Elon Musk, the Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of Tesla on Thursday became the richest man on earth.
The 49-year old is the Founder, CEO, lead designer of SpaceX, CEO, product architect of Tesla, Inc., Founder of The Boring Company and X.com (now PayPal), Co-founder of Neuralink, OpenAI, and Zip2, and Chairman of SolarCity.
Here are 7 Things To Know About Elon Musk
Richest Man In The World
BizWatch Nigeria had reported that the Chief Executive Officer of Tesla, Elon Musk has overtaken Amazon founder Jeff Bezos to become the wealthiest person in the world, on Thursday.
South African-born Musk is a major shareholder at Tesla ad has reaped from the burgeoning electric car company’s rising share price over the last year. Elon Musk is estimated to be worth $185 billion.
Net Worth
Elon Musk as of Thursday is worth $185 billion. SpaceX, Musk’s rocket company, is now valued at $46 billion.
Elon Musk Is Of African Descendant
That’s right, Elon Reeve Musk has African blood in him. Elon’s father, Errol Musk is a South African, who fathered Elon with his then wife Maye Musk who is a Canadian.
Elon Musk was born on June 28, 1971 and raised in Pretoria, South Africa. He attended school in South Africa up until high school, which he decided to move to Canada at the age of 17 years against his father’s wishes to attend college abroad.
At the age of 10, he developed an interest in computing while using the Commodore VIC-20. Through the help of a manual he learned computer programming and, by the age of 12, sold the code of a BASIC-based video game he created called Blastar to PC and Office Technology magazine for approximately $500.
Elon Musk has 3 Citizenships; South African Citizenship 1971 – till date (through birth and his father), Canadian Citizenship 1989 – till date (through application and his mother’s status) and United States of America Citizenship 2002 – till date.
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Elon Musk Is A Business Guru
Zip2 Corporation
In 1995, Elon Musk launched his first company with his brother, Kimbal Musk, they called it Zip2 Corporation. In 1999, a division of Compaq Computer Corporation bought Zip2 for $307 million in cash and $34 million in stock options.
X.com
In 1999, Elon and Kimbal Musk founded an online financial services company, X.com, which later became PayPal, which specialized in transferring money online. The online auction eBay bought PayPal in 2002 for $1.5 billion.
In October 2002, Musk earned his first billion when PayPal was acquired by eBay for $1.5 billion in stock. Before the sale, Musk owned 11% of PayPal stock.
Space Exploration Technologies Corporation (SpaceX)
In the year 2002, Elon Musk founded his third company, Space Exploration Technologies Corporation, or SpaceX, with the intention of building spacecraft for commercial space travel. In 2008, NASA awarded the company the contract to handle cargo transport for the International Space Station—with plans for astronaut transport in the future—in a move to replace NASA’s own space shuttle missions.
SEC Probe
In 2018, Elon Musk made a statement about privatising his company, the US securities regulators required Tesla to step down as chairman and pay $20 million to settle charges he defrauded investors with false claims on Twitter in August about a possible bid to take the company private, which was quickly aborted.
Ownership of Tesla
In January 2018, Elon Musk was granted an option to buy up to 20.3 million shares if Tesla’s market value were to rise to $650 billion. Majority shareholder approval for this package was approved in March 2018.
The grant was also meant to end speculation about Musk’s potential departure from Tesla to devote more time to his other business ventures
According to Forbes, Elon Musk owns 21% of Tesla but has pledged more than half his stake as collateral for loans.
Non-Profit Work
Elon Musk is working to revolutionize transportation both on Earth, through electric car maker Tesla – and in space, via rocket producer SpaceX.
The boundless potential of space exploration and the preservation of the future of the human race have become the cornerstones of Musk’s abiding interests, and toward these he has founded the Musk Foundation, which is dedicated to space exploration and the discovery of renewable and clean energy sources. (Business figure biography)
In October 2019, Musk pledged to donate $1 million to the #TeamTrees campaign, which aims to plant 20 million trees around the world by 2020. He even changed his Twitter name to Treelon for the occasion.
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