiced concerns about human population decline,[384][385] saying that "Mars has zero human population. We need a lot of people to become a multiplanet civilization."[386] Speaking at The Wall Street Journal's CEO Council session in 2021, Musk stated that a declining birth rate, and consequent population decline, is one of the biggest risks to human civilization.[387]

Politics

 
 
Musk with Senator Dianne Feinstein at the opening of the Tesla Fremont Factory (2010), and with Vice President Mike Pence alongside then-NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine at the Kennedy Space Center before SpaceX's Crew Dragon Demo-2 launch (2020)

While often described as libertarian, Musk has called himself "politically moderate" and was a registered independent voter when he lived in California. The New York Times wrote that Musk "expresses views that don't fit neatly into [the American] binary, left-right political framework".[388] Historically, Musk has donated to both Democrats and Republicans,[389] many of whom are in states in which he has a vested interest.[388] Beginning in the late 2010s, Musk's political contributions have shifted almost entirely to supporting Republicans.[390]

Musk voted for Hillary Clinton in the 2016 U.S. presidential election.[391] In the 2020 Democratic Party presidential primaries, Musk endorsed candidate Andrew Yang and expressed support for his proposed universal basic income.[392] He also endorsed Kanye West's 2020 presidential campaign.[393] He said he voted for Joe Biden in the 2020 U.S. presidential election.[394] In 2022, Musk said that he could "no longer support" the Democrats because they are the "party of division & hate",[395][396] and wrote a tweet encouraging "independent-minded voters" to vote Republican in the 2022 U.S. elections, which was an outlier among social media executives who typically avoid partisan political advocacy.[397][398] He has supported Republican Ron DeSantis for the 2024 U.S. presidential election, and Twitter hosted DeSantis's campaign announcement on a Twitter Spaces event.[399][400][401] In August 2023, Musk hosted Vivek Ramaswamy on Twitter Spaces, and shared his support.[402] As of May 2023, Musk was declining to endorse any specific candidate.[400]

 
Meeting of Musk and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi in New York City, June 20, 2023

Musk opposes a "billionaire's tax",[403] and has argued on Twitter with more left-leaning Democratic politicians such as Bernie Sanders,[404][405] Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez,[406] and Elizabeth Warren.[407] He has raised questions about the Black Lives Matter protests, partially based on the fact that the phrase "Hands up, don't shoot" was made up.[408][409] Musk also promoted a baseless theory relating to the attack of Speaker Nancy Pelosi's husband, but Musk deleted his tweet.[410] In May 2022, Musk traveled to Brazil to discuss projects to protect the Amazon rainforest with Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro.[411][412]

Musk has praised China and has been described as having a close relationship with the Chinese government, allowing access to its markets for Tesla.[413] After Gigafactory Shanghai produced its first batch of vehicles, Musk thanked the Chinese government and Chinese people while criticizing the United States and its people.[414]: 207–208  In 2022, Musk wrote an article for China Cyberspace, the official publication of Cyberspace Administration of China, which enforces Internet censorship in China. His writing the article was described as conflicting with his advocacy for free speech.[415][416] Musk later advocated for Taiwan to become a "special administrative zone" of China which drew cross-party criticism from Taiwanese lawmakers.[417][418][419] In October 2022, Musk posted a Twitter poll and "peace plan" to resolve the Russian invasion of Ukraine.[420][421] It was reported that Musk allegedly spoke with Russian President Vladimir Putin prior to the proposal, which Musk denied.[422][423][424] Musk has repeatedly expressed concern that a protracted war between Russia and Ukraine could lead to the use of nuclear weapons and the outbreak of World War III.[425][426][427] In October 2023, Musk said that "We are sleepwalking our way into World War III with one foolish decision after the other."[428]

In a YouTube podcast interview on November 10, 2023, Musk criticized Israel's actions in the Gaza Strip during the 2023 Israel–Hamas war, saying that Hamas "wanted to commit the worst atrocities that they could in order to provoke the most aggressive response possible from Israel." He added that "if you kill somebody’s child in Gaza, you have made at least a few Hamas members who will die just to kill an Israeli."[429] On November 17, 2023, Musk announced a policy change on the X platform, stating that users who use terms like "decolonization" and "from the river to the sea," or similar expressions that imply genocide of the Jewish people in Israel, will be suspended.[430] Several weeks later he would travel to Israel visiting the kibbutz Kfar Aza with Benjamin Netanyahu, which had been part of the 2023 Hamas-led attack on Israel, and described it as "jarring".[431]

COVID-19

 
Musk wearing a bandana as a face mask during the COVID-19 pandemic

Musk was criticized for his public comments and conduct related to the COVID-19 pandemic.[432][433] He spread misinformation about the virus, including promoting a widely discredited paper on the benefits of chloroquine and claiming that COVID-19 death statistics were inflated.[434]

In March 2020, Musk stated, "The coronavirus panic is dumb."[435][436] In an email to Tesla employees, Musk referred to COVID-19 as a "specific form of the common cold" and predicted that confirmed COVID-19 cases would not exceed 0.1% of the U.S. population.[432] On March 19, 2020, Musk predicted that there would be "probably close to zero new cases in [the U.S.] by end of April".[433] Politico labeled this statement one of "the most audacious, confident, and spectacularly incorrect prognostications [of 2020]".[437] Musk also falsely stated that children "are essentially immune" to COVID-19.[438][439]

Musk condemned COVID-19 lockdowns and initially refused to close the Tesla Fremont Factory in March 2020, defying the local shelter-in-place order.[432][440][441] In May 2020, he reopened the Tesla factory, defying the local stay-at-home order,[442][443] and warned workers that they would be unpaid, and their unemployment benefits might be jeopardized, if they did not report to work.[443] In December 2022, Musk called for prosecution of former National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases director Anthony Fauci.[444][445]

In March 2020, Musk promised that Tesla would make ventilators for COVID-19 patients if there were a shortage.[446] After figures like New York City mayor Bill de Blasio responded to Musk's offer,[447] Musk offered to donate ventilators which Tesla would build or buy from a third party.[446] However, Musk ended up buying and donating BiPAP and CPAP machines, which are devices that support respirations of someone able to breathe on their own, rather than the much more expensive and sought-after mechanical ventilator machines that are able to breathe for a patient entirely.[448][449]

In September 2020, Musk stated that he would not get the COVID-19 vaccine, because he and his children were "not at risk for COVID".[450][451] Two months later, Musk contracted COVID-19 but suggested his COVID-19 rapid antigen test results were dubious, as he had been tested four times on the same device with the same nurse but had received equal numbers of positive and negative results.[452] Following this, a postdoctoral fellow at the Princess Margaret Cancer Centre in Toronto explained in a Tweet why this result does not undermine the value of the test, referring to Musk as "Space Karen", which then trended on Twitter.[452][453] In December 2021, Musk revealed that he and his eligible children had received the vaccine, saying that the science behind the COVID vaccines was "unequivocal" but expressing his opposition to COVID vaccine mandates.[454]

Finance

Musk said that the U.S. government should not provide subsidies to companies, but impose a carbon tax to discourage poor behavior.[455][456] The free market, in his view, would achieve the best solution, and producing environmentally unfriendly vehicles should have consequences.[457] Tesla has received billions of dollars in subsidies.[458] In addition, Tesla made large sums from government-initiated systems of zero-emissions credits offered in California and at the United States federal level, which facilitated initial consumer adoption of Tesla vehicles, as the tax credits given by governments enabled Tesla's battery electric vehicles to be price-competitive, in comparison with existing lower-priced internal combustion engine vehicles.[459] Notably, Tesla generates some of its revenue from its sales of carbon credits granted to the company, by both the European Union Emissions Trading System and the Chinese national carbon trading scheme.[460][461][462][463]

Musk, a longtime opponent of short-selling, has repeatedly criticized the practice and argued it should be illegal.[464][465] Wired magazine speculated that Musk's opposition to short-selling stems from how short sellers have an incentive to find and promote unfavorable information about his companies.[466] In early 2021, he encouraged the GameStop short squeeze.[467][468]

In December 2022, Musk sold $3.6 billion of his stock in Tesla, equal to 22 million shares in the company,[469] despite pledging earlier in the year that he would not sell any additional shares.[470]

Technology

Musk has promoted cryptocurrencies and supports them over traditional government-issued fiat currencies.[471] Given the influence of Musk's tweets in moving cryptocurrency markets,[472] his statements about cryptocurrencies have been viewed as market manipulation by some, such as economist Nouriel Roubini.[473] Musk's social media praising of Bitcoin and Dogecoin was credited for increasing their prices. Consequently, Tesla's 2021 announcement, against the backdrop of Musk's social media behavior, that it bought $1.5 billion worth of Bitcoin, raised questions.[474] Tesla's announcement that it would accept Bitcoin for payment was criticized by environmentalists and investors, due to the environmental impact of cryptocurrency mining. A few months later, in response to the criticism, Musk announced on Twitter that Tesla would no longer accept payments in Bitcoin and would not engage in any Bitcoin transactions until the environmental issues are solved.[475][476]

Despite the Boring Company's involvement in building mass transit infrastructure, Musk has criticized public transport and promoted individualized transport (private vehicles).[477][478][479] His comments have been called "elitist" and have sparked widespread criticism from both transportation and urban planning experts, who have pointed out that public transportation in dense urban areas is more economical, more energy efficient, and requires much less space than private cars.[478][480][479]

Personal life

From the early 2000s until late 2020, Musk resided in California, where both Tesla and SpaceX were founded.[481] He then relocated to Texas, saying that California had become "complacent" about its economic success.[481][482] While hosting Saturday Night Live in 2021, Musk stated that he has Asperger syndrome, although he has never been medically diagnosed.[483][484] Musk trained in Brazilian jiu-jitsu while preparing for the proposed fight between himself and Mark Zuckerberg.[485] In his leisure time, he plays video games including Quake, Diablo IV, Elden Ring, and Polytopia.[486][487]

Relationships and children

Musk has 10 surviving children.[488] He met his first wife, Canadian author Justine Wilson, while attending Queen's University in Ontario, Canada; they married in 2000.[489] In 2002, their first child died of sudden infant death syndrome at the age of 10 weeks.[490] After his death, the couple used IVF to continue their family;[491] they had twins in 2004 followed by triplets in 2006.[491] The couple divorced in 2008 and shared custody.[492][493] In 2022, the eldest twin officially changed her name to reflect her gender identity as a trans woman and to use Wilson as her last name because she no longer wished to be associated with Musk.[494] Musk blamed the estrangement of his daughter on what the Financial Times characterized as "the supposed takeover of elite schools and universities by neo-Marxists."[495]

In 2008, Musk began dating English actress Talulah Riley.[496] They married two years later at Dornoch Cathedral in Scotland.[497][498] In 2012, the couple divorced, before remarrying the following year.[499] After briefly filing for divorce in 2014,[499] Musk finalized a second divorce from Riley in 2016.[500] Musk then dated Amber Heard for several months in 2017;[501] he had reportedly been pursuing her since 2012.[502]

In 2018, Musk and Canadian musician Grimes revealed that they were dating.[503] Grimes gave birth to their son in May 2020.[504][505] According to Musk and Grimes, his name was "X Æ A-12" (/ɛks æʃ eɪ ˈtwɛlv/); however, the name would have violated California regulations as it contained characters that are not in the modern English alphabet,[506][507] and was then changed to "X Æ A-Xii". This drew more confusion, as Æ is not a letter in the modern English alphabet.[508] The child was eventually named X AE A-XII Musk, with "X" as a first name, "AE A-XII" as a middle name, and "Musk" as surname.[509] In December 2021, Grimes and Musk had a second child, a daughter named Exa Dark Sideræl Musk (nicknamed "Y"), born via surrogacy.[2] Despite the pregnancy, Musk confirmed reports that the couple were "semi-separated" in September 2021; in an interview with Time in December 2021, he said he was single.[510][511] In March 2022, Grimes said of her relationship with Musk: "I would probably refer to him as my boyfriend, but we're very fluid."[2] Later that month, Grimes tweeted that she and Musk had broken up again.[512] In September 2023 it was revealed that the pair had a third child, a son named Techno Mechanicus "Tau" Musk.[4]

In July 2022, Insider published court documents revealing that Musk had had twins with Shivon Zilis, director of operations and special projects at Neuralink, in November 2021.[513] They were born weeks before Musk and Grimes had their second child via surrogate in December. The news "raise[d] questions about workplace ethics", given that Zilis directly reported to Musk.[514] Also in July 2022, The Wall Street Journal reported that Musk allegedly had an affair with Nicole Shanahan, the wife of Google co-founder Sergey Brin, in 2021, leading to their divorce the following year.[515] Musk denied the report.[516]

Musk has also had a relationship with Australian actress Natasha Bassett, who has been described as “an occasional girlfriend.”[517]

Legal matters

Main articles: List of lawsuits involving Tesla, Inc. and Criticism of Tesla, Inc.

In May 2022, Business Insider cited an anonymous friend of an unnamed SpaceX contract flight attendant, alleging that Musk engaged in sexual misconduct in 2016. The source stated that in November 2018, Musk, SpaceX, and the former flight attendant entered into a severance agreement granting the attendant a $250,000 payment in exchange for a promise not to sue over the claims.[518] Musk responded, "If I were inclined to engage in sexual harassment, this is unlikely to be the first time in my entire 30-year career that it comes to light". He accused the article from Business Insider of being a "politically motivated hit piece".[519][520] After the release of the Business Insider article, Tesla's stock fell by more than 6%,[521] decreasing Musk's net worth by $10 billion.[522] Barron's wrote "...some investors considered key-man risk – the danger that a company could be badly hurt by the loss of one individual."[523]

In April 2023, the government of the U.S. Virgin Islands sought to subpoena Musk for documents in a lawsuit alleging that JPMorgan Chase profited from Jeffrey Epstein's sex trafficking operation.[524] In May, a judge granted the U.S. Virgin Islands' request to serve Musk electronically through Tesla after the U.S. territory had difficulty locating him.[524] The efforts to subpoena Musk for documents do not implicate him in any wrongdoing and do not seek to have Musk testify under oath.[524]

Musk's former girlfriend Grimes filed a parental relationship petition in late September 2023 as part of a custody dispute. The petition came a month after Grimes openly accused him in a social media post of blocking her access to the youngest of their three children.[525][526]

Ben Brody, a 22-year-old Los Angeles-based college graduate, initiated a lawsuit in October 2023 against Musk for over $1 million. He alleged Musk had falsely identified him as a participant "in a violent street brawl on behalf of a neo-Nazi extremist group" near Portland, Oregon.[527][528][529] According to Brody's complaint, one of Musk's X posts promoted conspiracy theories that "Ben Brody's alleged participation in the extremist brawl meant the incident was probably a 'false flag' operation to deceive the American public".[527] The complaint also alleged that Musk's accusations led to Brody and his family being subjected to harassment and threats.[527][528][530]

In October 2023, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) sued Musk, alleging that he was refusing to testify in an investigation into whether he violated federal law by purchasing Twitter stock in 2022.[531][532][533] According to the lawsuit, Musk testified twice in 2022 but refused to testify a third time in 2023, claiming the SEC was harassing him.[531][533]

Public perception

See also: Elon Musk filmography and List of awards and honors received by Elon Musk
 
Musk (right) and then President Barack Obama at the Cape Canaveral Space Launch Complex 40, launch site of the SpaceX Falcon 9, 2010

Though his ventures were influential within their own industries in the 2000s, Musk only became a public figure in the early 2010s. He has been described as an eccentric who makes spontaneous and controversial statements, contrary to other billionaires who prefer reclusiveness to protect their businesses. Vance described people's opinions of Musk as polarized due to his "part philosopher, part troll" role on Twitter.[534]

Musk was a partial inspiration for the characterization of Tony Stark in the Marvel film Iron Man (2008).[535] Musk also had a cameo appearance in the film's 2010 sequel, Iron Man 2.[536] Musk has made cameos and appearances in other films such as Machete Kills (2013),[537] Why Him? (2016),[538] and Men in Black: International (2019).[539] Television series in which he has appeared include The Simpsons ("The Musk Who Fell to Earth", 2015),[540] The Big Bang Theory ("The Platonic Permutation", 2015),[541] South Park ("Members Only", 2016),[542][543] Young Sheldon ("A Patch, a Modem, and a Zantac®", 2017),[544] Rick and Morty ("One Crew over the Crewcoo's Morty", 2019),[545][546] and Saturday Night Live (2021).[547] He contributed interviews to the documentaries Racing Extinction (2015) and the Werner Herzog-directed Lo and Behold (2016).[548][549]

Musk was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society (FRS) in 2018.[550] In 2015, he received an honorary doctorate in engineering and technology from Yale University[551] and IEEE Honorary Membership.[552] Awards for his contributions to the development of the Falcon rockets include the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics George Low Transportation Award in 2008,[553] the Fédération Aéronautique Internationale Gold Space Medal in 2010,[554] and the Royal Aeronautical Society Gold Medal in 2012.[555] Time has listed Musk as one of the most influential people in the world on four occasions in 2010,[556] 2013,[557] 2018,[558] and 2021.[559] Musk was selected as Time's "Person of the Year" for 2021. Then Time editor-in-chief Edward Felsenthal wrote that "Person of the Year is a marker of influence, and few individuals have had more influence than Musk on life on Earth, and potentially life off Earth too".[560][561] In February 2022, Musk was elected to the National Academy of Engineering.[562]

Notes and references

Notes

  1. ^ One child is deceased.[3]
  2. ^ Musk remained on the board and served as an advisor.[84][85]
  3. ^ SpaceX received nearly $900 million in Federal Communications Commission subsidies for Starlink.[114][115]
  4. ^ Musk stated he was considering taking Tesla private at a price of $420 a share, an alleged reference to marijuana.[157] Members of Tesla's board and rapper Azealia Banks alleged that Musk may have been under the influence of recreational drugs when he wrote the tweet.[158][159]
  5. ^ He did not file the necessary SEC paperwork within 10 days of his stake passing 5%, a violation of U.S. securities laws.[213]
  6. ^ According to the Wall Street Journal, he was worth $140 billion, with $52 billion of that attributable to his ownership of Tesla stock.

Citations

  1. ^ "Elon Musk Reflects on "Brutal" Relationship With Amber Heard in New Biography". E! Online. September 13, 2023. from the original on October 20, 2023. Retrieved October 17, 2023.
  2. ^ a b c Gordon, Devin (March 10, 2022). ""Infamy Is Kind Of Fun": Grimes on Music, Mars, and—Surprise!—Her Secret New Baby With Elon Musk". Vanity Fair. from the original on May 21, 2022. Retrieved March 10, 2022.
  3. ^ Berger (2021), pp. 182.
  4. ^ a b Szalai, Jennifer (September 9, 2023). "Elon Musk Wants to Save Humanity. The Only Problem: People". The New York Times. Archived from the original on September 9, 2023. Retrieved September 19, 2023. The musician Grimes, the mother of three of Musk's children (the existence of the third, Techno Mechanicus, nicknamed Tau, has been kept private until now), calls his roiling anger 'demon mode' — a mind-set that 'causes a lot of chaos.'
  5. ^ "Bloomberg Billionaires Index". Bloomberg L.P. from the original on July 8, 2017. Retrieved July 25, 2022.
  6. ^ "Real Time Billionaires". Forbes. from the original on February 10, 2014. Retrieved August 27, 2017.
  7. ^ "X.AI Corp". OpenCorporates. from the original on August 5, 2023. Retrieved July 27, 2023.
  8. ^ a b Ghaffary, Shirin (May 20, 2023). "Elon Musk won't stop tweeting his way into trouble". Vox. from the original on October 27, 2023. Retrieved October 28, 2023.
  9. ^ Shephard, Alex (March 21, 2023). "What Is Elon Musk Building?". The New Republic. from the original on October 26, 2023. Retrieved October 26, 2023.
  10. ^ Bond, Shannon (October 31, 2022). "Elon Musk said Twitter wouldn't become a 'hellscape.' It's already changing". NPR. from the original on October 20, 2023. Retrieved October 28, 2023.
  11. ^ Bauer, Sydney (June 23, 2023). "Elon Musk Has Made Anti-Trans Hatred One of Twitter's Core Features" – via www.thenation.com.
  12. ^ a b "Elon Musk promotes transphobic content as hate speech surges on his far-right platform". The Independent. from the original on August 7, 2023. Retrieved August 5, 2023.
  13. ^ Thakker, Prem; Noah, Timothy; Thakker, Prem; Otten, Tori; Thakker, Prem; Thakker, Prem; Otten, Tori; Aronoff, Kate; Otten, Tori; Thakker, Prem (November 1, 2022). "Elon Musk Personally Elevates Transphobic Video Originally Flagged as Hate Speech" – via The New Republic.
  14. ^ "Disney, Apple among major companies to pull business from X after Elon Musk's antisemitic post". NBC News. November 18, 2023.
  15. ^ Hatmaker, Taylor (November 17, 2023). "Backlash builds after Elon Musk called an antisemitic conspiracy theory the 'actual truth'".
  16. ^ "Another Day, Another Antisemitic Conspiracy Theory for Elon Musk and X". Vanity Fair. November 16, 2023.
  17. ^ a b Knight, Will (November 25, 2022). "Here's Proof Hate Speech Is More Viral on Elon Musk's Twitter". Wired. from the original on December 13, 2022. Retrieved November 25, 2022.
  18. ^ Cohen, Julia (April 24, 2023). "Analysis finds hate speech has significantly increased on Twitter". phys.org. Retrieved November 16, 2023.
  19. ^ a b Binoy, Rhea (November 5, 2022). "Musk's Twitter updates app to start charging $8 for blue checkmark". Reuters. from the original on November 5, 2022. Retrieved November 5, 2022.
  20. ^ a b Wilson, Jason (November 16, 2022). "Twitter Blesses Extremists With Paid 'Blue Checks'". Southern Poverty Law Center. from the original on November 27, 2022. Retrieved November 29, 2022.
  21. ^ a b Eligon, John; Chutel, Lynsey (May 5, 2022). "Elon Musk Left a South Africa That Was Rife With Misinformation and White Privilege". The New York Times. from the original on November 11, 2022. Retrieved May 5, 2022.
  22. ^ Vance (2017), pp. 25, 31.
  23. ^ a b Hall, Dana (April 11, 2014). "Rocket Man: The otherworldly ambitions of Elon Musk". The Mercury News. from the original on April 14, 2014. Retrieved April 14, 2014.
  24. ^ Elliott, Hannah (March 26, 2012). "At Home With Elon Musk: The (Soon-to-Be) Bachelor Billionaire". Forbes. from the original on May 27, 2012. Retrieved May 30, 2015.
  25. ^ His biography author Ashlee Vance interviewed on the TV show Triangulation on the TWiT.tv network, discussion of his family starts around the 15th minute
  26. ^ Vargas, Chanel (March 6, 2018). "11 Things to Know About Stunning 69-Year-Old Model Maye Musk". Town & Country. from the original on March 7, 2018. Retrieved March 25, 2020.
  27. ^ a b Usborne, Simon (February 21, 2018). "Meet the Musks: who's who in Elon's extended family?". The Guardian. ISSN 0261-3077. from the original on May 27, 2020. Retrieved March 25, 2020.
  28. ^ a b Isaacson (2023), p. 23.
  29. ^ May, Dana Hull and Patrick. "Exploring the otherworldly ambitions of Elon Musk". The Buffalo News. from the original on September 26, 2022. Retrieved October 24, 2021.
  30. ^ Friend, Tad (August 17, 2009). "Plugged In". The New Yorker. from the original on March 8, 2022.
  31. ^ a b Smith, Adam (June 28, 2021). "50 years of Elon Musk's huge wealth, from emeralds to SpaceX and Tesla". The Independent. from the original on November 25, 2021. Retrieved December 20, 2021.
  32. ^ Lieberman, Hallie. "The Musk of Romance". Wired. from the original on September 2, 2020. Retrieved September 2, 2020.
  33. ^ a b Hull, Dana; May, Patrick (April 10, 2014). "2014: Rocket Man: The otherworldly ambitions of Elon Musk". The Mercury News. from the original on September 6, 2016. Retrieved April 7, 2021.
  34. ^ Keating, Joseph C. Jr. (September 1995). "Joshua N Haldeman, DC: the Canadian Years, 1926–1950". The Journal of the Canadian Chiropractic Association. PMC 2485067.
  35. ^ Vance (2017), pp. 26–30.
  36. ^ Isaacson (2023), p. 16.
  37. ^ Isaacson (2023), p. 10.
  38. ^ a b Strauss, Neil (November 15, 2017). . Rolling Stone. Archived from the original on August 17, 2020. Retrieved November 15, 2017.
  39. ^ Crilly, Rob (March 25, 2018). "Elon Musk's father has baby with step-daughter he has known since she was four". The Daily Telegraph. from the original on April 26, 2021.
  40. ^ Isaacson (2023), pp. 2—3.
  41. ^ "Elon Musk shares the science fiction book series that inspired him to start SpaceX". CNBC. February 22, 2020. from the original on November 4, 2023. Retrieved November 9, 2023.
  42. ^ "Billionaire Elon Musk says he was 'raised by books' and credits his success to these 8". CNBC. November 16, 2017. from the original on November 9, 2023. Retrieved November 9, 2023.
  43. ^ Vance (2017), p. 38.
  44. ^ O'Kane, Sean (June 9, 2015). "Play the PC game Elon Musk wrote as a pre-teen". The Verge. from the original on February 7, 2018. Retrieved January 12, 2019.
  45. ^ Belfiore (2007), pp. 166–95.
  46. ^ a b Mak, Aaron (December 4, 2019). . Slate. Archived from the original on October 6, 2020. Retrieved December 7, 2019.
  47. ^ Isaacson (2023), p. 26.
  48. ^ a b Clifford, Catherine (June 12, 2018). . CNBC. Archived from the original on August 2, 2020. Retrieved September 14, 2020.
  49. ^ Vance (2017), p. 44.
  50. ^ Junod, Tom (November 15, 2012). . Esquire. Archived from the original on August 18, 2020. Retrieved May 29, 2020.
  51. ^ Vance (2017), pp. 43–44.
  52. ^ Vance (2017), p. 45.
  53. ^ Vance (2017), p. 46.
  54. ^ Vance (2017), pp. 46–47.
  55. ^ Locke, Taylor (December 20, 2019). "Elon Musk's college pal: This is what 'differentiates Elon from the rest of humanity'". CNBC. from the original on December 14, 2020. Retrieved January 8, 2021.
  56. ^ "Encyclopedia Britannica Elon Musk". from the original on September 4, 2015. Retrieved January 11, 2023.
  57. ^ Vance (2017), Appendix 1
  58. ^ Meisenzahl, Elizabeth. . The Daily Pennsylvanian. Archived from the original on August 7, 2020. Retrieved June 1, 2020.
  59. ^ McCray, Patrick W. (June 11, 2012). "A pioneer in space and on Earth". CNN. from the original on November 28, 2022. Retrieved November 19, 2022.
  60. ^ Kasprak, Alex (December 21, 2022). "Does Elon Musk Have an Undergraduate Degree in Physics?". Snopes. from the original on December 23, 2022. Retrieved December 23, 2022.
  61. ^ a b Hern, Alex (February 9, 2018). "Elon Musk: the real-life Iron Man". The Guardian. from the original on June 11, 2022. Retrieved November 3, 2022.
  62. ^ . CNBC. July 16, 2018. Archived from the original on December 28, 2019. Retrieved December 28, 2019.
  63. ^ Soni, Jimmi (February 22, 2022). "The little-known story about Elon Musk's first post-grad internship". Fortune. from the original on March 7, 2022.
  64. ^ Vance (2017), p. 368.
  65. ^ Feeley, Jef (August 31, 2022). "Stanford Pulled Into Dropout Musk's Legal Fight With Twitter". Bloomberg. from the original on September 3, 2022. Retrieved November 19, 2022.
  66. ^ Maidment, Paul (March 15, 2016). . CNBC. Archived from the original on May 15, 2020. Retrieved September 3, 2020.
  67. ^ Delevett, Peter; Hull, Dana (August 13, 2012). "Greg Kouri, early investor in PayPal, dies in New York". The Mercury News. from the original on October 6, 2022. Retrieved October 1, 2022.
  68. ^ Huddleston, Tom Jr. (June 19, 2018). "How Elon Musk founded Zip2 with his brother Kimbal". CNBC. from the original on November 9, 2022. Retrieved October 1, 2022.
  69. ^ @elonmusk (December 28, 2019). "We started Zip2 with ~$2k from me plus my overclocked home-built PC, ~$5k from my bro & ~$8k from Greg Kouri (such a good guy — he is greatly missed). My Dad provided 10% of a ~$200k angel funding round much later, but by then risk was reduced & round would've happened anyway" (Tweet) – via Twitter.
  70. ^ Chafkin, Max (December 1, 2007). "Entrepreneur of the Year, 2007: Elon Musk". Inc. from the original on December 28, 2007. Retrieved February 22, 2022.
  71. ^ a b c Huddleston, Tom Jr. (June 19, 2018). . CNBC. Archived from the original on August 18, 2020. Retrieved September 4, 2020.
  72. ^ Kidder (2013), pp. 224–228.
  73. ^ Vance (2017), p. 67.
  74. ^ Vance (2017), p. 14.
  75. ^ Junnarkar, Sandeep (February 16, 1999). "Compaq buys Zip2". CNET. from the original on October 21, 2014. Retrieved December 13, 2020.
  76. ^ Vance (2017), p. 109.
  77. ^ Vance (2017), p. 78.
  78. ^ Vance (2017), p. 84.
  79. ^ a b Vance (2017), p. 86.
  80. ^ Jackson (2004), pp. 40, 69, 130, 163.
  81. ^ Vance (2017), pp. 85–86.
  82. ^ Vance (2017), pp. 85–87.
  83. ^ Vance (2017), pp. 87–88.
  84. ^ . Fortune. Archived from the original on May 23, 2017. Retrieved July 4, 2015.
  85. ^ a b Vance (2017), p. 89.
  86. ^ Odell, Mark (September 30, 2014). "Timeline: The rise of PayPal". Financial Times. from the original on June 22, 2020. Retrieved April 3, 2020.
  87. ^ . PayPal. December 31, 2001. Archived from the original on August 25, 2020.
  88. ^ Vance (2017), pp. 116.
  89. ^ Huang, Echo. . Quartz. Archived from the original on June 25, 2020. Retrieved April 3, 2020.
  90. ^ Statt, Nick (July 10, 2017). . The Verge. Archived from the original on June 25, 2020. Retrieved September 3, 2020.
  91. ^ Kleinman, Zoe (October 5, 2022). "Elon Musk, Twitter and the mysterious X app". BBC. from the original on October 21, 2022. Retrieved October 27, 2022.
  92. ^ Vance (2017), pp. 99, 102–103.
  93. ^ a b Vance, Ashlee (May 14, 2015). "Elon Musk's space dream almost killed Tesla". Bloomberg L.P. from the original on February 23, 2017. Retrieved June 7, 2015.
  94. ^ Wayne, Leslie (February 5, 2006). . The New York Times. Archived from the original on April 12, 2020. Retrieved February 16, 2015.
  95. ^ California Business Search (C2414622 – Space Exploration Technologies Corp), from the original on February 23, 2018, retrieved December 13, 2020
  96. ^ Koren, Marina (May 6, 2021). "Elon Musk Is Maybe, Actually, Strangely, Going to Do This Mars Thing". The Atlantic. from the original on May 31, 2022. Retrieved June 8, 2022.
  97. ^ a b Berger (2021), pp. 178–182.
  98. ^ Friedman, Josh (April 22, 2003). "Entrepreneur Tries His Midas Touch in Space, Los Angeles Times". Los Angeles Times. from the original on October 29, 2022. Retrieved October 29, 2022.
  99. ^ Malik, Tariq (November 21, 2005). "Griffin Reiterates NASA's Commitment to Commercial Cargo, Space News". from the original on June 19, 2022. Retrieved October 29, 2022.
  100. ^ Dunbar, Brian. "NASA Invests in Private Sector Space Flight with SpaceX, Rocketplane-Kistler". nasa.gov (Press release). from the original on September 8, 2021. Retrieved December 2, 2021.
  101. ^ Ledur, Júlia (May 1, 2019). "Falcon Flights". Reuters. from the original on February 10, 2021. Retrieved February 10, 2021.
  102. ^ Chang, Kenneth (May 22, 2012). "Big Day for a Space Entrepreneur Promising More". The New York Times. from the original on July 1, 2017. Retrieved January 11, 2021.
  103. ^ Harwood, William (May 31, 2012). . CBS News. Archived from the original on April 22, 2016. Retrieved August 3, 2013.
  104. ^ "SpaceX rocket in historic upright landing". BBC News. December 22, 2015. from the original on August 31, 2019. Retrieved June 30, 2016.
  105. ^ O'Kane, Sean (May 27, 2016). "SpaceX successfully lands a Falcon 9 rocket at sea for the third time". The Verge. from the original on June 27, 2016. Retrieved June 30, 2016.
  106. ^ Drake, Nadia (February 25, 2018). . National Geographic. Archived from the original on February 10, 2021. Retrieved February 10, 2021.
  107. ^ Chow, Denise (November 6, 2019). "'Starman' and the Tesla Roadster that SpaceX launched into orbit have now cruised beyond Mars". NBC News. from the original on February 10, 2021. Retrieved February 10, 2021.
  108. ^ Berger, Eric (August 28, 2019). "Starhopper aces test, sets up full-scale prototype flights this year". Ars Technica. from the original on January 21, 2021. Retrieved December 15, 2021.
  109. ^ Roulette, Joey (March 28, 2022). . Reuters. Archived from the original on March 29, 2022. Retrieved March 31, 2022.
  110. ^ Wattles, Jackie (May 30, 2020). . CNN. Archived from the original on August 29, 2020. Retrieved May 30, 2020.
  111. ^ Johnson, Eric M.; Roulette, Joey (October 31, 2018). "Musk shakes up SpaceX in race to make satellite launch window: sources". Reuters. from the original on May 18, 2020. Retrieved March 28, 2021.
  112. ^ Hall, Shannon (June 1, 2019). . The New York Times. Archived from the original on August 21, 2020. Retrieved June 1, 2019.
  113. ^ Shepardson, David; Roulette, Joey (July 30, 2020). "Taking on SpaceX, Amazon to invest $10 billion in satellite broadband plan". Reuters. from the original on January 7, 2021. Retrieved January 12, 2021.
  114. ^ Sheetz, Michael (December 7, 2020). "SpaceX's Starlink wins nearly $900 million in FCC subsidies to bring internet to rural areas". CNBC. from the original on December 16, 2020. Retrieved January 12, 2021.
  115. ^ Wattles, Jackie (December 8, 2020). "SpaceX gets almost $900 million in federal subsidies to deliver broadband to rural America". CNN. from the original on December 18, 2020. Retrieved January 12, 2021.
  116. ^ Griffin, Andrew (December 30, 2021). "Elon Musk rejects criticism that his satellite fleet is dangerous". The Independent. from the original on December 30, 2021. Retrieved December 31, 2021.
  117. ^ "Elon Musk rejects claims that his satellites are hogging space". BBC News. December 30, 2021. from the original on December 31, 2021. Retrieved December 31, 2021.
  118. ^ Smith, Adam (February 7, 2021). "Astronomers create new global force to stop Elon Musk's internet satellites hiding killer asteroids". The Independent. from the original on May 27, 2022. Retrieved June 30, 2022.
  119. ^ Sheetz, Michael (March 22, 2022). "Elon Musk's SpaceX sent thousands of Starlink satellite internet dishes to Ukraine, company's president says". CNBC. from the original on March 27, 2022. Retrieved March 28, 2022.
  120. ^ "SpaceX's Musk says Starlink has been told by some governments to block Russian news". Reuters. March 6, 2022. from the original on April 4, 2022. Retrieved April 5, 2022.
  121. ^ Porter, Jon (April 4, 2022). "Elon Musk buys 9.2 percent of Twitter amid complaints about free speech". The Verge. from the original on April 4, 2022. Retrieved April 5, 2022.
  122. ^ Marquardt, Alex (October 13, 2022). "Exclusive: Musk's SpaceX says it can no longer pay for critical satellite services in Ukraine, asks Pentagon to pick up the tab". CNN. from the original on October 24, 2022. Retrieved October 27, 2022.
  123. ^ Capoot, Ashley (October 15, 2022). "'The hell with it': Elon Musk tweets SpaceX will 'keep funding Ukraine govt for free' amid Starlink controversy". CNBC. from the original on November 3, 2022. Retrieved October 27, 2022.
  124. ^ Hern, Alex (October 15, 2022). "Musk says SpaceX will keep funding Ukraine Starlink internet". BBC News. from the original on December 5, 2022. Retrieved October 27, 2022.
  125. ^ "Elon Musk says SpaceX will keep funding Starlink internet in Ukraine". The Guardian. October 16, 2022. from the original on October 24, 2022. Retrieved October 27, 2022.
  126. ^ Reed, Eric (February 4, 2020). "History of Tesla: Timeline and Facts". TheStreet.com. from the original on December 20, 2021. Retrieved January 10, 2023.
  127. ^ Vance (2017), pp. 153–154.
  128. ^ Vance (2017), p. 159.
  129. ^ Schilling, Melissa (2018). Quirky: The remarkable story of the traits, foibles, and genius of breakthrough innovators who changed the world. PublicAffairs. ISBN 9781610397926.
  130. ^ Morrison, Chris (October 15, 2008). "Musk steps in as CEO". The New York Times. from the original on February 4, 2016. Retrieved December 13, 2020.
  131. ^ "Elon Musk: The Story of a Maverick". interestingengineering.com. August 13, 2020. from the original on March 16, 2021. Retrieved April 3, 2021.
  132. ^ LaMonica, Martin (September 2009). "Tesla Motors founders: Now there are five". CNET. from the original on November 15, 2020. Retrieved April 17, 2020. Tesla Motors and co-founder Martin Eberhard announced an agreement over who can claim to be a founder of the company on Monday.
  133. ^ Schwartz, Ariel (September 21, 2009). "Tesla Lawsuit Drama Ends as Five Company Founders Emerge". Fast Company. from the original on June 6, 2015. Retrieved April 14, 2020. Eberhard and Musk have reached a rather unexpected resolution–instead of agreeing to share the title of "founder", the pair has designated five people as company founders, including Musk, Eberhard, JB Straubel, Mark Tarpenning, and Ian Wright.
  134. ^ Royse, Dave (July 8, 2019). "Industry Shift: With Four Departures This Year, Who Is The Longest-Tenured Automotive CEO?". Yahoo. from the original on December 29, 2019. Retrieved June 8, 2022.
  135. ^ Shead, Sam (March 15, 2021). "Elon Musk has officially been made the 'Technoking of Tesla'". CNBC. from the original on January 12, 2022. Retrieved January 28, 2022.
  136. ^ Wilson, Kevin A. (March 15, 2018). "Worth the Watt: A Brief History of the Electric Car, 1830 to Present". Car and Driver. from the original on March 17, 2021. Retrieved March 30, 2021.
  137. ^ Boudreau, John (June 22, 2012). "In a Silicon Valley milestone, Tesla Motors begins delivering Model S electric cars". The Mercury News. from the original on November 24, 2012. Retrieved June 22, 2012.
  138. ^ Ruddick, Graham (September 30, 2015). "Tesla's Model X electric car spreads falcon wings at U.S. launch". The Guardian. from the original on June 2, 2017. Retrieved November 4, 2015.
  139. ^ Vlasic, Bill (July 29, 2017). "In Pivotal Moment, Tesla Unveils Its First Mass-Market Sedan". The New York Times. from the original on February 9, 2021. Retrieved February 9, 2021.
  140. ^ Shahan, Zachary (August 26, 2021). "Tesla Model 3 Has Passed 1 Million Sales". CleanTechnica. from the original on September 4, 2021. Retrieved August 26, 2021.
  141. ^ Holland, Maximilian (March 10, 2020). "Tesla Passes 1 Million EV Milestone & Model 3 Becomes All Time Best Seller". CleanTechnica. from the original on April 12, 2020. Retrieved April 20, 2020.
  142. ^ O'Kane, Sean (March 16, 2020). "Tesla Model Y deliveries begin in the US". The Verge. from the original on March 17, 2020. Retrieved February 14, 2021.
  143. ^ Huddleston, Tom Jr. (November 22, 2019). "This is the James Bond sports car Elon Musk bought for nearly $1 million that inspired Tesla Cybertruck". CNBC. from the original on November 27, 2019. Retrieved September 19, 2020.
  144. ^ Eddy, Melissa (March 4, 2022). "Tesla Wins Approval to Open European Assembly Plant". The New York Times. from the original on September 4, 2022. Retrieved September 4, 2022.
  145. ^ "With First Share Offering, Tesla Bets on Electric Car's Future". The New York Times. Associated Press. June 28, 2010. from the original on February 10, 2021. Retrieved February 9, 2021.
  146. ^ "Tesla overtakes Toyota to become world's most valuable carmaker". BBC News. July 1, 2020. from the original on February 10, 2021. Retrieved February 9, 2021.
  147. ^ Boudette, Neal E. (July 2, 2020). "Tesla Shines During the Pandemic as Other Automakers Struggle". The New York Times. from the original on February 10, 2021. Retrieved February 9, 2021.
  148. ^ Li, Yun (December 20, 2021). "Tesla shares fall 6% as it enters the S&P 500 with 1.69% weighting, fifth largest". CNBC. from the original on February 10, 2021. Retrieved February 9, 2021.
  149. ^ "Tesla Stock Joins the S&P 500: A Game Changer". The Wall Street Journal. December 21, 2020. from the original on February 10, 2021. Retrieved February 9, 2021.
  150. ^ Isidore, Chris (October 26, 2021). "Tesla is now worth more than $1 trillion". CNN. from the original on November 14, 2021. Retrieved November 14, 2021.
  151. ^ a b Haselton, Todd (November 13, 2021). "Elon Musk sold about $6.9 billion in Tesla stock this week". CNBC. from the original on June 8, 2022. Retrieved November 15, 2021.
  152. ^ Jin, Hyunjoo (December 30, 2021). "Tesla's Musk exercises all of his stock options expiring next year". Reuters. from the original on May 31, 2022. Retrieved June 8, 2022.
  153. ^ Michaels, Dave (February 24, 2022). "WSJ News Exclusive | SEC Probes Trading by Elon Musk and Brother in Wake of Tesla CEO's Sales". The Wall Street Journal. from the original on March 3, 2022. Retrieved March 3, 2022.
  154. ^ Siddiqui, Faiz (September 30, 2022). "Elon Musk debuts Tesla robot, Optimus, calling it a 'fundamental transformation'". The Washington Post. from the original on October 22, 2022.
  155. ^ "'I am a fan of Modi': Tesla CEO Elon Musk after meeting PM in New York". Hindustan Times. June 21, 2023. from the original on June 21, 2023. Retrieved June 22, 2023.
  156. ^ a b Goldstein, Matthew (September 27, 2018). . The New York Times. Archived from the original on June 23, 2020. Retrieved September 27, 2018.
  157. ^ Choudhury, Saheli Roy (September 28, 2018). . CNBC. Archived from the original on October 6, 2020. Retrieved September 17, 2020.
  158. ^ Swisher, Kara (August 23, 2018). "How and Why Silicon Valley Gets High". The New York Times. from the original on August 24, 2018. Retrieved May 11, 2021.
  159. ^ Woodyard, Chris (August 30, 2018). "Elon Musk's tweet on taking Tesla private now dogged by drugs claim from rapper Azealia Banks". USA Today. from the original on May 12, 2021. Retrieved May 11, 2021.
  160. ^ Patnaik, Subrat; Kalia, Shubham (September 28, 2018). . Reuters. Archived from the original on November 23, 2019. Retrieved November 23, 2018.
  161. ^ O'Kane, Sean; Lopatto, Elizabeth (September 27, 2018). . The Verge. Archived from the original on July 30, 2020. Retrieved September 27, 2018.
  162. ^ . The Verge. Archived from the original on May 27, 2020. Retrieved September 29, 2018.
  163. ^ . Reuters. October 27, 2018. Archived from the original on May 22, 2020. Retrieved December 9, 2018.
  164. ^ Youn, Soo; Katersky, Aaron (October 11, 2018). . ABC News. Archived from the original on October 23, 2019. Retrieved October 17, 2018.
  165. ^ Brodkin, Jon (April 18, 2022). "Musk keeps falsely claiming 'Funding secured' tweet was accurate, judge is told". Ars Technica. from the original on September 9, 2022. Retrieved September 9, 2022.
  166. ^ Godoy, Jody; Jin, Hyunjoo (February 3, 2023). "Tesla's Elon Musk found not liable in trial over 2018 'funding secured' tweets". Reuters. from the original on February 4, 2023. Retrieved February 4, 2023.
  167. ^ Ohnsman, Alan (February 25, 2019). . Forbes. Archived from the original on May 28, 2020. Retrieved February 26, 2019.
  168. ^ Wattles, Jackie (April 27, 2019). . CNN Business. Archived from the original on June 8, 2020. Retrieved July 16, 2019.
  169. ^ Marino-Nachison, David (April 26, 2019). . Barrons. Archived from the original on January 22, 2020. Retrieved November 25, 2019.
  170. ^ Bursztynsky, Jessica (May 1, 2020). . CNBC. Archived from the original on August 18, 2020. Retrieved June 14, 2020.
  171. ^ "Court Rules That No One Can Stop Elon Musk From Tweeting Tesla News—For Now". Observer. May 20, 2020. from the original on October 30, 2020. Retrieved December 1, 2020.
  172. ^ Elliott, Dave; Michaels, Rebecca (June 2, 2021). "WSJ News Exclusive: Tesla Failed to Oversee Elon Musk's Tweets, SEC Argued in Letters". The Wall Street Journal. from the original on June 10, 2021. Retrieved June 10, 2021.
  173. ^ Kanellos, Michael (February 15, 2008). "Elon Musk on rockets, sports cars, and solar power". CNET. from the original on January 29, 2014.
  174. ^ "2013 Top 250 Solar Contractors". Solar Power World. September 13, 2013. from the original on October 10, 2017. Retrieved December 13, 2020.
  175. ^ Smith, Aaron (June 17, 2014). "Elon Musk's sunny plans for Buffalo". CNNMoney. from the original on October 9, 2017. Retrieved December 13, 2020.
  176. ^ Kolodny, Lora (February 26, 2020). . CNBC. Archived from the original on August 8, 2020. Retrieved September 1, 2020.
  177. ^ "The highs, lows and legacy of Panasonic's doomed project in Buffalo". The Business Journals. from the original on November 23, 2020. Retrieved April 3, 2021.
  178. ^ Kolodny, Lora; Bursztynsky, Jessica (April 27, 2022). "Elon Musk wins shareholder lawsuit over Tesla's $2.6 billion SolarCity acquisition". CNBC. from the original on May 24, 2022. Retrieved June 7, 2022. According to emails that were part of evidence in the trial, Musk wrote an e-mail to SolarCity CFO Brad Buss on Sept. 18, 2016, saying that to get Tesla investors on board with the deal, SolarCity needed to get a handle on its liquidity problem and sign a letter of intent for a contract with Panasonic.
  179. ^ Strong, Michael (March 16, 2020). . The Detroit Bureau. Archived from the original on September 14, 2020. Retrieved September 1, 2020.
  180. ^ Mitchell, Russ (September 23, 2019). . Los Angeles Times. Archived from the original on July 30, 2020. Retrieved September 1, 2020.
  181. ^ Hals, Tom (January 30, 2020). . Reuters. Archived from the original on July 28, 2020. Retrieved September 1, 2020.
  182. ^ Chase, Randall (August 17, 2020). . ABC. Archived from the original on August 25, 2020. Retrieved September 1, 2020.
  183. ^ Kolodny, Lora; Bursztynsky, Jessica (April 27, 2022). "Elon Musk wins shareholder lawsuit over Tesla's $2.6 billion SolarCity acquisition". CNBC. from the original on May 24, 2022. Retrieved June 7, 2022.
  184. ^ a b Markoff, John (July 16, 2019). "Elon Musk's Neuralink Wants 'Sewing Machine-Like' Robots to Wire Brains to the Internet". The New York Times. from the original on July 20, 2022. Retrieved July 26, 2022.
  185. ^ a b Statt, Nick (March 27, 2017). . The Verge. Archived from the original on August 3, 2020. Retrieved April 10, 2017.
  186. ^ Winkler, Rolfe (March 27, 2017). . The Wall Street Journal. Archived from the original on October 2, 2020. Retrieved October 10, 2020.
  187. ^ a b "Elon Musk's Neuralink puts computer chips in pigs' brains in bid to cure diseases". NBC News. Reuters. August 29, 2020. from the original on April 26, 2022. Retrieved July 26, 2022.
  188. ^ Zhavoronkov, Alex. "Elon Musk's Big Neuralink Paper: Should We Prepare For The Digital Afterlife?". Forbes. from the original on August 17, 2022. Retrieved August 17, 2022.
  189. ^ Kahn, Jeremy; Vanian, Jonathan (January 27, 2022). "Inside Neuralink, Elon Musk's mysterious brain chip startup: A culture of blame, impossible deadlines, and a missing CEO". Fortune. from the original on September 25, 2022. Retrieved August 17, 2022.
  190. ^ a b Regalado, Antonio (August 30, 2020). "Elon Musk's Neuralink is neuroscience theater". MIT Technology Review. from the original on December 13, 2020. Retrieved September 3, 2020.
  191. ^ Cellan-Jones, Rory (September 1, 2020). . BBC News. Archived from the original on September 12, 2020. Retrieved September 14, 2020.
  192. ^ Rogers, Adam (September 4, 2020). . Wired. Archived from the original on September 6, 2020. Retrieved September 14, 2020.
  193. ^ Neate, Rupert (January 20, 2022). "Elon Musk's brain chip firm Neuralink lines up clinical trials in humans". The Guardian. from the original on July 12, 2022. Retrieved July 26, 2022.
  194. ^ Ryan, Hannah (February 17, 2022). "Elon Musk's Neuralink confirms monkeys died in the project, denies animal cruelty claims". CNN Business. from the original on July 11, 2022.
  195. ^ Levy, Rachel (December 5, 2022). "Musk's Neuralink faces federal probe, employee backlash over animal tests". Reuters. from the original on December 6, 2022. Retrieved December 5, 2022.
  196. ^ Singh, Maanvi (September 19, 2023). "Elon Musk's Neuralink approved to recruit humans for brain-implant trial". The Guardian. from the original on September 24, 2023. Retrieved September 24, 2023.
  197. ^ Petrova, Magdalena (July 20, 2021). "Why Elon Musk's Boring Company is finding that traffic is tough to fix". CNBC. from the original on June 14, 2022. Retrieved June 13, 2022.
  198. ^ McFarland, Matt (July 6, 2022). "Elon Musk's Boring Company will let you pay for a ride with Dogecoin". CNN. from the original on July 26, 2022. Retrieved July 26, 2022.
  199. ^ Heathman, Amelia. "Elon Musk's boring machine has already built a 'test trench' in LA". Wired. from the original on July 18, 2017. Retrieved February 19, 2017.
  200. ^ Romero, Dennis (December 19, 2018). "Elon Musk unveils his test car tunnel as a fix for traffic in Los Angeles". NBC News. from the original on July 4, 2022. Retrieved July 26, 2022.
  201. ^ Farivar, Cyrus (June 8, 2021). "Fort Lauderdale officials say Elon Musk's new tunnel to the beach can't come fast enough". NBC News. from the original on July 3, 2021. Retrieved July 27, 2022.
  202. ^ Heater, Brian (November 28, 2018). "Elon Musk's Boring Co. drops LA Westside tunnel plan". TechCrunch. from the original on November 28, 2018. Retrieved July 27, 2022.
  203. ^ "Boring Co. underground loop to be put to the test". Las Vegas Review-Journal. May 20, 2021. from the original on May 21, 2021. Retrieved May 29, 2021.
  204. ^ McBride, Sarah (December 16, 2020). "Elon Musk's Proposed Vegas Strip Transit System Advanced by City Council Vote". Bloomberg L.P. from the original on January 11, 2021. Retrieved January 8, 2021.
  205. ^ McFarland, Matt (July 7, 2021). "Fort Lauderdale accepts proposal for Elon Musk's Tesla beach tunnel". CNN Business. from the original on July 24, 2022. Retrieved July 26, 2022.
  206. ^ Elon Musk [@elonmusk] (April 14, 2022). "I made an offer
    [www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/0001418091/000110465922045641/tm2212748d1_sc13da.htm sec.gov/Archives/edgar...]" (Tweet) – via Twitter.
  207. ^ Paul, Kari (April 26, 2022). "Chaotic and crass: a brief timeline of Elon Musk's history with Twitter". The Guardian. from the original on April 26, 2022. Retrieved April 26, 2022.
  208. ^ "Elon Musk snaps up $3bn Twitter stake". BBC News. April 4, 2022. from the original on April 4, 2022. Retrieved April 4, 2022.
  209. ^ Jones, Callum. "Elon Musk becomes Twitter's biggest shareholder after taking 9.2% stake". The Times. from the original on April 4, 2022. Retrieved April 4, 2022.
  210. ^ Hull, Dana; Fleisher, Lisa (October 4, 2022). "Twitter texts released in court case reveal Elon Musk's ex-wife asked him to 'Please do something to fight woke-ism'". Fortune. from the original on May 30, 2023. Retrieved September 23, 2023.
  211. ^ Elder, Bryce (April 6, 2022). "Musk and Twitter: the timeline". Financial Times. from the original on May 30, 2022. Retrieved June 4, 2022.
  212. ^ a b Adler, Maxwell; Turner, Giles (April 14, 2022). "Elon Musk Makes $43 Billion Unsolicited Bid to Take Twitter Private". Bloomberg L.P. from the original on April 14, 2022. Retrieved April 14, 2022.
  213. ^ "Elon Musk delayed filing a form and made $156 million". The Washington Post. from the original on April 8, 2022. Retrieved April 8, 2022.
  214. ^ Imbert, Fred (April 4, 2022). "Twitter shares close up 27% after Elon Musk takes 9% stake in social media company". CNBC. from the original on April 4, 2022. Retrieved April 19, 2022. Twitter shares close up 27% after Elon Musk takes 9% stake in social media company
  215. ^ Corfield, Gareth (April 5, 2022). "Elon Musk to join Twitter board". The Daily Telegraph. from the original on April 5, 2022. Retrieved April 5, 2022.
  216. ^ McLean, Rob (April 11, 2022). "Twitter CEO: Elon Musk will not join Twitter board". CNN. from the original on April 11, 2022. Retrieved April 11, 2022.
  217. ^ "Elon Musk launches hostile takeover bid for Twitter". Agence France-Presse. April 14, 2022. from the original on April 14, 2022. Retrieved April 14, 2022.
  218. ^ Feiner, Lauren (April 15, 2022). "Twitter board adopts 'poison pill' after Musk's $43 billion bid to buy company". CNBC. from the original on April 17, 2022. Retrieved April 18, 2022.
  219. ^ Stahl, George. "Musk-Twitter Deal Values Company at Around $44 Billion". The Wall Street Journal. from the original on April 25, 2022. Retrieved April 25, 2022.
  220. ^ Isaac, Mike; Hirsch, Lauren (April 25, 2022). "With Deal for Twitter, Musk Lands a Prize and Pledges Fewer Limits". The New York Times. from the original on April 27, 2022. Retrieved April 26, 2022.
  221. ^ MacMillan, Douglas; Siddiqui, Faiz; Lerman, Rachel; Telford, Taylor (April 25, 2022). "Elon Musk acquires Twitter for roughly $44 billion". The Washington Post. from the original on April 25, 2022. Retrieved April 26, 2022.
  222. ^ Siddiqui, Faiz (April 26, 2022). "Tesla's value dropped Tuesday by more than double the cost of Twitter". The Washington Post. from the original on April 27, 2022. Retrieved April 26, 2022.
  223. ^ Gura, David (April 26, 2022). "Tesla shares sink, wipe out over $125 billion in value, as Musk scores Twitter deal". NPR. from the original on April 27, 2022. Retrieved April 26, 2022.
  224. ^ Woo, Erin; Isaac, Mike (April 27, 2022). . The New York Times. Archived from the original on April 28, 2022. Retrieved April 27, 2022.
  225. ^ Balu, Nivedita; Li, Kenneth (May 13, 2022). "Musk says $44 bln Twitter deal on hold over fake account data". Reuters. from the original on May 13, 2022. Retrieved May 13, 2022.
  226. ^ Seal, Dean; Needleman, Sarah E.; Lombardo, Cara (May 13, 2022). "Elon Musk Says His $44 Billion Twitter Deal Is 'On Hold'". The Wall Street Journal. from the original on May 13, 2022. Retrieved May 13, 2022.
  227. ^ Feiner, Lauren (July 8, 2022). "Elon Musk notifies Twitter he is terminating deal". CNBC. from the original on October 24, 2022. Retrieved July 8, 2022.
  228. ^ Conger, Kate; Hirsch, Lauren (July 12, 2022). "Twitter Sues Musk After He Tries Backing Out of $44 Billion Deal". The New York Times. from the original on October 24, 2022. Retrieved July 12, 2022.
  229. ^ Conger, Kate; Hirsch, Lauren; Sorkin, Andrew Ross (October 4, 2022). "Elon Musk Suggests Buying Twitter at His Original Price". The New York Times. from the original on October 24, 2022. Retrieved October 8, 2022.
  230. ^ a b Klar, Rebecca (October 27, 2022). "Musk officially closes Twitter deal: reports". The Hill. from the original on October 28, 2022. Retrieved October 27, 2022.
  231. ^ "Musk Said to Begin Firing Twitter's Top Executives". The New York Times. October 27, 2022. from the original on October 28, 2022.
  232. ^ Mehta, Chavi; Dang, Sheila; Ghosh, Sayantani (October 31, 2022). "Elon Musk, who runs four other companies, will now be Twitter CEO". Reuters. from the original on November 1, 2022.
  233. ^ "Elon Musk says $8 monthly fee for Twitter blue tick". BBC. November 2, 2022. from the original on November 2, 2022. Retrieved November 2, 2022.
  234. ^ Korn, Jennifer (November 2, 2022). "Musk says Twitter will charge $8 a month for account verification after criticism for $19.99 plan". CNN. from the original on November 2, 2022. Retrieved November 2, 2022.
  235. ^ Conger, Kate; Mac, Ryan (November 4, 2022). "Elon Musk Begins Layoffs at Twitter". The New York Times. from the original on November 4, 2022. Retrieved November 4, 2022.
  236. ^ Picchi, Aimee (November 4, 2022). "Elon Musk set to fire roughly half of Twitter's workers". CBS News. from the original on November 3, 2022. Retrieved November 4, 2022.
  237. ^ Zakrewski, Siddiqui; Faiz, Siddiqui; Menn, Joseph (November 22, 2022). "Musk's 'free speech' agenda dismantles safety work at Twitter, insiders say". The Washington Post. from the original on November 22, 2022. Retrieved January 19, 2023.
  238. ^ Ecarma, Caleb (November 21, 2022). "We're Officially in the Elon Musk Era of Content Moderation". Vanity Fair. from the original on January 10, 2023. Retrieved December 12, 2022.
  239. ^ Marshall, Aarian; Hoover, Amanda (December 3, 2022). "The Twitter Files Revealed One Thing: Elon Musk Is Trapped". Wired. from the original on December 13, 2022. Retrieved December 3, 2022.
  240. ^ Brooks, Emily and Rebecca Klar (2023). ‘Weaponization’ subcommittee members spar over ‘Twitter Files’ The Hill (March 9).
  241. ^ Da Silva, Chantal (December 19, 2022). "Twitter users vote for Elon Musk to step down as CEO in poll he launched". NBC News. from the original on September 11, 2023. Retrieved September 24, 2023.
  242. ^ Allyn, Bobby (December 20, 2022). "Elon Musk says he will resign as Twitter CEO once he finds a replacement". NPR. from the original on July 29, 2023. Retrieved September 24, 2023.
  243. ^ Milmo, Dan (May 11, 2023). "Elon Musk announces he has found new Twitter CEO". The Guardian. from the original on May 11, 2023. Retrieved May 11, 2023.
  244. ^ Dang, Sheila (2023) "X sues Media Matters after report about ads next to antisemitic content." Reuters (November 20).
  245. ^ a b c Kolodny, Lora (October 19, 2018). "Elon Musk's extreme micromanagement has wasted time and money at Tesla, insiders say". CNBC. from the original on May 24, 2022. Retrieved July 4, 2022.
  246. ^ a b Mac, Ryan; Metz, Cade; Conger, Kate (May 3, 2022). "'I Don't Really Have a Business Plan': How Elon Musk Wings It". The New York Times. from the original on June 28, 2022. Retrieved May 3, 2022.
  247. ^ Berger (2021), pp. 24–25.
  248. ^ Berger (2021), pp. 15.
  249. ^ Berger (2021), pp. 25.
  250. ^ Kolodny, Lora (November 19, 2021). "Read the emails Elon Musk sent Tesla employees about music on the job and following directions". CNBC. from the original on July 4, 2022. Retrieved July 4, 2022.
  251. ^ a b Duhigg, Charles (December 13, 2018). "Dr. Elon & Mr. Musk: Life Inside Tesla's Production Hell". Wired. from the original on March 21, 2021. Retrieved April 25, 2021.
  252. ^ Berger (2021), pp. 18.
  253. ^ "Is the world's richest person the world's worst boss? What it's like working for Elon Musk". Los Angeles Times. November 14, 2022. from the original on November 16, 2022. Retrieved November 16, 2022.
  254. ^ a b Duhigg, Charles. "Dr. Elon & Mr. Musk: Life Inside Tesla's Production Hell". Wired. ISSN 1059-1028. from the original on March 21, 2021. Retrieved November 8, 2022.
  255. ^ "Elon Musk feels 'super bad' about economy, needs to cut 10% of Tesla jobs". CNBC. June 3, 2022. from the original on June 28, 2022. Retrieved July 6, 2022.
  256. ^ Mac, Ryan (June 1, 2022). "Elon Musk to Workers: Spend 40 Hours in the Office, or Else". The New York Times. from the original on June 1, 2022.
  257. ^ * Bilton, Nick (November 10, 2020). "Elon Musk's Totally Awful, Batshit-Crazy, Completely Bonkers, Most Excellent Year". Vanity Fair. from the original on January 29, 2021. Retrieved April 25, 2021.
    • Vance (2017), p. 340. "Elon's worst trait by far, in my opinion, is a complete lack of loyalty or human connection. Many of us worked tirelessly for him for years and were tossed to the curb like a piece of litter without a second thought. Maybe it was calculated to keep the rest of the workforce on their toes and scared; maybe he was just able to detach from human connection to a remarkable degree. What was clear is that people who worked for him were like ammunition: used for a specific purpose until exhausted and discarded."
    • Wong, Julia Carrie (June 13, 2018). "Tesla workers say they pay the price for Elon Musk's big promises". The Guardian. from the original on March 23, 2021. Retrieved April 25, 2021. The CEO is known for outsized claims and ambitious goals. But numerous factory workers say he doesn't follow through – and that his leadership sets a troubling tone.
    • Warzel, Charlie (November 7, 2022). "Elon Musk Is Bad at This" 2022-12-31 at the Wayback Machine. The Atlantic.
  258. ^ Mitchell, Charlie. "Sweary tirades and abrupt firings under Elon Musk, new book claims". The Times. from the original on May 31, 2022. Retrieved August 6, 2021.
  259. ^ Dugan, Ianthe Jeanne; Spector, Mike (August 24, 2017). "Tesla's Push to Build a Self-Driving Car Sparked Dissent Among Its Engineers". The Wall Street Journal. from the original on April 16, 2021. Retrieved April 25, 2021.
  260. ^ "Musk Foundation". ProPublica. May 9, 2013. from the original on February 10, 2022.
  261. ^ a b Carlson, Kara (December 13, 2022). "Mapping Musklandia: A guide to Elon Musk-related activity in the Austin area". Austin American-Statesman. Archived from the original on December 15, 2022. Musk's private foundation was founded in 2001 and is focused on renewable energy, ...
  262. ^ Harris, Mark (January 23, 2019). . The Guardian. Archived from the original on July 28, 2020. Retrieved September 3, 2020.
  263. ^ a b Cuccinello, Hayley C. (September 8, 2020). "Elon Musk Has Promised To Give at Least Half His Fortune To Charity. Here's How Much He's Donated So Far". Forbes. from the original on December 13, 2020. Retrieved December 13, 2020.
  264. ^ a b Schleifer, Theodore (January 11, 2021). "The big decision before Elon Musk, now the richest person in the world". Vox. from the original on February 17, 2021. Retrieved February 17, 2021.
  265. ^ "OpenAI shifts from nonprofit to 'capped-profit' to attract capital". March 11, 2019. from the original on April 25, 2021. Retrieved April 25, 2021.
  266. ^ . The Giving Pledge. Archived from the original on January 9, 2022. Retrieved January 30, 2022.
  267. ^ Chappell, Bill (February 8, 2021). "Elon Musk Funds $100 Million XPrize For Pursuit Of New Carbon Removal Ideas". NPR. from the original on January 4, 2022. Retrieved February 8, 2022.
  268. ^ Coren, Michael J. "All the causes Elon Musk's foundation has donated money to since 2002". Quartz. from the original on April 10, 2021. Retrieved April 10, 2021.
  269. ^ "Elon Musk Makes Biggest Donation in History". Bloomberg L.P. February 15, 2022. from the original on February 15, 2022. Retrieved February 15, 2022.
  270. ^ Alexander, Sophie (December 12, 2022). "Musk's $5.7 Billion Mystery Gift Went to His Own Charity". Bloomberg News. Archived from the original on December 12, 2022.
  271. ^ "Hyperloop Update: Elon Musk Will Start Developing It Himself". Forbes. from the original on September 29, 2017. Retrieved March 22, 2016.
  272. ^ Kolawole, Emi (August 12, 2013). "Elon Musk Unveils 'Hyperloop' Plans". The Washington Post. from the original on July 28, 2022. Retrieved July 24, 2022.
  273. ^ Kirschen, Philippe; Burnell, Edward (April 6, 2021). "Hyperloop System Optimization". arXiv:2104.03907 [cs.CE].
  274. ^ Vance, Ashlee (August 12, 2013). . Bloomberg BusinessWeek. Archived from the original on January 27, 2015. Retrieved April 27, 2016.
  275. ^ Ranger, Steve. "What is Hyperloop? Everything you need to know about the race for super-fast travel". ZDNet. from the original on October 30, 2020. Retrieved September 19, 2020.
  276. ^ Mazza, Sandy (January 29, 2017). "Hyperloop competition brings new mass-transit technology to life in Hawthorne". Daily Bulletin. from the original on August 16, 2017. Retrieved December 13, 2020.
  277. ^ . NPR. Archived from the original on August 31, 2020. Retrieved July 25, 2017.
  278. ^ "Elon Musk's Boring Company removes D.C.-Baltimore tunnel from list of projects on website". The Washington Post. from the original on August 23, 2021. Retrieved August 14, 2021.
  279. ^ McBride, Sarah. "Musk's SpaceX Dismantles Hyperloop Prototype, Puts Up a Parking Lot". Bloomberg. from the original on November 4, 2022. Retrieved November 5, 2022.
  280. ^ Sorokanich, Bob (August 11, 2022). "Did Musk Propose Hyperloop to Stop California High-Speed Rail?". Jalopnik. from the original on August 19, 2022. Retrieved May 20, 2023.
  281. ^ Markoff, John (December 11, 2015). . The New York Times. Archived from the original on August 30, 2020. Retrieved December 15, 2015.
  282. ^ Vincent, James (March 24, 2023). "Elon Musk reportedly tried and failed to take over OpenAI in 2018". The Verge. from the original on June 19, 2023. Retrieved June 19, 2023.
  283. ^ "Why Elon Musk's $100 million donation claim to ChatGPT maker OpenAI may be wrong". The Times of India. May 18, 2023. from the original on June 19, 2023. Retrieved June 19, 2023.
  284. ^ Novet, Jordan (February 2, 2018). . CNBC. Archived from the original on August 30, 2020. Retrieved September 3, 2020.
  285. ^ Johnson, Steven; Iziev, Nikita (April 15, 2022). "A.I. Is Mastering Language. Should We Trust What It Says?". The New York Times. from the original on November 24, 2022. Retrieved July 24, 2022.
  286. ^ Metz, Cade (April 6, 2022). "Meet DALL-E, the A.I. That Draws Anything at Your Command". The New York Times. from the original on July 20, 2022. Retrieved July 24, 2022.
  287. ^ Zahn, Max. "Elon Musk launches his own AI company to compete with ChatGPT". ABC News. from the original on July 15, 2023. Retrieved July 14, 2023.
  288. ^ Henshall, Will (July 12, 2023). "What to Know About Elon Musk's New AI Company, xAI". Time. from the original on September 6, 2023. Retrieved September 24, 2023.
  289. ^ a b Lee, Timothy B. (July 10, 2018). "Thai official: Elon Musk's submarine "not practical for this mission" [Updated]". Ars Technica. from the original on September 19, 2020. Retrieved September 13, 2020.
  290. ^ Wong, Julia Carrie (December 5, 2019). "Elon Musk trial: Vernon Unsworth says entrepreneur's tweets 'humiliated' him". The Guardian. from the original on May 13, 2022. Retrieved May 13, 2022.
  291. ^ Ferris, Robert (July 10, 2018). "Elon Musk says his 'mini-submarine' can be used for other things". CNBC. from the original on July 13, 2018. Retrieved July 13, 2018.
December 02, 2023
elon, musk, other, uses, disambiguation, elon, reeve, musk, born, june, 1971, businessman, investor, musk, founder, chairman, chief, technology, officer, spacex, angel, investor, product, architect, former, chairman, tesla, owner, chairman, corp, founder, bori. For other uses see Elon Musk disambiguation Elon Reeve Musk ˈ iː l ɒ n EE lon born June 28 1971 is a businessman and investor Musk is the founder chairman CEO and chief technology officer of SpaceX angel investor CEO product architect and former chairman of Tesla Inc owner chairman and CTO of X Corp founder of the Boring Company and xAI co founder of Neuralink and OpenAI and president of the Musk Foundation He is the wealthiest person in the world with an estimated net worth of US 219 billion as of November 2023 update according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index and 241 billion according to Forbes primarily from his ownership stakes in Tesla and SpaceX 5 6 Elon MuskFRSMusk in 2022BornElon Reeve Musk 1971 06 28 June 28 1971 age 52 Pretoria Transvaal South AfricaCitizenshipSouth Africa Canada United StatesEducationUniversity of Pennsylvania BA BS TitleFounder CEO and chief engineer of SpaceX CEO and product architect of Tesla Inc Owner and CTO of X formerly Twitter President of the Musk Foundation Founder of The Boring Company X Corp and xAI Co founder of Neuralink OpenAI Zip2 and X com part of PayPal SpousesJustine Wilson m 2000 div 2008 wbr Talulah Riley m 2010 div 2012 wbr m 2013 div 2016 wbr PartnersAmber Heard 2015 2017 1 Grimes 2018 2021 2 Children11 a 4 ParentsErrol MuskMaye MuskRelativesKimbal Musk brother Tosca Musk sister Lyndon Rive cousin FamilyMusk familySignatureA member of the wealthy South African Musk family Elon Musk was born in Pretoria and briefly attended the University of Pretoria before immigrating to Canada at age 18 acquiring citizenship through his Canadian born mother Two years later he matriculated at Queen s University at Kingston in Canada Musk later transferred to the University of Pennsylvania and received bachelor s degrees in economics and physics there He moved to California in 1995 to attend Stanford University However Musk dropped out after two days and with his brother Kimbal co founded online city guide software company Zip2 The startup was acquired by Compaq for 307 million in 1999 and with 12 million of the money he made that same year Musk co founded X com a direct bank X com merged with Confinity in 2000 to form PayPal In October 2002 eBay acquired PayPal for 1 5 billion and that same year with 100 million of the money he made Musk founded SpaceX a spaceflight services company In 2004 he became an early investor in electric vehicle manufacturer Tesla Motors Inc now Tesla Inc He became its chairman and product architect assuming the position of CEO in 2008 In 2006 Musk helped create SolarCity a solar energy company that was acquired by Tesla in 2016 and became Tesla Energy In 2013 he proposed a hyperloop high speed vactrain transportation system In 2015 he co founded OpenAI a nonprofit artificial intelligence research company The following year Musk co founded Neuralink a neurotechnology company developing brain computer interfaces and the Boring Company a tunnel construction company In 2022 he acquired Twitter for 44 billion He subsequently merged the company into newly created X Corp and rebranded the service as X the following year In March 2023 he founded xAI an artificial intelligence company 7 Musk has expressed views that have made him a polarizing figure 8 9 10 He has been criticized for making unscientific and misleading statements including COVID 19 misinformation transphobia 11 12 13 and antisemitic conspiracy theories 8 14 15 16 His Twitter ownership has been similarly controversial including laying off a large number of employees an increase in hate speech on the website 17 18 and changes to Twitter Blue verification 19 20 In 2018 the U S Securities and Exchange Commission SEC sued him for falsely tweeting that he had secured funding for a private takeover of Tesla To settle the case Musk stepped down as the chairman of Tesla and paid a 20 million fine Contents 1 Early life and education 1 1 Childhood and family 1 2 Education 2 Business career 2 1 Zip2 2 2 X com and PayPal 2 3 SpaceX 2 3 1 Starlink 2 4 Tesla 2 4 1 SEC and shareholder lawsuits regarding tweets 2 4 2 SolarCity and Tesla Energy 2 5 Neuralink 2 6 The Boring Company 2 7 Acquisition of Twitter renaming to X 2 8 Leadership style 3 Other activities 3 1 Musk Foundation 3 2 Hyperloop 3 3 OpenAI and xAI 3 4 Tham Luang cave rescue and defamation case 3 5 2018 cannabis incident 3 6 Music 3 7 Private jet 4 Wealth 4 1 Net worth 4 2 Sources of wealth 5 Personal views and Twitter later X usage 5 1 Accusations of antisemitism 5 2 Existential threats 5 3 Politics 5 4 COVID 19 5 5 Finance 5 6 Technology 6 Personal life 6 1 Relationships and children 6 2 Legal matters 7 Public perception 8 Notes and references 8 1 Notes 8 2 Citations 8 3 Works cited 9 External linksEarly life and educationChildhood and family Further information Musk family Elon Reeve Musk was born on June 28 1971 in Pretoria South Africa s administrative capital 21 22 He has British and Pennsylvania Dutch ancestry 23 24 His mother Maye Musk nee Haldeman is a model and dietitian born in Saskatchewan Canada and raised in South Africa 25 26 27 His father Errol Musk is a South African electromechanical engineer pilot sailor consultant and property developer who partly owned a Zambian emerald mine near Lake Tanganyika as well as a rental lodge at the Timbavati Private Nature Reserve 28 29 30 31 Musk has a younger brother Kimbal and a younger sister Tosca 27 32 Musk s family was wealthy during his youth 31 His father was elected to the Pretoria City Council as a representative of the anti apartheid Progressive Party and has said that his children shared their father s dislike of apartheid 21 His maternal grandfather and namesake Joshua Elon Haldeman was an American born Canadian who took his family on record breaking journeys to Africa and Australia in a single engine Bellanca airplane 33 34 35 36 Haldeman was a member of the Social Credit Party of Canada possessed antisemitic beliefs and supported the Technocracy movement 37 After his parents divorced in 1980 Musk chose to live primarily with his father 23 28 Musk later regretted his decision and became estranged from his father 38 He has a paternal half sister and a half brother 33 39 Musk was often bullied In one incident after calling a boy whose father had committed suicide stupid Musk was severely beaten and thrown down concrete steps 40 He was also an enthusiast reader of books attributing his success in part to having read Benjamin Franklin An American Life Lord of the Flies the Foundation series and The Hitchhiker s Guide to the Galaxy 41 42 At age ten he developed an interest in computing and video games teaching himself how to program from the VIC 20 user manual 43 At age twelve Musk sold his BASIC based game Blastar to PC and Office Technology magazine for approximately 500 44 45 Education nbsp Musk graduated from Pretoria Boys High School in South AfricaMusk attended Waterkloof House Preparatory School Bryanston High School and Pretoria Boys High School from where he graduated 46 Musk was a good but not exceptional student earning a 61 in Afrikaans and a B on his senior math certification 47 Musk applied for a Canadian passport through his Canadian born mother 48 49 knowing that it would be easier to immigrate to the United States this way 50 While waiting for his application to be processed he attended the University of Pretoria for five months 51 Musk arrived in Canada in June 1989 and lived with a second cousin in Saskatchewan for a year 52 working odd jobs at a farm and lumber mill 53 In 1990 he entered Queen s University in Kingston Ontario 54 55 Two years later he transferred to the University of Pennsylvania UPenn where he completed studies for a Bachelor of Arts degree in physics and a Bachelor of Science degree in economics from the Wharton School 56 57 58 59 Although Musk said he earned the degrees in 1995 UPenn maintains it awarded them in 1997 60 He reportedly hosted large ticketed house parties to help pay for tuition and wrote a business plan for an electronic book scanning service similar to Google Books 61 In 1994 Musk held two internships in Silicon Valley one at energy storage startup Pinnacle Research Institute which investigated electrolytic ultracapacitors for energy storage and another at Palo Alto based startup Rocket Science Games 62 63 In 1995 he was accepted to a PhD program in materials science at Stanford University 64 65 However Musk decided to join the Internet boom dropping out two days after being accepted and applied for a job at Netscape to which he reportedly never received a response 66 48 Business careerZip2 Main article Zip2 External videos nbsp Musk speaks of his early business experience during a 2014 commencement speech at USC on YouTubeIn 1995 Musk his brother Kimbal and Greg Kouri founded Global Link later renamed to Zip2 67 68 The company was financed mainly through a financing round of US 200 000 of which 10 was contributed by his father Errol Musk 69 The company developed an Internet city guide with maps directions and yellow pages and marketed it to newspapers 70 They worked at a small rented office in Palo Alto 71 with Musk coding the website every night 71 Eventually Zip2 obtained contracts with The New York Times and the Chicago Tribune 61 The brothers persuaded the board of directors to abandon a merger with CitySearch 72 however Musk s attempts to become CEO were thwarted 73 Compaq acquired Zip2 for 307 million in cash in February 1999 74 75 and Musk received 22 million for his 7 percent share 76 X com and PayPal Main articles X com bank PayPal and PayPal Mafia Later in 1999 Musk co founded X com an online financial services and e mail payment company with 12 million of the money he made from the Compaq acquisition 77 X com was one of the first federally insured online banks and over 200 000 customers joined in its initial months of operation 78 Even though Musk founded the company investors regarded him as inexperienced and replaced him with Intuit CEO Bill Harris by the end of the year 79 In 2000 X com merged with online bank Confinity to avoid competition 71 79 80 as the latter s money transfer service PayPal was more popular than X com s service 81 Musk then returned as CEO of the merged company His preference for Microsoft over Unix based software caused a rift among the company s employees and eventually led Confinity co founder Peter Thiel to resign 82 With the company suffering from compounding technological issues and the lack of a cohesive business model the board ousted Musk and replaced him with Thiel in September 2000 83 b Under Thiel the company focused on the money transfer service and was renamed PayPal in 2001 85 86 In 2002 PayPal was acquired by eBay for 1 5 billion in stock of which Musk PayPal s largest shareholder with 11 72 of shares received 175 8 million 87 88 In 2017 more than 15 years later Musk purchased the X com domain from PayPal for its sentimental value 89 90 In 2022 Musk discussed a goal of creating X the everything app 91 SpaceX Main article SpaceX nbsp Then NASA Administrator Charles Bolden congratulating Musk by the SpaceX Dragon following its 2012 missionIn early 2001 Musk became involved with the nonprofit Mars Society and discussed funding plans to place a growth chamber for plants on Mars 92 In October of the same year he traveled to Moscow with Jim Cantrell and Adeo Ressi to buy refurbished intercontinental ballistic missiles ICBMs that could send the greenhouse payloads into space He met with the companies NPO Lavochkin and Kosmotras however Musk was seen as a novice 93 and the group returned to the United States empty handed In February 2002 the group returned to Russia with Mike Griffin president of In Q Tel to look for three ICBMs They had another meeting with Kosmotras and were offered one rocket for 8 million which Musk rejected He instead decided to start a company that could build affordable rockets 93 With 100 million of his own money 94 Musk founded SpaceX in May 2002 and became the company s CEO and Chief Engineer 95 96 SpaceX attempted its first launch of the Falcon 1 rocket in 2006 97 Though the rocket failed to reach Earth orbit it was awarded a Commercial Orbital Transportation Services program contract from NASA Administrator and former SpaceX consultant 98 Mike Griffin later that year 99 100 After two more failed attempts that nearly caused Musk and his companies to go bankrupt 97 SpaceX succeeded in launching the Falcon 1 into orbit in 2008 101 Later that year SpaceX received a 1 6 billion Commercial Resupply Services contract from NASA for 12 flights of its Falcon 9 rocket and Dragon spacecraft to the International Space Station replacing the Space Shuttle after its 2011 retirement 102 In 2012 the Dragon vehicle docked with the ISS a first for a commercial spacecraft 103 nbsp Musk examining F9R Dev1 debris in 2014Working towards its goal of reusable rockets in 2015 SpaceX successfully landed the first stage of a Falcon 9 on an inland platform 104 Later landings were achieved on autonomous spaceport drone ships an ocean based recovery platform 105 In 2018 SpaceX launched the Falcon Heavy the inaugural mission carried Musk s personal Tesla Roadster as a dummy payload 106 107 Since 2019 108 SpaceX has been developing Starship a fully reusable super heavy lift launch vehicle intended to replace the Falcon 9 and the Falcon Heavy 109 In 2020 SpaceX launched its first crewed flight the Demo 2 becoming the first private company to place astronauts into orbit and dock a crewed spacecraft with the ISS 110 Starlink Main article Starlink See also Starlink in the Russo Ukrainian War nbsp 50 Starlink satellites shortly before deployment to low Earth orbit 2019In 2015 SpaceX began development of the Starlink constellation of low Earth orbit satellites to provide satellite Internet access 111 with the first two prototype satellites launched in February 2018 A second set of test satellites and the first large deployment of a piece of the constellation occurred in May 2019 when the first 60 operational satellites were launched 112 The total cost of the decade long project to design build and deploy the constellation is estimated by SpaceX to be about 10 billion 113 c Some critics including the International Astronomical Union have alleged that Starlink blocks the view of the sky and poses a collision threat to spacecraft 116 117 118 During the Russian invasion of Ukraine Musk sent Starlink terminals to Ukraine to provide Internet access and communication 119 However Musk refused to block Russian state media on Starlink declaring himself a free speech absolutist 120 121 In October 2022 Musk stated that about 20 000 satellite terminals had been donated to Ukraine together with free data transfer subscriptions which cost SpaceX 80 million After asking the United States Department of Defense to pay for further units and future subscriptions on behalf of Ukraine 122 Musk publicly stated that SpaceX would continue to provide Starlink to Ukraine for free at a yearly cost to itself of 400 million 123 124 125 Tesla Main article Tesla Inc nbsp Musk next to a Tesla Model S 2011Tesla Inc originally Tesla Motors was incorporated in July 2003 by Martin Eberhard and Marc Tarpenning who financed the company until the Series A round of funding Both men played active roles in the company s early development prior to Musk s involvement 126 Musk led the Series A round of investment in February 2004 he invested 6 5 million became the majority shareholder and joined Tesla s board of directors as chairman 127 Musk took an active role within the company and oversaw Roadster product design but was not deeply involved in day to day business operations 128 Following a series of escalating conflicts in 2007 and the financial crisis of 2007 2008 Eberhard was ousted from the firm 129 page needed 130 Musk assumed leadership of the company as CEO and product architect in 2008 131 A 2009 lawsuit settlement with Eberhard designated Musk as a Tesla co founder along with Tarpenning and two others 132 133 As of 2019 Musk was the longest tenured CEO of any automotive manufacturer globally 134 In 2021 Musk nominally changed his title to Technoking while retaining his position as CEO 135 nbsp Musk before a Model X at the 2014 Tesla Inc annual shareholder meetingTesla began delivery of an electric sports car the Roadster in 2008 With sales of about 2 500 vehicles it was the first serial production all electric car to use lithium ion battery cells 136 Tesla began delivery of its four door Model S sedan in 2012 137 A cross over the Model X was launched in 2015 138 A mass market sedan the Model 3 was released in 2017 139 The Model 3 is the all time bestselling plug in electric car worldwide and in June 2021 it became the first electric car to sell 1 million units globally 140 141 A fifth vehicle the Model Y crossover was launched in 2020 142 The Cybertruck an all electric pickup truck was unveiled in 2019 143 Under Musk Tesla has also constructed multiple lithium ion battery and electric vehicle factories named Gigafactories 144 Since its initial public offering in 2010 145 Tesla stock has risen significantly it became the most valuable carmaker in summer 2020 146 147 and it entered the S amp P 500 later that year 148 149 In October 2021 it reached a market capitalization of 1 trillion the sixth company in U S history to do so 150 In November 2021 Musk proposed on Twitter to sell 10 of his Tesla stock since much is made lately of unrealized gains being a means of tax avoidance 151 After more than 3 5 million Twitter accounts supported the sale Musk sold 6 9 billion of Tesla stock within a week 151 and a total of 16 4 billion by year end reaching the 10 target 152 In February 2022 The Wall Street Journal reported that both Elon and Kimbal Musk were under investigation by the SEC for possible insider trading related to the sale 153 In 2022 Musk unveiled a robot developed by Tesla Optimus 154 On June 20 2023 Musk met with Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi in New York City suggesting that he might be interested in investing in India as soon as humanly possible 155 SEC and shareholder lawsuits regarding tweets In 2018 Musk was sued by the SEC for a tweet stating that funding had been secured for potentially taking Tesla private 156 d The lawsuit characterized the tweet as false misleading and damaging to investors and sought to bar Musk from serving as CEO of publicly traded companies 156 160 161 Two days later Musk settled with the SEC without admitting or denying the SEC s allegations As a result Musk and Tesla were fined 20 million each and Musk was forced to step down for three years as Tesla chairman but was able to remain as CEO 162 Musk has stated in interviews that he does not regret posting the tweet that triggered the SEC investigation 163 164 In April 2022 the shareholder who sued Musk over the tweet along with several Tesla shareholders said that a federal judge had ruled that the tweet was false although the ruling in question has not been unsealed 165 In February 2023 the jury found Musk and Tesla not liable 166 In 2019 Musk stated in a tweet that Tesla would build half a million cars that year 167 The SEC reacted to Musk s tweet by filing in court asking the court to hold him in contempt for violating the terms of a settlement agreement with such a tweet the accusation was disputed by Musk This was eventually settled by a joint agreement between Musk and the SEC clarifying the previous agreement details 168 The agreement included a list of topics that Musk would need preclearance before tweeting about 169 In 2020 a judge prevented a lawsuit from proceeding that claimed a tweet by Musk regarding Tesla stock price too high imo violated the agreement 170 171 FOIA released records showed that the SEC itself concluded Musk has subsequently violated the agreement twice by tweeting regarding Tesla s solar roof production volumes and its stock price 172 SolarCity and Tesla Energy Main articles SolarCity and Tesla Energy nbsp SolarCity solar panel installation vans in 2009Musk provided the initial concept and financial capital for SolarCity which his cousins Lyndon and Peter Rive founded in 2006 173 By 2013 SolarCity was the second largest provider of solar power systems in the United States 174 In 2014 Musk promoted the idea of SolarCity building an advanced production facility in Buffalo New York triple the size of the largest solar plant in the United States 175 Construction of the factory started in 2014 and was completed in 2017 It operated as a joint venture with Panasonic until early 2020 176 177 Tesla acquired SolarCity for over 2 billion in 2016 and merged it with its battery unit to create Tesla Energy The deal s announcement resulted in a more than 10 drop in Tesla s stock price At the time SolarCity was facing liquidity issues 178 Multiple shareholder groups filed a lawsuit against Musk and Tesla s directors stating that the purchase of SolarCity was done solely to benefit Musk and came at the expense of Tesla and its shareholders 179 180 Tesla directors settled the lawsuit in January 2020 leaving Musk the sole remaining defendant 181 182 Two years later the court ruled in Musk s favor 183 Neuralink Main article Neuralink nbsp Musk discussing a Neuralink device during a live demonstration in 2020In 2016 Musk co founded Neuralink a neurotechnology startup company with an investment of 100 million 184 185 Neuralink aims to integrate the human brain with artificial intelligence AI by creating devices that are embedded in the brain to facilitate its merging with machines Such technology could enhance memory or allow the devices to communicate with software 185 186 The company also hopes to develop devices with which to treat neurological conditions such as Alzheimer s disease dementia and spinal cord injuries 187 In 2019 Musk announced work on a device akin to a sewing machine that could embed threads into a human brain 184 He is listed as the sole author of an October 2019 paper that details some of Neuralink s research 188 although Musk s being listed as such rankled the Neuralink team s researchers 189 At a 2020 live demonstration Musk described one of their early devices as a Fitbit in your skull that could soon cure paralysis deafness blindness and other disabilities Many neuroscientists and publications criticized these claims 190 191 192 with MIT Technology Review describing them as highly speculative and neuroscience theater 190 During the demonstration Musk revealed a pig with a Neuralink implant that tracked neural activity related to smell 187 In 2022 Neuralink announced that clinical trials would begin by the end of the year 193 Neuralink has conducted further animal testing on macaque monkeys at the University of California Davis Primate Research Center In 2021 the company released a video in which a Macaque played the video game Pong via a Neuralink implant The company s animal trials which have caused the deaths of some monkeys have led to claims of animal cruelty The Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine has alleged that Neuralink s animal trials have violated the Animal Welfare Act 194 Employees have complained that pressure from Musk to accelerate development has led to botched experiments and unnecessary animal deaths In 2022 a federal probe was launched into possible animal welfare violations by Neuralink 195 In September 2023 the company was approved to intitiate human trials the company will conduct a six year study 196 The Boring Company Main article The Boring Company nbsp Musk during the 2018 inauguration of the Boring Test Tunnel in Hawthorne CaliforniaIn 2017 Musk founded the Boring Company to construct tunnels and revealed plans for specialized underground high occupancy vehicles that could travel up to 150 miles per hour 240 km h and thus circumvent above ground traffic in major cities 197 198 Early in 2017 the company began discussions with regulatory bodies and initiated construction of a 30 foot 9 1 m wide 50 foot 15 m long and 15 foot 4 6 m deep test trench on the premises of SpaceX s offices as that required no permits 199 The Los Angeles tunnel less than two miles 3 2 km in length debuted to journalists in 2018 It used Tesla Model Xs and was reported to be a rough ride while traveling at suboptimal speeds 200 Two tunnel projects announced in 2018 in Chicago and West Los Angeles have been canceled 201 202 However a tunnel beneath the Las Vegas Convention Center was completed in early 2021 203 Local officials have approved further expansions of the tunnel system 204 In 2021 tunnel construction was approved for Fort Lauderdale Florida 205 Acquisition of Twitter renaming to X Further information Acquisition of Twitter by Elon Musk nbsp Elon Musk Twitter elonmusk I made an offerhttps sec gov Archives edgar April 14 2022 206 Musk expressed interest in buying Twitter as early as 2017 207 and had questioned the platform s commitment to freedom of speech 208 209 Additionally his ex wife Talulah Riley had urged him to buy Twitter to stop the woke ism 210 In January 2022 Musk started purchasing Twitter shares reaching a 9 2 stake by April 211 making him the largest shareholder 212 e When this was publicly disclosed Twitter shares experienced the largest intraday price surge since the company s 2013 IPO 214 On April 4 Musk agreed to a deal that would appoint him to Twitter s board of directors and prohibit him from acquiring more than 14 9 of the company 215 216 However on April 13 Musk made a 43 billion offer to buy Twitter launching a takeover bid to buy 100 of Twitter s stock at 54 20 per share 212 217 In response Twitter s board adopted a poison pill shareholder rights plan to make it more expensive for any single investor to own more than 15 of the company without board approval 218 Nevertheless by the end of the month Musk had successfully concluded his bid for approximately 44 billion 219 This included about 12 5 billion in loans against his Tesla stock and 21 billion in equity financing 220 221 Tesla s stock market value sank by over 100 billion the next day in reaction to the deal 222 223 He subsequently tweeted criticism of Twitter executive Vijaya Gadde s policies to his 86 million followers which led to some of them engaging in sexist and racist harassment against her 224 Exactly a month after announcing the takeover Musk stated that the deal was on hold following a report that 5 of Twitter s daily active users were spam accounts 225 Although he initially affirmed his commitment to the acquisition 226 he sent notification of his termination of the deal in July Twitter s Board of Directors responded that they were committed to holding him to the transaction 227 On July 12 2022 Twitter formally sued Musk in the Chancery Court of Delaware for breaching a legally binding agreement to purchase Twitter 228 In October 2022 Musk reversed again offering to purchase Twitter at 54 20 per share 229 The acquisition was officially completed on October 27 230 Immediately after the acquisition Musk fired several top Twitter executives including CEO Parag Agrawal 230 231 Musk became the CEO instead 232 He instituted a 7 99 monthly subscription for a blue check 233 234 19 and laid off a significant portion of the company s staff 235 236 Musk lessened content moderation including reinstating accounts like the Bee 237 238 and in December Musk released internal documents relating to Twitter s moderation of Hunter Biden s laptop controversy in the leadup to the 2020 presidential election 239 Comments on these internal documents by journalists Matt Taibbi Bari Weiss Michael Shellenberger and others were posted at Twitter as the Twitter Files The United States House Committee on the Judiciary held hearings on the Twitter Files on March 9 2023 at which Taibbi and Shellenberger gave testimony 240 The Southern Poverty Law Center noted that Twitter has verified numerous extremists 20 hate speech also increased on the platform after his takeover 17 12 In late 2022 Musk promised to step down as CEO after a Twitter poll posted by Musk found that majority of user wanted him to do so 241 242 Five months later Musk stepped down from CEO and placed former NBCUniversal executive Linda Yaccarino in the position and transitioned his role to executive chairman and chief technology officer 243 On November 20 2023 in a U S District Court in Texas X filed a lawsuit stating that Media Matters manipulated the X platform X stated that Media Matters used accounts that followed accounts for major brands and resorted to endlessly scrolling and refreshing the feed until it found ads next to extremist posts 244 Leadership style nbsp Musk giving a speech to SpaceX employees in 2012Musk is often described as a micromanager and has called himself a nano manager 245 The New York Times has characterized his approach as absolutist 246 Musk does not make formal business plans 246 instead he says he prefers to approach engineering problems non sequitur with an iterative design methodology and tolerance for failures 247 He has forced employees to adopt the company s own jargon and launched ambitious risky and costly projects against his advisors recommendations such as removing front facing radar from Tesla Autopilot His insistence on vertical integration causes his companies to move most production in house While this resulted in saved costs for SpaceX s rocket 248 vertical integration has caused many usability problems for Tesla s software 245 Musk s handling of employees whom he communicates with directly through mass emails has been characterized as carrot and stick rewarding those who offer constructive criticism while also being known to impulsively threaten swear at and fire his employees 249 250 251 Musk said he expects his employees to work for long hours sometimes for 80 hours per week 252 He has his new employees sign strict non disclosure agreements and often fires in sprees 253 254 such as during the Model 3 production hell in 2018 254 In 2022 Musk revealed plans to fire 10 percent of Tesla s workforce due to his concerns about the economy 255 That same month he suspended remote work at SpaceX and Tesla and threatened to fire employees who do not work 40 hours per week in the office 256 Musk s leadership has been praised by some who credit it with the success of Tesla and his other endeavors 245 and criticized by others who see him as callous and his managerial decisions as show ing a lack of human understanding 251 257 The 2021 book Power Play contains anecdotes of Musk berating employees 258 The Wall Street Journal reported that after Musk insisted on branding his vehicles as self driving he faced criticism from his engineers for putting customer lives at risk with some employees resigning in consequence 259 Other activitiesMusk Foundation Musk is president of the Musk Foundation he founded in 2001 260 261 whose stated purpose is to provide solar power energy systems in disaster areas support research development and advocacy for interests including human space exploration pediatrics renewable energy and safe artificial intelligence and support science and engineering educational efforts 262 As of 2020 the foundation has made 350 donations Around half of them were made to scientific research or education nonprofits Notable beneficiaries include the Wikimedia Foundation his alma mater the University of Pennsylvania and his brother Kimbal s non profit Big Green 263 From 2002 to 2018 the foundation gave 25 million directly to non profit organizations nearly half of which went to Musk s OpenAI 264 which was a non profit at the time 265 In 2012 Musk took the Giving Pledge thereby committing to give the majority of his wealth to charitable causes either during his lifetime or in his will 266 He has endowed prizes at the X Prize Foundation including 100 million to reward improved carbon capture technology 267 Vox said the Musk Foundation is almost entertaining in its simplicity and yet is strikingly opaque noting that its website was only 33 words in plain text 264 The foundation has been criticized for the relatively small amount of wealth donated 268 In 2020 Forbes gave Musk a philanthropy score of 1 because he had given away less than 1 of his net worth 263 In November 2021 Musk donated 5 7 billion of Tesla s shares to charity according to regulatory filings 269 However Bloomberg News noted that all of it went to his own foundation bringing Musk Foundation s assets up to 9 4 billion at the end of 2021 The foundation disbursed 160 million to non profits that year 270 Hyperloop Main articles Hyperloop and Hyperloop pod competition nbsp A tube part of the 2017 Hyperloop pod competition sponsored by SpaceXIn August 2013 Musk announced plans for a version of a vactrain a vacuum tube train and assigned a dozen engineers from SpaceX and Tesla to establish the conceptual foundations and create initial designs 271 Later that year Musk unveiled the concept which he dubbed the hyperloop 272 The alpha design for the system was published in a whitepaper posted to the Tesla and SpaceX blogs 273 The document scoped out the technology and outlined a notional route where such a transport system could be built between the Greater Los Angeles Area and the San Francisco Bay Area at an estimated cost of 6 billion 274 The proposal if technologically feasible at the costs cited would make Hyperloop travel cheaper than any other mode of transport for such long distances 275 In 2015 Musk announced a design competition for students and others to build Hyperloop pods to operate on a SpaceX sponsored mile long track for a 2015 2017 Hyperloop pod competition The track was used in January 2017 and Musk also announced that the company had started a tunnel project with Hawthorne Municipal Airport as its destination 276 In July 2017 Musk said that he had received verbal government approval to build a hyperloop from New York City to Washington D C with stops in both Philadelphia and Baltimore 277 Mention of the projected DC to Baltimore leg was removed from the Boring Company website in 2021 278 The tunnel project to Hawthorne was discontinued in 2022 and is cited to be converted into parking spots for SpaceX workers 279 Biographer Ashlee Vance has noted that Musk hoped Hyperloop would make the public and legislators rethink the high speed train proposal current in California at the time and consider more creative ideas 280 OpenAI and xAI Main articles OpenAI and xAI company In December 2015 Musk co founded OpenAI a not for profit artificial intelligence AI research company aiming to develop artificial general intelligence intended to be safe and beneficial to humanity 281 A particular focus of the company is to democratize artificial superintelligence systems against governments and corporations 38 Musk pledged 1 billion of funding to OpenAI 282 In 2023 Musk tweeted that he had ended up giving a total of 100 million to OpenAI TechCrunch later reported that according to its own investigation of public records only 15 million of OpenAI s funding could be definitively traced to Musk Musk subsequently stated that he had donated about 50 million 283 In 2018 Musk left the OpenAI board to avoid possible future conflicts with his role as CEO of Tesla as the latter company increasingly became involved in AI through Tesla Autopilot 284 Since then OpenAI has made significant advances in machine learning producing neural networks such as GPT 3 producing human like text 285 and DALL E generating digital images from natural language descriptions 286 On July 12 2023 Elon Musk launched an artificial intelligence company called xAI which aims to develop a generative AI program that competes with existing offerings like ChatGPT The company has reportedly hired engineers from Google and OpenAI 287 The company which is incorporated in Nevada purchased 10 000 graphics processing units Musk was reportedly obtaining funding from investors in SpaceX and Tesla 288 Tham Luang cave rescue and defamation case Further information Tham Luang cave rescue In July 2018 Musk arranged for his employees to build a mini submarine to assist the rescue of children trapped in a flooded cavern in Thailand 289 Richard Stanton leader of the international rescue diving team urged Musk to facilitate the construction of the vehicle as a back up in case flooding worsened 290 Engineers at SpaceX and the Boring Company built the mini submarine from a Falcon 9 liquid oxygen transfer tube in eight hours and personally delivered it to Thailand 291 292 By this time however eight of the 12 children had already been rescued the rescuers employing full face masks oxygen and anesthesia consequently Thai authorities declined to use the submarine 289 In March 2019 Musk was later one of the 187 people who received various honors conferred by the King of Thailand for involvement in the rescue effort 293 Soon after the rescue Vernon Unsworth a British recreational caver who had been exploring the cave for the previous six years and played a key advisory role in the operation criticized the submarine on CNN as amounting to nothing more than a public relations effort with no chance of success maintaining that Musk had no conception of what the cave passage was like and can stick his submarine where it hurts Musk asserted on Twitter that the device would have worked and referred to Unsworth as a pedo guy 294 He deleted the tweets 294 and apologized 295 and he deleted his responses to critical tweets from Cher Scarlett a software engineer which had caused his followers to harass her 296 In an email to BuzzFeed News Musk later called Unsworth a child rapist and said that he had married a child 297 298 In September Unsworth filed a defamation suit in the District Court for the Central District of California 299 300 In his defense Musk argued that pedo guy was a common insult used in South Africa when I was growing up synonymous with creepy old man and is used to insult a person s appearance and demeanor 46 The defamation case began in December 2019 with Unsworth seeking 190 million in damages 301 During the trial Musk apologized to Unsworth again for the tweet On December 6 the jury found in favor of Musk and ruled he was not liable 302 303 2018 cannabis incident In September 2018 Musk was interviewed on an episode of The Joe Rogan Experience podcast during which he sampled a cigar laced with cannabis 304 In 2022 Musk said that he and other SpaceX employees had subsequently been required to undergo random drug tests for about a year following the incident as required by the Drug Free Workplace Act of 1988 for Federal contractors 305 In a 2019 60 Minutes interview Musk had said I do not smoke pot As anybody who watched that podcast could tell I have no idea how to smoke pot 306 Music In April 2019 Musk through Emo G Records released a rap track RIP Harambe on SoundCloud 307 The track which refers to the killing of Harambe the gorilla and the subsequent Internet sensationalism surrounding the event was performed by Yung Jake written by Yung Jake and Caroline Polachek and produced by BloodPop 308 The following year Musk released an EDM track Don t Doubt Ur Vibe featuring his own lyrics and vocals 309 While Guardian critic Alexi Petridis described it as indistinguishable from umpteen competent but unthrilling bits of bedroom electronica posted elsewhere on SoundCloud 310 TechCrunch said it was not a bad representation of the genre 309 Private jet Main articles ElonJet and 2022 Twitter suspensions In 2003 Musk said his favorite plane he owned was an L 39 Albatros 311 He uses a private jet owned by Falcon Landing LLC a SpaceX linked company and acquired a second jet in August 2020 312 313 His heavy use of the jet it flew over 150 000 miles in 2018 and the consequent fossil fuel usage has received criticism 312 314 His flight usage is tracked on social media through ElonJet The Twitter version of the account was blocked in December 2022 after Musk said that his son X AE A XII had been harassed by a stalker after the account posted the airport at which his jet had landed 315 316 317 This led to Musk banning the ElonJet account on Twitter as well as the accounts of journalists that posted stories regarding the incident including Donie O Sullivan Keith Olbermann and journalists from The New York Times The Washington Post CNN and The Intercept 318 Musk equated the reporting to doxxing 319 The police do not believe there is a link between the account and alleged stalker 320 Musk later took a Twitter poll on whether the journalists accounts should be reinstated which resulted in reinstating the accounts 321 WealthNet worth nbsp Musk s net worth from 2013 to 2023 as estimated by Forbes magazineMusk made 175 8 million when PayPal was sold to eBay in October 2002 322 He was first listed on the Forbes Billionaires List in 2012 with a net worth of 2 billion 323 At the start of 2020 Musk had a net worth of 27 billion 324 By the end of the year his net worth had increased by 150 billion mostly driven by his ownership of around 20 of Tesla stock 325 During this period Musk s net worth was often volatile For example it dropped 16 3 billion on September 8 the largest single day plunge in Bloomberg Billionaires Index s history at the time 326 In November of that year Musk passed Facebook co founder Mark Zuckerberg to become the third richest person in the world a week later he passed Microsoft co founder Bill Gates to become the second richest 327 In January 2021 Musk with a net worth of 185 billion surpassed Amazon founder Jeff Bezos to become the richest person in the world 328 Bezos reclaimed the top spot the following month 329 On September 27 2021 after Tesla stock surged Forbes announced that Musk had a net worth of over 200 billion and was the richest person in the world 330 In November 2021 Musk became the first person to have a net worth of more than 300 billion 331 On December 30 2022 it was reported that Musk had lost 200 billion from his net worth due to declining stock values in Tesla becoming the first person in history to lose such a large sum of money 332 333 In January 2023 Musk was recognized by Guinness World Records for experiencing the largest loss of personal fortune in history with regards to his financial losses since November 2021 which Guinness quoted a Forbes estimate of 182 billion 334 Musk s personal wealth is managed by his family office called Excession LLC formed in 2016 and run by Jared Birchall 335 261 Sources of wealth Around 75 of Musk s wealth was derived from Tesla stock in November 2020 327 a proportion that fell to about 37 as of December 2022 f after selling nearly 40 billion in company shares since late 2021 336 Musk does not receive a salary from Tesla he agreed with the board in 2018 to a compensation plan that ties his personal earnings to Tesla s valuation and revenue 325 The deal stipulated that Musk only received the compensation if Tesla reached certain market values 337 It was the largest such deal ever done between a CEO and a company board 338 In the first award given in May 2020 he was eligible to purchase 1 69 million Tesla shares about 1 of the company at below market prices which was worth about 800 million 338 337 Musk paid 455 million in taxes on 1 52 billion of income between 2014 and 2018 339 According to ProPublica Musk paid no federal income taxes in 2018 340 He stated his 2021 tax bill was estimated at 12 billion based on his sale of 14 billion worth of Tesla stock 339 Musk has repeatedly described himself as cash poor 341 342 and has professed to have little interest in the material trappings of wealth 341 In May 2020 he pledged to sell almost all physical possessions 342 Musk has defended his wealth by saying he is accumulating resources for humanity s outward expansion to space 343 Personal views and Twitter later X usageMain article Views of Elon Musk Since joining Twitter now known as X in 2009 344 Musk has been an active user and has over 163 million followers as of November 2023 update 345 He posts memes promotes business interests and comments on contemporary political and cultural issues 346 Musk s statements have provoked controversy such as for mocking preferred gender pronouns 347 348 and comparing Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau to Adolf Hitler 349 The New York Times describes his contributions to international relations as chaotic and critics of Musk argue that there is a lack of separation between his opinions and his business interests 350 As CEO of Twitter Musk emerged as a source of misinformation and right wing conspiracy theories for example by suggesting online details about mass murderer Mauricio Garcia s apparent interest in Nazism could have been planted as part of a psyop 351 Allegations of him being transphobic appeared as well in response to actions taken by Twitter under his guidance 352 353 Accusations of antisemitism The Israel government and several media outlets accused Musk of antisemitism due to him spreading George Soros conspiracy theories 354 although some Israeli officials defended Musk 355 A tweet of his in November 2023 supported white nationalist ideology 356 and affirmed another antisemitic conspiracy theory that Jews push hatred against Whites 357 358 The following day Musk made a tweet supporting white pride 359 360 Advertisers distanced themselves from his tweets 361 Musk wrote that he doesn t believe that all Jewish communities hate white people but specifically took aim at the Anti Defamation League 362 He also tweeted that his criticism of Jews applies to more groups than just the ADL You right that this does not extend to all Jewish communities but it is also not just limited to ADL 363 At the DealBook Summit on November 29 2023 after comments from Disney CEO Bob Iger explaining his decision to stop advertising on X after Musk s recent post journalist Andrew Ross Sorkin questioned Musk about the withdrawal of advertisers Musk said in response I hope they stop Don t advertise and If somebody is going to try to blackmail me with advertising blackmail me with money go fuck yourself Go fuck yourself Is that clear I hope it is Musk singled out Iger saying Hey Bob if you re in the audience 364 365 Existential threats nbsp Musk giving details about Falcon 9 and Dragon spacecraft at the 2006 Mars Society ConferenceMusk has been described as believing in longtermism emphasizing the needs of future populations 366 Accordingly Musk has stated that artificial intelligence poses the greatest existential threat to humanity 367 368 He has warned of a Terminator like AI apocalypse and suggested that the government should regulate its safe development 369 370 In 2015 Musk was a cosignatory along with Stephen Hawking and hundreds of others of the Open Letter on Artificial Intelligence which called for the ban of autonomous weapons 371 Musk s AI stances have been called alarmist and sensationalist by critics such as computer scientist Yann LeCun and Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg 372 373 and led the think tank Information Technology and Innovation Foundation to award Musk its Annual Luddite Award in 2016 374 Musk has described climate change as the greatest threat to humanity after AI 375 and has advocated for a carbon tax 376 Musk was a critic of President Donald Trump s stance on climate change 377 378 and resigned from two presidential business advisory councils following Trump s 2017 decision to withdraw the United States from the Paris Agreement 379 Musk has long promoted the colonization of Mars and argues that humanity should become a multiplanetary species 380 He has suggested the use of nuclear weapons to terraform Mars 381 382 He envisioned establishing a direct democracy on Mars with a system in which more votes would be required to create laws than remove them 383 Musk has also voiced concerns about human population decline 384 385 saying that Mars has zero human population We need a lot of people to become a multiplanet civilization 386 Speaking at The Wall Street Journal s CEO Council session in 2021 Musk stated that a declining birth rate and consequent population decline is one of the biggest risks to human civilization 387 Politics nbsp nbsp Musk with Senator Dianne Feinstein at the opening of the Tesla Fremont Factory 2010 and with Vice President Mike Pence alongside then NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine at the Kennedy Space Center before SpaceX s Crew Dragon Demo 2 launch 2020 While often described as libertarian Musk has called himself politically moderate and was a registered independent voter when he lived in California The New York Times wrote that Musk expresses views that don t fit neatly into the American binary left right political framework 388 Historically Musk has donated to both Democrats and Republicans 389 many of whom are in states in which he has a vested interest 388 Beginning in the late 2010s Musk s political contributions have shifted almost entirely to supporting Republicans 390 Musk voted for Hillary Clinton in the 2016 U S presidential election 391 In the 2020 Democratic Party presidential primaries Musk endorsed candidate Andrew Yang and expressed support for his proposed universal basic income 392 He also endorsed Kanye West s 2020 presidential campaign 393 He said he voted for Joe Biden in the 2020 U S presidential election 394 In 2022 Musk said that he could no longer support the Democrats because they are the party of division amp hate 395 396 and wrote a tweet encouraging independent minded voters to vote Republican in the 2022 U S elections which was an outlier among social media executives who typically avoid partisan political advocacy 397 398 He has supported Republican Ron DeSantis for the 2024 U S presidential election and Twitter hosted DeSantis s campaign announcement on a Twitter Spaces event 399 400 401 In August 2023 Musk hosted Vivek Ramaswamy on Twitter Spaces and shared his support 402 As of May 2023 Musk was declining to endorse any specific candidate 400 nbsp Meeting of Musk and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi in New York City June 20 2023Musk opposes a billionaire s tax 403 and has argued on Twitter with more left leaning Democratic politicians such as Bernie Sanders 404 405 Alexandria Ocasio Cortez 406 and Elizabeth Warren 407 He has raised questions about the Black Lives Matter protests partially based on the fact that the phrase Hands up don t shoot was made up 408 409 Musk also promoted a baseless theory relating to the attack of Speaker Nancy Pelosi s husband but Musk deleted his tweet 410 In May 2022 Musk traveled to Brazil to discuss projects to protect the Amazon rainforest with Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro 411 412 Musk has praised China and has been described as having a close relationship with the Chinese government allowing access to its markets for Tesla 413 After Gigafactory Shanghai produced its first batch of vehicles Musk thanked the Chinese government and Chinese people while criticizing the United States and its people 414 207 208 In 2022 Musk wrote an article for China Cyberspace the official publication of Cyberspace Administration of China which enforces Internet censorship in China His writing the article was described as conflicting with his advocacy for free speech 415 416 Musk later advocated for Taiwan to become a special administrative zone of China which drew cross party criticism from Taiwanese lawmakers 417 418 419 In October 2022 Musk posted a Twitter poll and peace plan to resolve the Russian invasion of Ukraine 420 421 It was reported that Musk allegedly spoke with Russian President Vladimir Putin prior to the proposal which Musk denied 422 423 424 Musk has repeatedly expressed concern that a protracted war between Russia and Ukraine could lead to the use of nuclear weapons and the outbreak of World War III 425 426 427 In October 2023 Musk said that We are sleepwalking our way into World War III with one foolish decision after the other 428 In a YouTube podcast interview on November 10 2023 Musk criticized Israel s actions in the Gaza Strip during the 2023 Israel Hamas war saying that Hamas wanted to commit the worst atrocities that they could in order to provoke the most aggressive response possible from Israel He added that if you kill somebody s child in Gaza you have made at least a few Hamas members who will die just to kill an Israeli 429 On November 17 2023 Musk announced a policy change on the X platform stating that users who use terms like decolonization and from the river to the sea or similar expressions that imply genocide of the Jewish people in Israel will be suspended 430 Several weeks later he would travel to Israel visiting the kibbutz Kfar Aza with Benjamin Netanyahu which had been part of the 2023 Hamas led attack on Israel and described it as jarring 431 COVID 19 nbsp Musk wearing a bandana as a face mask during the COVID 19 pandemicMusk was criticized for his public comments and conduct related to the COVID 19 pandemic 432 433 He spread misinformation about the virus including promoting a widely discredited paper on the benefits of chloroquine and claiming that COVID 19 death statistics were inflated 434 In March 2020 Musk stated The coronavirus panic is dumb 435 436 In an email to Tesla employees Musk referred to COVID 19 as a specific form of the common cold and predicted that confirmed COVID 19 cases would not exceed 0 1 of the U S population 432 On March 19 2020 Musk predicted that there would be probably close to zero new cases in the U S by end of April 433 Politico labeled this statement one of the most audacious confident and spectacularly incorrect prognostications of 2020 437 Musk also falsely stated that children are essentially immune to COVID 19 438 439 Musk condemned COVID 19 lockdowns and initially refused to close the Tesla Fremont Factory in March 2020 defying the local shelter in place order 432 440 441 In May 2020 he reopened the Tesla factory defying the local stay at home order 442 443 and warned workers that they would be unpaid and their unemployment benefits might be jeopardized if they did not report to work 443 In December 2022 Musk called for prosecution of former National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases director Anthony Fauci 444 445 In March 2020 Musk promised that Tesla would make ventilators for COVID 19 patients if there were a shortage 446 After figures like New York City mayor Bill de Blasio responded to Musk s offer 447 Musk offered to donate ventilators which Tesla would build or buy from a third party 446 However Musk ended up buying and donating BiPAP and CPAP machines which are devices that support respirations of someone able to breathe on their own rather than the much more expensive and sought after mechanical ventilator machines that are able to breathe for a patient entirely 448 449 In September 2020 Musk stated that he would not get the COVID 19 vaccine because he and his children were not at risk for COVID 450 451 Two months later Musk contracted COVID 19 but suggested his COVID 19 rapid antigen test results were dubious as he had been tested four times on the same device with the same nurse but had received equal numbers of positive and negative results 452 Following this a postdoctoral fellow at the Princess Margaret Cancer Centre in Toronto explained in a Tweet why this result does not undermine the value of the test referring to Musk as Space Karen which then trended on Twitter 452 453 In December 2021 Musk revealed that he and his eligible children had received the vaccine saying that the science behind the COVID vaccines was unequivocal but expressing his opposition to COVID vaccine mandates 454 Finance Musk said that the U S government should not provide subsidies to companies but impose a carbon tax to discourage poor behavior 455 456 The free market in his view would achieve the best solution and producing environmentally unfriendly vehicles should have consequences 457 Tesla has received billions of dollars in subsidies 458 In addition Tesla made large sums from government initiated systems of zero emissions credits offered in California and at the United States federal level which facilitated initial consumer adoption of Tesla vehicles as the tax credits given by governments enabled Tesla s battery electric vehicles to be price competitive in comparison with existing lower priced internal combustion engine vehicles 459 Notably Tesla generates some of its revenue from its sales of carbon credits granted to the company by both the European Union Emissions Trading System and the Chinese national carbon trading scheme 460 461 462 463 Musk a longtime opponent of short selling has repeatedly criticized the practice and argued it should be illegal 464 465 Wired magazine speculated that Musk s opposition to short selling stems from how short sellers have an incentive to find and promote unfavorable information about his companies 466 In early 2021 he encouraged the GameStop short squeeze 467 468 In December 2022 Musk sold 3 6 billion of his stock in Tesla equal to 22 million shares in the company 469 despite pledging earlier in the year that he would not sell any additional shares 470 Technology Musk has promoted cryptocurrencies and supports them over traditional government issued fiat currencies 471 Given the influence of Musk s tweets in moving cryptocurrency markets 472 his statements about cryptocurrencies have been viewed as market manipulation by some such as economist Nouriel Roubini 473 Musk s social media praising of Bitcoin and Dogecoin was credited for increasing their prices Consequently Tesla s 2021 announcement against the backdrop of Musk s social media behavior that it bought 1 5 billion worth of Bitcoin raised questions 474 Tesla s announcement that it would accept Bitcoin for payment was criticized by environmentalists and investors due to the environmental impact of cryptocurrency mining A few months later in response to the criticism Musk announced on Twitter that Tesla would no longer accept payments in Bitcoin and would not engage in any Bitcoin transactions until the environmental issues are solved 475 476 Despite the Boring Company s involvement in building mass transit infrastructure Musk has criticized public transport and promoted individualized transport private vehicles 477 478 479 His comments have been called elitist and have sparked widespread criticism from both transportation and urban planning experts who have pointed out that public transportation in dense urban areas is more economical more energy efficient and requires much less space than private cars 478 480 479 Personal lifeFrom the early 2000s until late 2020 Musk resided in California where both Tesla and SpaceX were founded 481 He then relocated to Texas saying that California had become complacent about its economic success 481 482 While hosting Saturday Night Live in 2021 Musk stated that he has Asperger syndrome although he has never been medically diagnosed 483 484 Musk trained in Brazilian jiu jitsu while preparing for the proposed fight between himself and Mark Zuckerberg 485 In his leisure time he plays video games including Quake Diablo IV Elden Ring and Polytopia 486 487 Relationships and children Musk has 10 surviving children 488 He met his first wife Canadian author Justine Wilson while attending Queen s University in Ontario Canada they married in 2000 489 In 2002 their first child died of sudden infant death syndrome at the age of 10 weeks 490 After his death the couple used IVF to continue their family 491 they had twins in 2004 followed by triplets in 2006 491 The couple divorced in 2008 and shared custody 492 493 In 2022 the eldest twin officially changed her name to reflect her gender identity as a trans woman and to use Wilson as her last name because she no longer wished to be associated with Musk 494 Musk blamed the estrangement of his daughter on what the Financial Times characterized as the supposed takeover of elite schools and universities by neo Marxists 495 In 2008 Musk began dating English actress Talulah Riley 496 They married two years later at Dornoch Cathedral in Scotland 497 498 In 2012 the couple divorced before remarrying the following year 499 After briefly filing for divorce in 2014 499 Musk finalized a second divorce from Riley in 2016 500 Musk then dated Amber Heard for several months in 2017 501 he had reportedly been pursuing her since 2012 502 In 2018 Musk and Canadian musician Grimes revealed that they were dating 503 Grimes gave birth to their son in May 2020 504 505 According to Musk and Grimes his name was X AE A 12 ɛ k s ae ʃ eɪ ˈ t w ɛ l v however the name would have violated California regulations as it contained characters that are not in the modern English alphabet 506 507 and was then changed to X AE A Xii This drew more confusion as AE is not a letter in the modern English alphabet 508 The child was eventually named X AE A XII Musk with X as a first name AE A XII as a middle name and Musk as surname 509 In December 2021 Grimes and Musk had a second child a daughter named Exa Dark Siderael Musk nicknamed Y born via surrogacy 2 Despite the pregnancy Musk confirmed reports that the couple were semi separated in September 2021 in an interview with Time in December 2021 he said he was single 510 511 In March 2022 Grimes said of her relationship with Musk I would probably refer to him as my boyfriend but we re very fluid 2 Later that month Grimes tweeted that she and Musk had broken up again 512 In September 2023 it was revealed that the pair had a third child a son named Techno Mechanicus Tau Musk 4 In July 2022 Insider published court documents revealing that Musk had had twins with Shivon Zilis director of operations and special projects at Neuralink in November 2021 513 They were born weeks before Musk and Grimes had their second child via surrogate in December The news raise d questions about workplace ethics given that Zilis directly reported to Musk 514 Also in July 2022 The Wall Street Journal reported that Musk allegedly had an affair with Nicole Shanahan the wife of Google co founder Sergey Brin in 2021 leading to their divorce the following year 515 Musk denied the report 516 Musk has also had a relationship with Australian actress Natasha Bassett who has been described as an occasional girlfriend 517 Legal matters Main articles List of lawsuits involving Tesla Inc and Criticism of Tesla Inc In May 2022 Business Insider cited an anonymous friend of an unnamed SpaceX contract flight attendant alleging that Musk engaged in sexual misconduct in 2016 The source stated that in November 2018 Musk SpaceX and the former flight attendant entered into a severance agreement granting the attendant a 250 000 payment in exchange for a promise not to sue over the claims 518 Musk responded If I were inclined to engage in sexual harassment this is unlikely to be the first time in my entire 30 year career that it comes to light He accused the article from Business Insider of being a politically motivated hit piece 519 520 After the release of the Business Insider article Tesla s stock fell by more than 6 521 decreasing Musk s net worth by 10 billion 522 Barron s wrote some investors considered key man risk the danger that a company could be badly hurt by the loss of one individual 523 In April 2023 the government of the U S Virgin Islands sought to subpoena Musk for documents in a lawsuit alleging that JPMorgan Chase profited from Jeffrey Epstein s sex trafficking operation 524 In May a judge granted the U S Virgin Islands request to serve Musk electronically through Tesla after the U S territory had difficulty locating him 524 The efforts to subpoena Musk for documents do not implicate him in any wrongdoing and do not seek to have Musk testify under oath 524 Musk s former girlfriend Grimes filed a parental relationship petition in late September 2023 as part of a custody dispute The petition came a month after Grimes openly accused him in a social media post of blocking her access to the youngest of their three children 525 526 Ben Brody a 22 year old Los Angeles based college graduate initiated a lawsuit in October 2023 against Musk for over 1 million He alleged Musk had falsely identified him as a participant in a violent street brawl on behalf of a neo Nazi extremist group near Portland Oregon 527 528 529 According to Brody s complaint one of Musk s X posts promoted conspiracy theories that Ben Brody s alleged participation in the extremist brawl meant the incident was probably a false flag operation to deceive the American public 527 The complaint also alleged that Musk s accusations led to Brody and his family being subjected to harassment and threats 527 528 530 In October 2023 the U S Securities and Exchange Commission SEC sued Musk alleging that he was refusing to testify in an investigation into whether he violated federal law by purchasing Twitter stock in 2022 531 532 533 According to the lawsuit Musk testified twice in 2022 but refused to testify a third time in 2023 claiming the SEC was harassing him 531 533 Public perceptionSee also Elon Musk filmography and List of awards and honors received by Elon Musk nbsp Musk right and then President Barack Obama at the Cape Canaveral Space Launch Complex 40 launch site of the SpaceX Falcon 9 2010Though his ventures were influential within their own industries in the 2000s Musk only became a public figure in the early 2010s He has been described as an eccentric who makes spontaneous and controversial statements contrary to other billionaires who prefer reclusiveness to protect their businesses Vance described people s opinions of Musk as polarized due to his part philosopher part troll role on Twitter 534 Musk was a partial inspiration for the characterization of Tony Stark in the Marvel film Iron Man 2008 535 Musk also had a cameo appearance in the film s 2010 sequel Iron Man 2 536 Musk has made cameos and appearances in other films such as Machete Kills 2013 537 Why Him 2016 538 and Men in Black International 2019 539 Television series in which he has appeared include The Simpsons The Musk Who Fell to Earth 2015 540 The Big Bang Theory The Platonic Permutation 2015 541 South Park Members Only 2016 542 543 Young Sheldon A Patch a Modem and a Zantac 2017 544 Rick and Morty One Crew over the Crewcoo s Morty 2019 545 546 and Saturday Night Live 2021 547 He contributed interviews to the documentaries Racing Extinction 2015 and the Werner Herzog directed Lo and Behold 2016 548 549 Musk was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society FRS in 2018 550 In 2015 he received an honorary doctorate in engineering and technology from Yale University 551 and IEEE Honorary Membership 552 Awards for his contributions to the development of the Falcon rockets include the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics George Low Transportation Award in 2008 553 the Federation Aeronautique Internationale Gold Space Medal in 2010 554 and the Royal Aeronautical Society Gold Medal in 2012 555 Time has listed Musk as one of the most influential people in the world on four occasions in 2010 556 2013 557 2018 558 and 2021 559 Musk was selected as Time s Person of the Year for 2021 Then Time editor in chief Edward Felsenthal wrote that Person of the Year is a marker of influence and few individuals have had more influence than Musk on life on Earth and potentially life off Earth too 560 561 In February 2022 Musk was elected to the National Academy of Engineering 562 Notes and referencesNotes One child is deceased 3 Musk remained on the board and served as an advisor 84 85 SpaceX received nearly 900 million in Federal Communications Commission subsidies for Starlink 114 115 Musk stated he was considering taking Tesla private at a price of 420 a share an alleged reference to marijuana 157 Members of Tesla s board and rapper Azealia Banks alleged that Musk may have been under the influence of recreational drugs when he wrote the tweet 158 159 He did not file the necessary SEC paperwork within 10 days of his stake passing 5 a violation of U S securities laws 213 According to the Wall Street Journal he was worth 140 billion with 52 billion of that attributable to his ownership of Tesla stock Citations Elon Musk Reflects on Brutal Relationship With Amber Heard in New Biography E Online September 13 2023 Archived from the original on October 20 2023 Retrieved October 17 2023 a b c Gordon Devin March 10 2022 Infamy Is Kind Of Fun Grimes on Music Mars and Surprise Her Secret New Baby With Elon Musk Vanity Fair Archived from the original on May 21 2022 Retrieved March 10 2022 Berger 2021 pp 182 a b Szalai Jennifer September 9 2023 Elon Musk Wants to Save Humanity The Only Problem People The New York Times Archived from the original on September 9 2023 Retrieved September 19 2023 The musician Grimes the mother of three of Musk s children the existence of the third Techno Mechanicus nicknamed Tau has been kept private until now calls his roiling anger demon mode a mind set that causes a lot of chaos Bloomberg Billionaires Index Bloomberg L P Archived from the original on July 8 2017 Retrieved July 25 2022 Real Time Billionaires Forbes Archived from the original on February 10 2014 Retrieved August 27 2017 X AI Corp OpenCorporates Archived from the original on August 5 2023 Retrieved July 27 2023 a b Ghaffary Shirin May 20 2023 Elon Musk won t stop tweeting his way into trouble Vox Archived from the original on October 27 2023 Retrieved October 28 2023 Shephard Alex March 21 2023 What Is Elon Musk Building The New Republic Archived from the original on October 26 2023 Retrieved October 26 2023 Bond Shannon October 31 2022 Elon Musk said Twitter wouldn t become a hellscape It s already changing NPR Archived from the original on October 20 2023 Retrieved October 28 2023 Bauer Sydney June 23 2023 Elon Musk Has Made Anti Trans Hatred One of Twitter s Core Features via www thenation com a b Elon Musk promotes transphobic content as hate speech surges on his far right platform The Independent Archived from the original on August 7 2023 Retrieved August 5 2023 Thakker Prem Noah Timothy Thakker Prem Otten Tori Thakker Prem Thakker Prem Otten Tori Aronoff Kate Otten Tori Thakker Prem November 1 2022 Elon Musk Personally Elevates Transphobic Video Originally Flagged as Hate Speech via The New Republic Disney Apple among major companies to pull business from X after Elon Musk s antisemitic post NBC News November 18 2023 Hatmaker Taylor November 17 2023 Backlash builds after Elon Musk called an antisemitic conspiracy theory the actual truth Another Day Another Antisemitic Conspiracy Theory for Elon Musk and X Vanity Fair November 16 2023 a b Knight Will November 25 2022 Here s Proof Hate Speech Is More Viral on Elon Musk s Twitter Wired Archived from the original on December 13 2022 Retrieved November 25 2022 Cohen Julia April 24 2023 Analysis finds hate speech has significantly increased on Twitter phys org Retrieved November 16 2023 a b Binoy Rhea November 5 2022 Musk s Twitter updates app to start charging 8 for blue checkmark Reuters Archived from the original on November 5 2022 Retrieved November 5 2022 a b Wilson Jason November 16 2022 Twitter Blesses Extremists With Paid Blue Checks Southern Poverty Law Center Archived from the original on November 27 2022 Retrieved November 29 2022 a b Eligon John Chutel Lynsey May 5 2022 Elon Musk Left a South Africa That Was Rife With Misinformation and White Privilege The New York Times Archived from the original on November 11 2022 Retrieved May 5 2022 Vance 2017 pp 25 31 a b Hall Dana April 11 2014 Rocket Man The otherworldly ambitions of Elon Musk The Mercury News Archived from the original on April 14 2014 Retrieved April 14 2014 Elliott Hannah March 26 2012 At Home With Elon Musk The Soon to Be Bachelor Billionaire Forbes Archived from the original on May 27 2012 Retrieved May 30 2015 His biography author Ashlee Vance interviewed on the TV show Triangulation on the TWiT tv network discussion of his family starts around the 15th minute Vargas Chanel March 6 2018 11 Things to Know About Stunning 69 Year Old Model Maye Musk Town amp Country Archived from the original on March 7 2018 Retrieved March 25 2020 a b Usborne Simon February 21 2018 Meet the Musks who s who in Elon s extended family The Guardian ISSN 0261 3077 Archived from the original on May 27 2020 Retrieved March 25 2020 a b Isaacson 2023 p 23 May Dana Hull and Patrick Exploring the otherworldly ambitions of Elon Musk The Buffalo News Archived from the original on September 26 2022 Retrieved October 24 2021 Friend Tad August 17 2009 Plugged In The New Yorker Archived from the original on March 8 2022 a b Smith Adam June 28 2021 50 years of Elon Musk s huge wealth from emeralds to SpaceX and Tesla The Independent Archived from the original on November 25 2021 Retrieved December 20 2021 Lieberman Hallie The Musk of Romance Wired Archived from the original on September 2 2020 Retrieved September 2 2020 a b Hull Dana May Patrick April 10 2014 2014 Rocket Man The otherworldly ambitions of Elon Musk The Mercury News Archived from the original on September 6 2016 Retrieved April 7 2021 Keating Joseph C Jr September 1995 Joshua N Haldeman DC the Canadian Years 1926 1950 The Journal of the Canadian Chiropractic Association PMC 2485067 Vance 2017 pp 26 30 Isaacson 2023 p 16 Isaacson 2023 p 10 a b Strauss Neil November 15 2017 Elon Musk The Architect of Tomorrow Rolling Stone Archived from the original on August 17 2020 Retrieved November 15 2017 Crilly Rob March 25 2018 Elon Musk s father has baby with step daughter he has known since she was four The Daily Telegraph Archived from the original on April 26 2021 Isaacson 2023 pp 2 3 Elon Musk shares the science fiction book series that inspired him to start SpaceX CNBC February 22 2020 Archived from the original on November 4 2023 Retrieved November 9 2023 Billionaire Elon Musk says he was raised by books and credits his success to these 8 CNBC November 16 2017 Archived from the original on November 9 2023 Retrieved November 9 2023 Vance 2017 p 38 O Kane Sean June 9 2015 Play the PC game Elon Musk wrote as a pre teen The Verge Archived from the original on February 7 2018 Retrieved January 12 2019 Belfiore 2007 pp 166 95 a b Mak Aaron December 4 2019 Elon Musk Says Pedo Guy Was a Common Insult in His Youth We Checked With His Schoolmates Slate Archived from the original on October 6 2020 Retrieved December 7 2019 Isaacson 2023 p 26 a b Clifford Catherine June 12 2018 Multi billionaire Elon Musk I arrived in North America at 17 with 2 000 CNBC Archived from the original on August 2 2020 Retrieved September 14 2020 Vance 2017 p 44 Junod Tom November 15 2012 Elon Musk Triumph of His Will Esquire Archived from the original on August 18 2020 Retrieved May 29 2020 Vance 2017 pp 43 44 Vance 2017 p 45 Vance 2017 p 46 Vance 2017 pp 46 47 Locke Taylor December 20 2019 Elon Musk s college pal This is what differentiates Elon from the rest of humanity CNBC Archived from the original on December 14 2020 Retrieved January 8 2021 Encyclopedia Britannica Elon Musk Archived from the original on September 4 2015 Retrieved January 11 2023 Vance 2017 Appendix 1 Meisenzahl Elizabeth SpaceX founded by Penn graduate Elon Musk launches U S astronauts into space The Daily Pennsylvanian Archived from the original on August 7 2020 Retrieved June 1 2020 McCray Patrick W June 11 2012 A pioneer in space and on Earth CNN Archived from the original on November 28 2022 Retrieved November 19 2022 Kasprak Alex December 21 2022 Does Elon Musk Have an Undergraduate Degree in Physics Snopes Archived from the original on December 23 2022 Retrieved December 23 2022 a b Hern Alex February 9 2018 Elon Musk the real life Iron Man The Guardian Archived from the original on June 11 2022 Retrieved November 3 2022 How internships helped Elon Musk figure out his future CNBC July 16 2018 Archived from the original on December 28 2019 Retrieved December 28 2019 Soni Jimmi February 22 2022 The little known story about Elon Musk s first post grad internship Fortune Archived from the original on March 7 2022 Vance 2017 p 368 Feeley Jef August 31 2022 Stanford Pulled Into Dropout Musk s Legal Fight With Twitter Bloomberg Archived from the original on September 3 2022 Retrieved November 19 2022 Maidment Paul March 15 2016 7 college dropouts who made millions CNBC Archived from the original on May 15 2020 Retrieved September 3 2020 Delevett Peter Hull Dana August 13 2012 Greg Kouri early investor in PayPal dies in New York The Mercury News Archived from the original on October 6 2022 Retrieved October 1 2022 Huddleston Tom Jr June 19 2018 How Elon Musk founded Zip2 with his brother Kimbal CNBC Archived from the original on November 9 2022 Retrieved October 1 2022 elonmusk December 28 2019 We started Zip2 with 2k from me plus my overclocked home built PC 5k from my bro amp 8k from Greg Kouri such a good guy he is greatly missed My Dad provided 10 of a 200k angel funding round much later but by then risk was reduced amp round would ve happened anyway Tweet via Twitter Chafkin Max December 1 2007 Entrepreneur of the Year 2007 Elon Musk Inc Archived from the original on December 28 2007 Retrieved February 22 2022 a b c Huddleston Tom Jr June 19 2018 Elon Musk slept on his office couch and showered at the YMCA while starting his first company CNBC Archived from the original on August 18 2020 Retrieved September 4 2020 Kidder 2013 pp 224 228 Vance 2017 p 67 Vance 2017 p 14 Junnarkar Sandeep February 16 1999 Compaq buys Zip2 CNET Archived from the original on October 21 2014 Retrieved December 13 2020 Vance 2017 p 109 Vance 2017 p 78 Vance 2017 p 84 a b Vance 2017 p 86 Jackson 2004 pp 40 69 130 163 Vance 2017 pp 85 86 Vance 2017 pp 85 87 Vance 2017 pp 87 88 The PayPal Mafia Fortune Archived from the original on May 23 2017 Retrieved July 4 2015 a b Vance 2017 p 89 Odell Mark September 30 2014 Timeline The rise of PayPal Financial Times Archived from the original on June 22 2020 Retrieved April 3 2020 SEC 10 K PayPal December 31 2001 Archived from the original on August 25 2020 Vance 2017 pp 116 Huang Echo Elon Musk bought a web domain worth millions with sentimental value to him Quartz Archived from the original on June 25 2020 Retrieved April 3 2020 Statt Nick July 10 2017 Elon Musk now owns X com the defunct domain of his second startup The Verge Archived from the original on June 25 2020 Retrieved September 3 2020 Kleinman Zoe October 5 2022 Elon Musk Twitter and the mysterious X app BBC Archived from the original on October 21 2022 Retrieved October 27 2022 Vance 2017 pp 99 102 103 a b Vance Ashlee May 14 2015 Elon Musk s space dream almost killed Tesla Bloomberg L P Archived from the original on February 23 2017 Retrieved June 7 2015 Wayne Leslie February 5 2006 A Bold Plan to Go Where Men Have Gone Before The New York Times Archived from the original on April 12 2020 Retrieved February 16 2015 California Business Search C2414622 Space Exploration Technologies Corp archived from the original on February 23 2018 retrieved December 13 2020 Koren Marina May 6 2021 Elon Musk Is Maybe Actually Strangely Going to Do This Mars Thing The Atlantic Archived from the original on May 31 2022 Retrieved June 8 2022 a b Berger 2021 pp 178 182 Friedman Josh April 22 2003 Entrepreneur Tries His Midas Touch in Space Los Angeles Times Los Angeles Times Archived from the original on October 29 2022 Retrieved October 29 2022 Malik Tariq November 21 2005 Griffin Reiterates NASA s Commitment to Commercial Cargo Space News Archived from the original on June 19 2022 Retrieved October 29 2022 Dunbar Brian NASA Invests in Private Sector Space Flight with SpaceX Rocketplane Kistler nasa gov Press release Archived from the original on September 8 2021 Retrieved December 2 2021 Ledur Julia May 1 2019 Falcon Flights Reuters Archived from the original on February 10 2021 Retrieved February 10 2021 Chang Kenneth May 22 2012 Big Day for a Space Entrepreneur Promising More The New York Times Archived from the original on July 1 2017 Retrieved January 11 2021 Harwood William May 31 2012 SpaceX Dragon returns to Earth ends historic trip CBS News Archived from the original on April 22 2016 Retrieved August 3 2013 SpaceX rocket in historic upright landing BBC News December 22 2015 Archived from the original on August 31 2019 Retrieved June 30 2016 O Kane Sean May 27 2016 SpaceX successfully lands a Falcon 9 rocket at sea for the third time The Verge Archived from the original on June 27 2016 Retrieved June 30 2016 Drake Nadia February 25 2018 Elon Musk s Tesla in Space Could Crash into Earth National Geographic Archived from the original on February 10 2021 Retrieved February 10 2021 Chow Denise November 6 2019 Starman and the Tesla Roadster that SpaceX launched into orbit have now cruised beyond Mars NBC News Archived from the original on February 10 2021 Retrieved February 10 2021 Berger Eric August 28 2019 Starhopper aces test sets up full scale prototype flights this year Ars Technica Archived from the original on January 21 2021 Retrieved December 15 2021 Roulette Joey March 28 2022 SpaceX ending production of flagship crew capsule Reuters Archived from the original on March 29 2022 Retrieved March 31 2022 Wattles Jackie May 30 2020 SpaceX and NASA launch Crew Dragon in Florida Live updates CNN Archived from the original on August 29 2020 Retrieved May 30 2020 Johnson Eric M Roulette Joey October 31 2018 Musk shakes up SpaceX in race to make satellite launch window sources Reuters Archived from the original on May 18 2020 Retrieved March 28 2021 Hall Shannon June 1 2019 After SpaceX Starlink Launch a Fear of Satellites That Outnumber All Visible Stars Images of the Starlink constellation in orbit have rattled astronomers around the world The New York Times Archived from the original on August 21 2020 Retrieved June 1 2019 Shepardson David Roulette Joey July 30 2020 Taking on SpaceX Amazon to invest 10 billion in satellite broadband plan Reuters Archived from the original on January 7 2021 Retrieved January 12 2021 Sheetz Michael December 7 2020 SpaceX s Starlink wins nearly 900 million in FCC subsidies to bring internet to rural areas CNBC Archived from the original on December 16 2020 Retrieved January 12 2021 Wattles Jackie December 8 2020 SpaceX gets almost 900 million in federal subsidies to deliver broadband to rural America CNN Archived from the original on December 18 2020 Retrieved January 12 2021 Griffin Andrew December 30 2021 Elon Musk rejects criticism that his satellite fleet is dangerous The Independent Archived from the original on December 30 2021 Retrieved December 31 2021 Elon Musk rejects claims that his satellites are hogging space BBC News December 30 2021 Archived from the original on December 31 2021 Retrieved December 31 2021 Smith Adam February 7 2021 Astronomers create new global force to stop Elon Musk s internet satellites hiding killer asteroids The Independent Archived from the original on May 27 2022 Retrieved June 30 2022 Sheetz Michael March 22 2022 Elon Musk s SpaceX sent thousands of Starlink satellite internet dishes to Ukraine company s president says CNBC Archived from the original on March 27 2022 Retrieved March 28 2022 SpaceX s Musk says Starlink has been told by some governments to block Russian news Reuters March 6 2022 Archived from the original on April 4 2022 Retrieved April 5 2022 Porter Jon April 4 2022 Elon Musk buys 9 2 percent of Twitter amid complaints about free speech The Verge Archived from the original on April 4 2022 Retrieved April 5 2022 Marquardt Alex October 13 2022 Exclusive Musk s SpaceX says it can no longer pay for critical satellite services in Ukraine asks Pentagon to pick up the tab CNN Archived from the original on October 24 2022 Retrieved October 27 2022 Capoot Ashley October 15 2022 The hell with it Elon Musk tweets SpaceX will keep funding Ukraine govt for free amid Starlink controversy CNBC Archived from the original on November 3 2022 Retrieved October 27 2022 Hern Alex October 15 2022 Musk says SpaceX will keep funding Ukraine Starlink internet BBC News Archived from the original on December 5 2022 Retrieved October 27 2022 Elon Musk says SpaceX will keep funding Starlink internet in Ukraine The Guardian October 16 2022 Archived from the original on October 24 2022 Retrieved October 27 2022 Reed Eric February 4 2020 History of Tesla Timeline and Facts TheStreet com Archived from the original on December 20 2021 Retrieved January 10 2023 Vance 2017 pp 153 154 Vance 2017 p 159 Schilling Melissa 2018 Quirky The remarkable story of the traits foibles and genius of breakthrough innovators who changed the world PublicAffairs ISBN 9781610397926 Morrison Chris October 15 2008 Musk steps in as CEO The New York Times Archived from the original on February 4 2016 Retrieved December 13 2020 Elon Musk The Story of a Maverick interestingengineering com August 13 2020 Archived from the original on March 16 2021 Retrieved April 3 2021 LaMonica Martin September 2009 Tesla Motors founders Now there are five CNET Archived from the original on November 15 2020 Retrieved April 17 2020 Tesla Motors and co founder Martin Eberhard announced an agreement over who can claim to be a founder of the company on Monday Schwartz Ariel September 21 2009 Tesla Lawsuit Drama Ends as Five Company Founders Emerge Fast Company Archived from the original on June 6 2015 Retrieved April 14 2020 Eberhard and Musk have reached a rather unexpected resolution instead of agreeing to share the title of founder the pair has designated five people as company founders including Musk Eberhard JB Straubel Mark Tarpenning and Ian Wright Royse Dave July 8 2019 Industry Shift With Four Departures This Year Who Is The Longest Tenured Automotive CEO Yahoo Archived from the original on December 29 2019 Retrieved June 8 2022 Shead Sam March 15 2021 Elon Musk has officially been made the Technoking of Tesla CNBC Archived from the original on January 12 2022 Retrieved January 28 2022 Wilson Kevin A March 15 2018 Worth the Watt A Brief History of the Electric Car 1830 to Present Car and Driver Archived from the original on March 17 2021 Retrieved March 30 2021 Boudreau John June 22 2012 In a Silicon Valley milestone Tesla Motors begins delivering Model S electric cars The Mercury News Archived from the original on November 24 2012 Retrieved June 22 2012 Ruddick Graham September 30 2015 Tesla s Model X electric car spreads falcon wings at U S launch The Guardian Archived from the original on June 2 2017 Retrieved November 4 2015 Vlasic Bill July 29 2017 In Pivotal Moment Tesla Unveils Its First Mass Market Sedan The New York Times Archived from the original on February 9 2021 Retrieved February 9 2021 Shahan Zachary August 26 2021 Tesla Model 3 Has Passed 1 Million Sales CleanTechnica Archived from the original on September 4 2021 Retrieved August 26 2021 Holland Maximilian March 10 2020 Tesla Passes 1 Million EV Milestone amp Model 3 Becomes All Time Best Seller CleanTechnica Archived from the original on April 12 2020 Retrieved April 20 2020 O Kane Sean March 16 2020 Tesla Model Y deliveries begin in the US The Verge Archived from the original on March 17 2020 Retrieved February 14 2021 Huddleston Tom Jr November 22 2019 This is the James Bond sports car Elon Musk bought for nearly 1 million that inspired Tesla Cybertruck CNBC Archived from the original on November 27 2019 Retrieved September 19 2020 Eddy Melissa March 4 2022 Tesla Wins Approval to Open European Assembly Plant The New York Times Archived from the original on September 4 2022 Retrieved September 4 2022 With First Share Offering Tesla Bets on Electric Car s Future The New York Times Associated Press June 28 2010 Archived from the original on February 10 2021 Retrieved February 9 2021 Tesla overtakes Toyota to become world s most valuable carmaker BBC News July 1 2020 Archived from the original on February 10 2021 Retrieved February 9 2021 Boudette Neal E July 2 2020 Tesla Shines During the Pandemic as Other Automakers Struggle The New York Times Archived from the original on February 10 2021 Retrieved February 9 2021 Li Yun December 20 2021 Tesla shares fall 6 as it enters the S amp P 500 with 1 69 weighting fifth largest CNBC Archived from the original on February 10 2021 Retrieved February 9 2021 Tesla Stock Joins the S amp P 500 A Game Changer The Wall Street Journal December 21 2020 Archived from the original on February 10 2021 Retrieved February 9 2021 Isidore Chris October 26 2021 Tesla is now worth more than 1 trillion CNN Archived from the original on November 14 2021 Retrieved November 14 2021 a b Haselton Todd November 13 2021 Elon Musk sold about 6 9 billion in Tesla stock this week CNBC Archived from the original on June 8 2022 Retrieved November 15 2021 Jin Hyunjoo December 30 2021 Tesla s Musk exercises all of his stock options expiring next year Reuters Archived from the original on May 31 2022 Retrieved June 8 2022 Michaels Dave February 24 2022 WSJ News Exclusive SEC Probes Trading by Elon Musk and Brother in Wake of Tesla CEO s Sales The Wall Street Journal Archived from the original on March 3 2022 Retrieved March 3 2022 Siddiqui Faiz September 30 2022 Elon Musk debuts Tesla robot Optimus calling it a fundamental transformation The Washington Post Archived from the original on October 22 2022 I am a fan of Modi Tesla CEO Elon Musk after meeting PM in New York Hindustan Times June 21 2023 Archived from the original on June 21 2023 Retrieved June 22 2023 a b Goldstein Matthew September 27 2018 S E C Sues Tesla s Elon Musk for Fraud and Seeks to Bar Him From Running a Public Company The New York Times Archived from the original on June 23 2020 Retrieved September 27 2018 Choudhury Saheli Roy September 28 2018 SEC says Musk chose 420 price for Tesla shares because it s a pot reference CNBC Archived from the original on October 6 2020 Retrieved September 17 2020 Swisher Kara August 23 2018 How and Why Silicon Valley Gets High The New York Times Archived from the original on August 24 2018 Retrieved May 11 2021 Woodyard Chris August 30 2018 Elon Musk s tweet on taking Tesla private now dogged by drugs claim from rapper Azealia Banks USA Today Archived from the original on May 12 2021 Retrieved May 11 2021 Patnaik Subrat Kalia Shubham September 28 2018 Factbox Funding secured SEC gives timeline surrounding tweet from Tesla s Musk Reuters Archived from the original on November 23 2019 Retrieved November 23 2018 O Kane Sean Lopatto Elizabeth September 27 2018 Elon Musk sued by SEC for securities fraud The Verge Archived from the original on July 30 2020 Retrieved September 27 2018 Elon Musk forced to step down as chairman of Tesla remains CEO The Verge Archived from the original on May 27 2020 Retrieved September 29 2018 Tesla s Elon Musk says tweet that led to 20 million fine Worth It Reuters October 27 2018 Archived from the original on May 22 2020 Retrieved December 9 2018 Youn Soo Katersky Aaron October 11 2018 Elon Musk commits to SEC settlement despite mocking tweets ABC News Archived from the original on October 23 2019 Retrieved October 17 2018 Brodkin Jon April 18 2022 Musk keeps falsely claiming Funding secured tweet was accurate judge is told Ars Technica Archived from the original on September 9 2022 Retrieved September 9 2022 Godoy Jody Jin Hyunjoo February 3 2023 Tesla s Elon Musk found not liable in trial over 2018 funding secured tweets Reuters Archived from the original on February 4 2023 Retrieved February 4 2023 Ohnsman Alan February 25 2019 Elon Musk s Tesla Tweet Puts CEO Role at Risk Again Forbes Archived from the original on May 28 2020 Retrieved February 26 2019 Wattles Jackie April 27 2019 Elon Musk and SEC reach an agreement over tweeting CNN Business Archived from the original on June 8 2020 Retrieved July 16 2019 Marino Nachison David April 26 2019 Tesla CEO Elon Musk Gets a Long Do Not Tweet List From the SEC Barrons Archived from the original on January 22 2020 Retrieved November 25 2019 Bursztynsky Jessica May 1 2020 Tesla shares tank after Elon Musk tweets the stock price is too high CNBC Archived from the original on August 18 2020 Retrieved June 14 2020 Court Rules That No One Can Stop Elon Musk From Tweeting Tesla News For Now Observer May 20 2020 Archived from the original on October 30 2020 Retrieved December 1 2020 Elliott Dave Michaels Rebecca June 2 2021 WSJ News Exclusive Tesla Failed to Oversee Elon Musk s Tweets SEC Argued in Letters The Wall Street Journal Archived from the original on June 10 2021 Retrieved June 10 2021 Kanellos Michael February 15 2008 Elon Musk on rockets sports cars and solar power CNET Archived from the original on January 29 2014 2013 Top 250 Solar Contractors Solar Power World September 13 2013 Archived from the original on October 10 2017 Retrieved December 13 2020 Smith Aaron June 17 2014 Elon Musk s sunny plans for Buffalo CNNMoney Archived from the original on October 9 2017 Retrieved December 13 2020 Kolodny Lora February 26 2020 Tesla Panasonic will reportedly stop joint solar cell production at Gigafactory 2 in Buffalo CNBC Archived from the original on August 8 2020 Retrieved September 1 2020 The highs lows and legacy of Panasonic s doomed project in Buffalo The Business Journals Archived from the original on November 23 2020 Retrieved April 3 2021 Kolodny Lora Bursztynsky Jessica April 27 2022 Elon Musk wins shareholder lawsuit over Tesla s 2 6 billion SolarCity acquisition CNBC Archived from the original on May 24 2022 Retrieved June 7 2022 According to emails that were part of evidence in the trial Musk wrote an e mail to SolarCity CFO Brad Buss on Sept 18 2016 saying that to get Tesla investors on board with the deal SolarCity needed to get a handle on its liquidity problem and sign a letter of intent for a contract with Panasonic Strong Michael March 16 2020 Shareholder 2 2B Lawsuit Against Tesla CEO Musk Halted After Trial Postponed Due to Coronavirus The Detroit Bureau Archived from the original on September 14 2020 Retrieved September 1 2020 Mitchell Russ September 23 2019 Elon Musk knew SolarCity was going broke before merger with Tesla lawsuit alleges Los Angeles Times Archived from the original on July 30 2020 Retrieved September 1 2020 Hals Tom January 30 2020 Tesla directors settle isolating Musk as SolarCity trial looms Reuters Archived from the original on July 28 2020 Retrieved September 1 2020 Chase Randall August 17 2020 Judge OKs 60M settlement over Tesla buyout of SolarCity ABC Archived from the original on August 25 2020 Retrieved September 1 2020 Kolodny Lora Bursztynsky Jessica April 27 2022 Elon Musk wins shareholder lawsuit over Tesla s 2 6 billion SolarCity acquisition CNBC Archived from the original on May 24 2022 Retrieved June 7 2022 a b Markoff John July 16 2019 Elon Musk s Neuralink Wants Sewing Machine Like Robots to Wire Brains to the Internet The New York Times Archived from the original on July 20 2022 Retrieved July 26 2022 a b Statt Nick March 27 2017 Elon Musk launches Neuralink a venture to merge the human brain with AI The Verge Archived from the original on August 3 2020 Retrieved April 10 2017 Winkler Rolfe March 27 2017 Elon Musk Launches Neuralink to Connect Brains With Computers The Wall Street Journal Archived from the original on October 2 2020 Retrieved October 10 2020 a b Elon Musk s Neuralink puts computer chips in pigs brains in bid to cure diseases NBC News Reuters August 29 2020 Archived from the original on April 26 2022 Retrieved July 26 2022 Zhavoronkov Alex Elon Musk s Big Neuralink Paper Should We Prepare For The Digital Afterlife Forbes Archived from the original on August 17 2022 Retrieved August 17 2022 Kahn Jeremy Vanian Jonathan January 27 2022 Inside Neuralink Elon Musk s mysterious brain chip startup A culture of blame impossible deadlines and a missing CEO Fortune Archived from the original on September 25 2022 Retrieved August 17 2022 a b Regalado Antonio August 30 2020 Elon Musk s Neuralink is neuroscience theater MIT Technology Review Archived from the original on December 13 2020 Retrieved September 3 2020 Cellan Jones Rory September 1 2020 Is Elon Musk over hyping his brain hacking Neuralink tech BBC News Archived from the original on September 12 2020 Retrieved September 14 2020 Rogers Adam September 4 2020 Neuralink Is Impressive Tech Wrapped in Musk Hype Wired Archived from the original on September 6 2020 Retrieved September 14 2020 Neate Rupert January 20 2022 Elon Musk s brain chip firm Neuralink lines up clinical trials in humans The Guardian Archived from the original on July 12 2022 Retrieved July 26 2022 Ryan Hannah February 17 2022 Elon Musk s Neuralink confirms monkeys died in the project denies animal cruelty claims CNN Business Archived from the original on July 11 2022 Levy Rachel December 5 2022 Musk s Neuralink faces federal probe employee backlash over animal tests Reuters Archived from the original on December 6 2022 Retrieved December 5 2022 Singh Maanvi September 19 2023 Elon Musk s Neuralink approved to recruit humans for brain implant trial The Guardian Archived from the original on September 24 2023 Retrieved September 24 2023 Petrova Magdalena July 20 2021 Why Elon Musk s Boring Company is finding that traffic is tough to fix CNBC Archived from the original on June 14 2022 Retrieved June 13 2022 McFarland Matt July 6 2022 Elon Musk s Boring Company will let you pay for a ride with Dogecoin CNN Archived from the original on July 26 2022 Retrieved July 26 2022 Heathman Amelia Elon Musk s boring machine has already built a test trench in LA Wired Archived from the original on July 18 2017 Retrieved February 19 2017 Romero Dennis December 19 2018 Elon Musk unveils his test car tunnel as a fix for traffic in Los Angeles NBC News Archived from the original on July 4 2022 Retrieved July 26 2022 Farivar Cyrus June 8 2021 Fort Lauderdale officials say Elon Musk s new tunnel to the beach can t come fast enough NBC News Archived from the original on July 3 2021 Retrieved July 27 2022 Heater Brian November 28 2018 Elon Musk s Boring Co drops LA Westside tunnel plan TechCrunch Archived from the original on November 28 2018 Retrieved July 27 2022 Boring Co underground loop to be put to the test Las Vegas Review Journal May 20 2021 Archived from the original on May 21 2021 Retrieved May 29 2021 McBride Sarah December 16 2020 Elon Musk s Proposed Vegas Strip Transit System Advanced by City Council Vote Bloomberg L P Archived from the original on January 11 2021 Retrieved January 8 2021 McFarland Matt July 7 2021 Fort Lauderdale accepts proposal for Elon Musk s Tesla beach tunnel CNN Business Archived from the original on July 24 2022 Retrieved July 26 2022 Elon Musk elonmusk April 14 2022 I made an offer www sec gov Archives edgar data 0001418091 000110465922045641 tm2212748d1 sc13da htm sec gov Archives edgar Tweet via Twitter Paul Kari April 26 2022 Chaotic and crass a brief timeline of Elon Musk s history with Twitter The Guardian Archived from the original on April 26 2022 Retrieved April 26 2022 Elon Musk snaps up 3bn Twitter stake BBC News April 4 2022 Archived from the original on April 4 2022 Retrieved April 4 2022 Jones Callum Elon Musk becomes Twitter s biggest shareholder after taking 9 2 stake The Times Archived from the original on April 4 2022 Retrieved April 4 2022 Hull Dana Fleisher Lisa October 4 2022 Twitter texts released in court case reveal Elon Musk s ex wife asked him to Please do something to fight woke ism Fortune Archived from the original on May 30 2023 Retrieved September 23 2023 Elder Bryce April 6 2022 Musk and Twitter the timeline Financial Times Archived from the original on May 30 2022 Retrieved June 4 2022 a b Adler Maxwell Turner Giles April 14 2022 Elon Musk Makes 43 Billion Unsolicited Bid to Take Twitter Private Bloomberg L P Archived from the original on April 14 2022 Retrieved April 14 2022 Elon Musk delayed filing a form and made 156 million The Washington Post Archived from the original on April 8 2022 Retrieved April 8 2022 Imbert Fred April 4 2022 Twitter shares close up 27 after Elon Musk takes 9 stake in social media company CNBC Archived from the original on April 4 2022 Retrieved April 19 2022 Twitter shares close up 27 after Elon Musk takes 9 stake in social media company Corfield Gareth April 5 2022 Elon Musk to join Twitter board The Daily Telegraph Archived from the original on April 5 2022 Retrieved April 5 2022 McLean Rob April 11 2022 Twitter CEO Elon Musk will not join Twitter board CNN Archived from the original on April 11 2022 Retrieved April 11 2022 Elon Musk launches hostile takeover bid for Twitter Agence France Presse April 14 2022 Archived from the original on April 14 2022 Retrieved April 14 2022 Feiner Lauren April 15 2022 Twitter board adopts poison pill after Musk s 43 billion bid to buy company CNBC Archived from the original on April 17 2022 Retrieved April 18 2022 Stahl George Musk Twitter Deal Values Company at Around 44 Billion The Wall Street Journal Archived from the original on April 25 2022 Retrieved April 25 2022 Isaac Mike Hirsch Lauren April 25 2022 With Deal for Twitter Musk Lands a Prize and Pledges Fewer Limits The New York Times Archived from the original on April 27 2022 Retrieved April 26 2022 MacMillan Douglas Siddiqui Faiz Lerman Rachel Telford Taylor April 25 2022 Elon Musk acquires Twitter for roughly 44 billion The Washington Post Archived from the original on April 25 2022 Retrieved April 26 2022 Siddiqui Faiz April 26 2022 Tesla s value dropped Tuesday by more than double the cost of Twitter The Washington Post Archived from the original on April 27 2022 Retrieved April 26 2022 Gura David April 26 2022 Tesla shares sink wipe out over 125 billion in value as Musk scores Twitter deal NPR Archived from the original on April 27 2022 Retrieved April 26 2022 Woo Erin Isaac Mike April 27 2022 In tweets Musk takes aim at Twitter executives creating outrage The New York Times Archived from the original on April 28 2022 Retrieved April 27 2022 Balu Nivedita Li Kenneth May 13 2022 Musk says 44 bln Twitter deal on hold over fake account data Reuters Archived from the original on May 13 2022 Retrieved May 13 2022 Seal Dean Needleman Sarah E Lombardo Cara May 13 2022 Elon Musk Says His 44 Billion Twitter Deal Is On Hold The Wall Street Journal Archived from the original on May 13 2022 Retrieved May 13 2022 Feiner Lauren July 8 2022 Elon Musk notifies Twitter he is terminating deal CNBC Archived from the original on October 24 2022 Retrieved July 8 2022 Conger Kate Hirsch Lauren July 12 2022 Twitter Sues Musk After He Tries Backing Out of 44 Billion Deal The New York Times Archived from the original on October 24 2022 Retrieved July 12 2022 Conger Kate Hirsch Lauren Sorkin Andrew Ross October 4 2022 Elon Musk Suggests Buying Twitter at His Original Price The New York Times Archived from the original on October 24 2022 Retrieved October 8 2022 a b Klar Rebecca October 27 2022 Musk officially closes Twitter deal reports The Hill Archived from the original on October 28 2022 Retrieved October 27 2022 Musk Said to Begin Firing Twitter s Top Executives The New York Times October 27 2022 Archived from the original on October 28 2022 Mehta Chavi Dang Sheila Ghosh Sayantani October 31 2022 Elon Musk who runs four other companies will now be Twitter CEO Reuters Archived from the original on November 1 2022 Elon Musk says 8 monthly fee for Twitter blue tick BBC November 2 2022 Archived from the original on November 2 2022 Retrieved November 2 2022 Korn Jennifer November 2 2022 Musk says Twitter will charge 8 a month for account verification after criticism for 19 99 plan CNN Archived from the original on November 2 2022 Retrieved November 2 2022 Conger Kate Mac Ryan November 4 2022 Elon Musk Begins Layoffs at Twitter The New York Times Archived from the original on November 4 2022 Retrieved November 4 2022 Picchi Aimee November 4 2022 Elon Musk set to fire roughly half of Twitter s workers CBS News Archived from the original on November 3 2022 Retrieved November 4 2022 Zakrewski Siddiqui Faiz Siddiqui Menn Joseph November 22 2022 Musk s free speech agenda dismantles safety work at Twitter insiders say The Washington Post Archived from the original on November 22 2022 Retrieved January 19 2023 Ecarma Caleb November 21 2022 We re Officially in the Elon Musk Era of Content Moderation Vanity Fair Archived from the original on January 10 2023 Retrieved December 12 2022 Marshall Aarian Hoover Amanda December 3 2022 The Twitter Files Revealed One Thing Elon Musk Is Trapped Wired Archived from the original on December 13 2022 Retrieved December 3 2022 Brooks Emily and Rebecca Klar 2023 Weaponization subcommittee members spar over Twitter Files The Hill March 9 Da Silva Chantal December 19 2022 Twitter users vote for Elon Musk to step down as CEO in poll he launched NBC News Archived from the original on September 11 2023 Retrieved September 24 2023 Allyn Bobby December 20 2022 Elon Musk says he will resign as Twitter CEO once he finds a replacement NPR Archived from the original on July 29 2023 Retrieved September 24 2023 Milmo Dan May 11 2023 Elon Musk announces he has found new Twitter CEO The Guardian Archived from the original on May 11 2023 Retrieved May 11 2023 Dang Sheila 2023 X sues Media Matters after report about ads next to antisemitic content Reuters November 20 a b c Kolodny Lora October 19 2018 Elon Musk s extreme micromanagement has wasted time and money at Tesla insiders say CNBC Archived from the original on May 24 2022 Retrieved July 4 2022 a b Mac Ryan Metz Cade Conger Kate May 3 2022 I Don t Really Have a Business Plan How Elon Musk Wings It The New York Times Archived from the original on June 28 2022 Retrieved May 3 2022 Berger 2021 pp 24 25 Berger 2021 pp 15 Berger 2021 pp 25 Kolodny Lora November 19 2021 Read the emails Elon Musk sent Tesla employees about music on the job and following directions CNBC Archived from the original on July 4 2022 Retrieved July 4 2022 a b Duhigg Charles December 13 2018 Dr Elon amp Mr Musk Life Inside Tesla s Production Hell Wired Archived from the original on March 21 2021 Retrieved April 25 2021 Berger 2021 pp 18 Is the world s richest person the world s worst boss What it s like working for Elon Musk Los Angeles Times November 14 2022 Archived from the original on November 16 2022 Retrieved November 16 2022 a b Duhigg Charles Dr Elon amp Mr Musk Life Inside Tesla s Production Hell Wired ISSN 1059 1028 Archived from the original on March 21 2021 Retrieved November 8 2022 Elon Musk feels super bad about economy needs to cut 10 of Tesla jobs CNBC June 3 2022 Archived from the original on June 28 2022 Retrieved July 6 2022 Mac Ryan June 1 2022 Elon Musk to Workers Spend 40 Hours in the Office or Else The New York Times Archived from the original on June 1 2022 Bilton Nick November 10 2020 Elon Musk s Totally Awful Batshit Crazy Completely Bonkers Most Excellent Year Vanity Fair Archived from the original on January 29 2021 Retrieved April 25 2021 Vance 2017 p 340 Elon s worst trait by far in my opinion is a complete lack of loyalty or human connection Many of us worked tirelessly for him for years and were tossed to the curb like a piece of litter without a second thought Maybe it was calculated to keep the rest of the workforce on their toes and scared maybe he was just able to detach from human connection to a remarkable degree What was clear is that people who worked for him were like ammunition used for a specific purpose until exhausted and discarded Wong Julia Carrie June 13 2018 Tesla workers say they pay the price for Elon Musk s big promises The Guardian Archived from the original on March 23 2021 Retrieved April 25 2021 The CEO is known for outsized claims and ambitious goals But numerous factory workers say he doesn t follow through and that his leadership sets a troubling tone Warzel Charlie November 7 2022 Elon Musk Is Bad at This Archived 2022 12 31 at the Wayback Machine The Atlantic Mitchell Charlie Sweary tirades and abrupt firings under Elon Musk new book claims The Times Archived from the original on May 31 2022 Retrieved August 6 2021 Dugan Ianthe Jeanne Spector Mike August 24 2017 Tesla s Push to Build a Self Driving Car Sparked Dissent Among Its Engineers The Wall Street Journal Archived from the original on April 16 2021 Retrieved April 25 2021 Musk Foundation ProPublica May 9 2013 Archived from the original on February 10 2022 a b Carlson Kara December 13 2022 Mapping Musklandia A guide to Elon Musk related activity in the Austin area Austin American Statesman Archived from the original on December 15 2022 Musk s private foundation was founded in 2001 and is focused on renewable energy Harris Mark January 23 2019 How Elon Musk s secretive foundation hands out his billions The Guardian Archived from the original on July 28 2020 Retrieved September 3 2020 a b Cuccinello Hayley C September 8 2020 Elon Musk Has Promised To Give at Least Half His Fortune To Charity Here s How Much He s Donated So Far Forbes Archived from the original on December 13 2020 Retrieved December 13 2020 a b Schleifer Theodore January 11 2021 The big decision before Elon Musk now the richest person in the world Vox Archived from the original on February 17 2021 Retrieved February 17 2021 OpenAI shifts from nonprofit to capped profit to attract capital March 11 2019 Archived from the original on April 25 2021 Retrieved April 25 2021 Pledge Signatories The Giving Pledge Archived from the original on January 9 2022 Retrieved January 30 2022 Chappell Bill February 8 2021 Elon Musk Funds 100 Million XPrize For Pursuit Of New Carbon Removal Ideas NPR Archived from the original on January 4 2022 Retrieved February 8 2022 Coren Michael J All the causes Elon Musk s foundation has donated money to since 2002 Quartz Archived from the original on April 10 2021 Retrieved April 10 2021 Elon Musk Makes Biggest Donation in History Bloomberg L P February 15 2022 Archived from the original on February 15 2022 Retrieved February 15 2022 Alexander Sophie December 12 2022 Musk s 5 7 Billion Mystery Gift Went to His Own Charity Bloomberg News Archived from the original on December 12 2022 Hyperloop Update Elon Musk Will Start Developing It Himself Forbes Archived from the original on September 29 2017 Retrieved March 22 2016 Kolawole Emi August 12 2013 Elon Musk Unveils Hyperloop Plans The Washington Post Archived from the original on July 28 2022 Retrieved July 24 2022 Kirschen Philippe Burnell Edward April 6 2021 Hyperloop System Optimization arXiv 2104 03907 cs CE Vance Ashlee August 12 2013 Revealed Elon Musk Explains the Hyperloop the Solar Powered High Speed Future of Inter City Transportation Bloomberg BusinessWeek Archived from the original on January 27 2015 Retrieved April 27 2016 Ranger Steve What is Hyperloop Everything you need to know about the race for super fast travel ZDNet Archived from the original on October 30 2020 Retrieved September 19 2020 Mazza Sandy January 29 2017 Hyperloop competition brings new mass transit technology to life in Hawthorne Daily Bulletin Archived from the original on August 16 2017 Retrieved December 13 2020 Elon Musk Says He Has Verbal OK To Build N Y D C Hyperloop NPR Archived from the original on August 31 2020 Retrieved July 25 2017 Elon Musk s Boring Company removes D C Baltimore tunnel from list of projects on website The Washington Post Archived from the original on August 23 2021 Retrieved August 14 2021 McBride Sarah Musk s SpaceX Dismantles Hyperloop Prototype Puts Up a Parking Lot Bloomberg Archived from the original on November 4 2022 Retrieved November 5 2022 Sorokanich Bob August 11 2022 Did Musk Propose Hyperloop to Stop California High Speed Rail Jalopnik Archived from the original on August 19 2022 Retrieved May 20 2023 Markoff John December 11 2015 Artificial Intelligence Research Center Is Founded by Silicon Valley Investors The New York Times Archived from the original on August 30 2020 Retrieved December 15 2015 Vincent James March 24 2023 Elon Musk reportedly tried and failed to take over OpenAI in 2018 The Verge Archived from the original on June 19 2023 Retrieved June 19 2023 Why Elon Musk s 100 million donation claim to ChatGPT maker OpenAI may be wrong The Times of India May 18 2023 Archived from the original on June 19 2023 Retrieved June 19 2023 Novet Jordan February 2 2018 Elon Musk who has sounded the alarm on AI leaves the organization he co founded to make it safer CNBC Archived from the original on August 30 2020 Retrieved September 3 2020 Johnson Steven Iziev Nikita April 15 2022 A I Is Mastering Language Should We Trust What It Says The New York Times Archived from the original on November 24 2022 Retrieved July 24 2022 Metz Cade April 6 2022 Meet DALL E the A I That Draws Anything at Your Command The New York Times Archived from the original on July 20 2022 Retrieved July 24 2022 Zahn Max Elon Musk launches his own AI company to compete with ChatGPT ABC News Archived from the original on July 15 2023 Retrieved July 14 2023 Henshall Will July 12 2023 What to Know About Elon Musk s New AI Company xAI Time Archived from the original on September 6 2023 Retrieved September 24 2023 a b Lee Timothy B July 10 2018 Thai official Elon Musk s submarine not practical for this mission Updated Ars Technica Archived from the original on September 19 2020 Retrieved September 13 2020 Wong Julia Carrie December 5 2019 Elon Musk trial Vernon Unsworth says entrepreneur s tweets humiliated him The Guardian Archived from the original on May 13 2022 Retrieved May 13 2022 Ferris Robert July 10 2018 Elon Musk says his mini submarine can be used for other things CNBC Archived from the original on July 13 2018 Retrieved July 13 2018 span, wikipedia, wiki, book, books, library,

article

, read, download, free, free download, mp3, video, mp4, 3gp, jpg, jpeg, gif, png, picture, music, song, movie, book, game, games.