Here is a look at the life of Elon Musk, the billionaire entrepreneur behind Tesla, SpaceX and SolarCity.
Personal:
Birth date: June 28, 1971
Birth place: Pretoria, South Africa
Birth name: Elon Reeve Musk
Father: Errol Musk, engineer
Mother: Maye (Haldeman) Musk, nutritionist and model
Marriages: Talulah Riley (2013-2016), divorced; 2010-2012, divorced for the first time); Justine (Wilson) Musk (2000-2008, divorced)
Children: with Justine (Wilson) Musk: Nevada, died at 10 weeks; twins Griffin and Xavier; triplets Damian, Saxon and Kai
Education: Attended Queen’s University in Kingston, Ontario, Canada, 1990-1992; University of Pennsylvania, B.S. in economics and B.A. in physics, 1995; briefly attended Stanford University in 1995
Other Facts:
CEO and CTO of Space Exploration Technologies (SpaceX), a commercial space exploration company.
CEO and product architect of electric automaker Tesla Motors.
Chairman, and largest shareholder of solar power company SolarCity.
Chairman of Musk Foundation, an organization supporting research on renewable energy, human space exploration and pediatrics.
At age 12, sold his code for a video game called “Blastar” to a computer magazine for $500.
Film director Jon Favreau has said Musk helped inspire the on-screen version of genius billionaire Tony Stark in the “Iron Man” films.
Timeline:
1995 – Musk co-founds Zip2 Corp., a company that develops online city guides.
1999 – Sells Zip2 to Compaq for $307 million in cash.
March 1999 – Co-founds X.com, an online banking and financial services company.
March 2000 – X.com merges with Confinity, and is renamed PayPal in 2001.
June 2002 – Musk founds SpaceX, with the intention of decreasing the cost and increasing the accessibility of space travel.
October 2002 – EBay acquires PayPal for $1.5 billion, with Musk pocketing $165 million.
February 2004 – Musk leads Tesla Motors’ initial round of investment funding, and joins the company as chairman of the board.
October 2008 – In addition to serving as board chairman, becomes CEO and product architect of Tesla Motors.
December 8, 2010 – SpaceX becomes the first privately owned company to return a commercial spacecraft from a low-Earth orbit.
May 25, 2012 – SpaceX’s unmanned Dragon spacecraft makes history as the first private capsule to connect to the International Space Station (ISS).
May 31, 2012 – After delivering more than 1,000 pounds of cargo, including food, clothing, computer equipment and supplies for science experiments to the ISS, the first successful commercial mission ends with the SpaceX Dragon capsule splashing down about 560 miles off Baja California. Musk declares the flight a “grand slam.”
November 2013 – Named Fortune’s Businessperson of the Year.
December 11, 2015 – Along with other big name technology sponsors, announces plans to invest in the non-profit artificial intelligence research center OpenAI.
April 8, 2016 – For the first time, SpaceX successfully lands its Falcon 9 rocket on a drone ship.
March 2017 – Ranked number 80 on Forbes’ list of The World’s Billionaires, with a net worth of $13.9 billion.
March 30, 2017 – SpaceX successfully launches a used rocket. This is the first time in the history of spaceflight that the same rocket has been used on two separate missions to orbit.
June 1, 2017 – Quits two of President Donald Trump’s business advisory councils after the president announces he will pull the US out of the historic Paris climate agreement. Musk tweets, “Am departing presidential councils. Climate change is real. Leaving Paris is not good for America or the world.”
June 7, 2017 – Tesla lands on the Fortune 500 list of the nation’s largest companies for the first time, landing at number 383. The list ranks companies by revenue, and Tesla pulled in $7 billion in 2016.