It is hard to believe that until a few days ago, many were those who had never heard of Elon Musk. Something that has changed recently. And it is that a few days after knowing his entrance of him into the board of directors of Twitter, the businessman was crowned “the richest man in the world” by the prestigious magazine “Forbes”.
Controversial, eccentric, workaholic, environmental advocate, and visionary. These are just some of the numerous adjectives with which Elon Musk has been defined in recent years. And they are all true.
At 50 years old, he is not only the greatest fortune in the world but also one of the most powerful men on the planet (as confirmed by ‘Time’ magazine, which named him ‘Person of the Year in 2021), who claims to be willing to create a better world, although for this it has to be questioned and even marked as ‘crazy’.
Who is Elon Musk?
Born in Pretoria, South Africa, on June 28, 1971, the businessman is the son of a former model and an engineer and is the oldest of three brothers. At 17, he moved to Canada with his mother’s family, apparently to escape South African military service. There he worked on a farm before enrolling at Queens University in Ontario.
He also studied at the University of Pennsylvania and Stanford, although he abandoned these two days later to find his first company.
Years earlier, when he was just ten, Elon Musk self-taught programming, which led him to sell his first video game, called ‘Blastar’, for $500 when he was 12 years old.
Considered one of the most powerful men, Elon Musk is also the wealthiest man in the world.
Elon Musk’s companies: from PayPal to Tesla
Together with his brother Kimbal and his friend Greg Kouri, he created Zip2, dedicated to promoting development, hosting, and maintenance services for different websites. In 1999, they sold the company for $307 million, of which Musk received $22 million.
Of his earnings, he invested $12 million in X.com, a financial company that merged with Confinity in 2000, giving rise to PayPal, a money transfer company of which Elon Musk took over as CEO.
Just two years later, PayPal was sold for $1.5 billion to eBay. A millionaire operation that reported him 180 million with which he launched his new companies.
In 2002, Elon Musk founded SpaceX, an aerospace company to explore space, and in September 2021 launched the first civilian mission outside of Earth. Set to encourage private flights into space, the businessman is poised to dominate space travel.
A year later, he founded Tesla, a company focused on the manufacture of electric cars that, although it cost him more than one dislike, including legal problems with the co-founders and almost bankruptcy in 2008, has become one of his best businesses.
Elon Musk is the founder of more than a dozen companies, including Tesla, PayPal, and SpaceX.
A born entrepreneur, and a true visionary, Elon Musk continued to create companies and businesses, for many impossible.
In 2006, Musk founded SolarCity, a renewable energy company with which he intends to promote solar energy services for homes, to counteract global warming.
In 2014 it was the turn of Hyperloop One, a transport technology company that is working on a new concept of high-speed transport to travel through a network of tubes with capsules as wagons.
Open AI, in 2015, was his first foray into the world of Artificial Intelligence; and Neuralink, in 2016, was a neurotechnology company working on developing brain-computer interfaces.
That same year he also launched The Boring Company, for the excavation and creation of infrastructures that seek to lower the cost of producing the works.
The fortune of the wealthiest man in the world
Although he claims to have taken risks, and in 2008 he was close to bankruptcy after investing his entire fortune in Space X and Tesla, companies that had a hard time taking off, Elon Musk managed to come back and invest successfully until he became the wealthiest man in the world.
Recently ‘Forbes ‘ confirmed that Musk, with a fortune estimated at 219,000 million dollars, has dethroned Jeff Bezos, owner of Amazon, who this year holds second place in the ranking with his 171,000 million dollars
For Forbes, the third world fortune is that of Bernard Arnault and his family, owners of the luxury conglomerate LVMH, with 158,000 million dollars, while fourth place is for Bill Gates, with 129,000 million.
Forbes estimates that Elon Musk has a fortune of $219 billion.
The majority shareholder of Twitter
Elon Musk’s recognition came a few days after his purchase of 9.2 percent of Twitter shares was known. An acquisition, for 2,980 million dollars, has made him the main shareholder of the social network.
A social network in which the businessman has a very active profile, and where he has a whopping 81 million followers.
After learning that he will be part of Twitter’s board of directors, the company’s shares soared on the New York Stock Exchange.
His private life: three weddings and eight children
A few weeks before his 51st birthday, Elon Musk can boast of having a large family, the result of his various relationships.
His first wife was Justine Musk, a Canadian writer whom he met in college. They married in 2000 and 2002 their first child was born, a boy they named Nevada who died at ten weeks from sudden death syndrome.
In 2004 they were parents to twins, Griffin and Xavier, and in 2006 to triplets, Damian, Saxon, and Kai. The couple separated in 2008.
Elon Musk is the father of eight children, including twins and triplets.
Shortly after, Elon Musk met the British actress Talulah Riley, whom he married in 2010. Two years later, the couple separated, as the businessman announced on his Twitter profile: “It was an incredible four years. I will love you forever. You will make someone very happy one day.”
A year later, Elon and Talulah were remarried. They separated definitively in 2016 although they continued to maintain a very good relationship.
In 2017, he had a brief relationship with actress Amber Heard, ex-wife of Johnny Depp. During the trial that the ex-marriage currently maintains for alleged ill-treatment, the sexual relations that Musk had with Amber and the model Cara Delevingne came to light.
In 2018 we knew about the millionaire’s relationship with the artist Grimes, whose real name is Claire Boucher. They met through Twitter. In May 2020 they welcomed their first child together, whom they decided to name X Æ A-Xii, to the surprise of the world.
Although it seemed that the couple had gone their separate ways, and there are even those who claim that they have an open relationship, a few weeks ago they announced the birth of their second daughter, Exa Dark Siderael, born by surrogacy, whom they affectionately call Y.
Rumors currently suggest that Elon Musk is in a relationship with Australian actress Natasha Bassett.
His last confirmed relationship was with the artist Grimes, the mother of his last two children.
