Elon Musk

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Elon Musk founded SpaceX in 2002 and became Tesla’s CEO in 2008, helping reshape the aerospace and electric vehicle industries.

Trevor Cokley—U.S. Air Force/U.S. Department of Defense

Elon Musk is a South African–born American entrepreneur who cofounded the electronic payment firm PayPal and formed SpaceX, maker of launch vehicles and spacecraft. He was also one of the first significant investors in, as well as chief executive officer of, the electric car manufacturer Tesla. In addition, Musk acquired Twitter (later X) in 2022 and founded the artificial intelligence company xAI in 2023. Musk is the world’s richest person. In June 2026, SpaceX completed its initial public offering (IPO) at $135 a share, valuing the company at about $1.77 trillion and further boosting Musk’s wealth.

Musk was born June 28, 1971, in Pretoria, South Africa, to a South African father and a Canadian mother. He displayed an early talent for computers and entrepreneurship, and at age 12, created a video game that he sold to a computer magazine.

In 1988, after obtaining a Canadian passport, Musk left South Africa, citing his unwillingness to support apartheid through compulsory military service and his desire for greater economic opportunities available in the United States.

Musk attended Queen’s University in Kingston, Ontario, and in 1992 he transferred to the University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, where he received bachelor’s degrees in physics and economics in 1997. He enrolled in graduate school in physics at Stanford University in California, but he left after only two days because he felt that the Internet had much more potential to change society than work in physics. In 1995, he founded Zip2, a company that provided maps and business directories to online newspapers. In 1999, Zip2 was bought by the computer manufacturer Compaq for $307 million, and Musk then 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.

Musk was long convinced that for life to survive, humanity has to become a multiplanet species, but he was dissatisfied with the great expense of rocket launchers. In 2002, he founded Space Exploration Technologies (SpaceX) to make more affordable rockets. Its first two rockets were the Falcon 1 (first launched in 2006) and the larger Falcon 9 (first launched in 2010), which were designed to cost much less than competing rockets. A third rocket, the Falcon Heavy (first launched in 2018), was designed to carry 117,000 pounds (53,000 kg) to orbit, nearly twice as much as its largest competitor, the Boeing Company’s Delta IV Heavy, for one-third the cost. The Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy eventually dominated the launch vehicle market, and in 2024 more than half of the world’s orbital launches were done by SpaceX.

SpaceX has been developing and testing the successor to the Falcon 9 and the Falcon Heavy: the Super Heavy–Starship system. The Super Heavy first stage would be capable of lifting 100,000 kg (220,000 pounds) to low Earth orbit. The payload would be the Starship, a spacecraft designed for providing fast transportation between cities on Earth and building bases on the Moon and Mars.

SpaceX also developed the Dragon spacecraft, which carries supplies to the International Space Station (ISS). Dragon can carry as many as seven astronauts, and it had a crewed flight carrying astronauts Doug Hurley and Robert Behnken to the ISS in 2020. The first test flights of the Super Heavy–Starship system launched in 2020. In addition to being CEO of SpaceX, Musk was also chief designer in building the Falcon rockets, Dragon, and Starship. SpaceX also secured a NASA contract to develop a lunar lander for the Artemis program, which aims to return astronauts to the Moon.

SpaceX has also developed the Starlink satellite network, which provides broadband internet services globally. Musk launched the project in 2015 in part to bankroll his ambition of establishing a human colony on Mars. In March 2018, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) gave SpaceX the go-ahead to launch 4,425 satellites into low Earth orbit. A Falcon 9 rocket carried the first batch of satellites into low Earth orbit in May 2019. Beta testing commenced in 2020, and commercial services were rolled out in 2021. As of January 2026 there were 9,633 active Starlink satellites, accounting for more than half of all active satellites. Starlink is a megaconstellation, or satellite Internet constellation, with more than five million subscribers as of 2025. In addition to its civilian services, the company operates Starshield, a military-grade version of Starlink, and is building a secure satellite system for the U.S. military.

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Elon Musk, 2014.

Jerry Lampen—EPA/Shutterstock.com

Musk had long been interested in the possibilities of electric cars, and in 2004 he became one of the major funders of Tesla Motors (later renamed Tesla), an electric car company founded by entrepreneurs Martin Eberhard and Marc Tarpenning. In 2006, Tesla introduced its first car, the Roadster, which could travel 245 miles (394 km) on a single charge. Unlike most previous electric vehicles, which Musk thought were stodgy and uninteresting, it was a sports car that could go from 0 to 60 mph (97 km/h) in less than four seconds. In 2010, the company’s IPO raised about $226 million. Two years later Tesla introduced the Model S sedan, which was acclaimed by automotive critics for its performance and design. The company won further praise for its Model X luxury SUV, which went on the market in 2015. The Model 3, a less-expensive vehicle, went into production in 2017 and became the best-selling electric car of all time.

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The stainless-steel Tesla Cybertruck proved a controversial design with its angular shape.

© VanderWolfImages/Dreamstime.com

Tesla announced several models for the early 2020s, including a semitrailer truck (the Tesla Semi) and a pickup truck, the Cybertruck. Originally slated for production in 2021, the Cybertruck was delayed by supply chain disruptions and design challenges. It entered limited production in late 2023, with the first deliveries that year, and continued a gradual rollout through 2025.

In November 2025, Musk secured shareholder approval for a new $1 trillion compensation package from Tesla, one of the largest in corporate history. Under the plan Musk could receive stock awards worth up to that amount over the next decade if he meets a series of ambitious financial and operational targets. They include increasing Tesla’s market capitalization to about $8.5 trillion—roughly six times its 2025 value—and expanding its robotics and autonomous-driving divisions. The vote, which followed months of debate over corporate governance and executive pay, reaffirmed Musk’s influence at Tesla and his status as the world’s richest person.

Musk joined the social media service Twitter in 2009, and, as @elonmusk, he became one of the most popular accounts on the site, with more than 85 million followers as of 2022. He expressed reservations about Tesla’s being publicly traded, and in August 2018 he made a series of tweets about taking the company private at a value of $420 a share, noting that he had “secured funding.” (The value of $420 was seen as a joking reference to April 20, a day celebrated by devotees of cannabis.) The following month the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) sued Musk for securities fraud, alleging that the tweets were “false and misleading.” Shortly thereafter Tesla’s board rejected the SEC’s proposed settlement, reportedly because Musk had threatened to resign. The news sent Tesla stock plummeting, and a harsher deal was ultimately accepted. Its terms included Musk’s stepping down as chairman for three years, though he was allowed to continue as CEO; his tweets were to be preapproved by Tesla lawyers, and fines of $20 million for both Tesla and Musk were levied.

Musk was critical of Twitter’s commitment to principles of free speech, in light of the company’s content-moderation policies. Early in April 2022, Twitter’s filings with the SEC disclosed that Musk had bought more than 9% of the company. Shortly thereafter Twitter announced that Musk would join the company’s board, but Musk decided against that and made a bid for the entire company, at a value of $54.20 a share, for $44 billion. Twitter’s board accepted the deal, which would make him sole owner of the company. Musk said his plans for the company included “enhancing the product with new features, making the algorithms open source to increase trust, defeating the spam bots, and authenticating all humans.” In July 2022, Musk announced that he was withdrawing his bid, saying that Twitter had not provided sufficient information about bot accounts and claiming that the company was in “material breach of multiple provisions” of the purchase agreement. Bret Taylor, the chair of Twitter’s board of directors, responded by saying that the company was “committed to closing the transaction on the price and terms agreed upon with Mr. Musk.” Twitter sued Musk to force him to buy the company. In September 2022, Twitter’s shareholders voted to accept Musk’s offer. Facing a legal battle, Musk ultimately proceeded with the deal, and it was completed in October.

Among Musk’s first acts as Twitter’s owner were to lay off about half the company and to allow users to purchase for $8 a month the blue check-mark verification, which had previously been bestowed by Twitter upon notable figures. In addition, he disbanded Twitter’s content-moderation body and reinstated many banned accounts, most notably that of then-former U.S. president Donald Trump, which had been suspended after the U.S. Capitol attack on January 6, 2021. Advertising revenue fell sharply as many companies withdrew their ads from the service. Musk changed the name of the company to X in July 2023. (Tweets became posts with the change.)

Musk has often expressed fears that unrestricted advancement in AI could pose the “biggest existential threat” to humanity. Research lab OpenAI, founded as a nonprofit by Musk, Sam Altman, and other investors in 2015, was presented as a more socially responsible project committed to open source software and safety. It was also intended to be a counterbalance to Google’s early lead in AI development.

But Musk exited OpenAI three years later citing a conflict of interest with software being developed at Tesla. OpenAI’s management later said that Musk had sought to head a new for-profit arm of the company or merge it with Tesla. Musk sued OpenAI, Altman, Greg Brockman, and major investor Microsoft (MSFT) in 2024, accusing them of straying from the venture’s nonprofit foundations. In February 2025, Musk and a consortium of investors offered to acquire OpenAI for $97.4 billion; the company turned down the bid.

In spring 2026, a federal court in California heard Musk’s lawsuit claiming that OpenAI had abandoned its founding nonprofit mission. A jury ultimately ruled against Musk, finding that he had waited too long to file the lawsuit, and the court dismissed his claims.

Nine months after acquiring Twitter in October 2022, Musk founded xAI, an artificial intelligence company that develops machine-learning models using data from X and other sources. Its primary product is Grok, an AI-powered assistant that competes with OpenAI’s ChatGPT and Google’s Gemini.

Frustrated by Los Angeles traffic, Musk in late 2016 proposed setting up a new infrastructure and tunneling company to build a low-cost, underground public transport system beneath the city. Musk’s initial idea was to lower vehicles from the street into subterranean tunnels, where they would travel on autonomous electric sleds, called skates, at 125 to 150 mph (200 to 240 km/h). The new project, called The Boring Company, began as a division of SpaceX and was spun off into a separate business in 2018. That same year the company dug a 1.14-mile (1.8 km) test tunnel near SpaceX’s headquarters in Hawthorne, California. The company said the tunnel was built for less than $10 million—a fraction of the per-mile cost of other tunneling projects in the U.S., which can run into the billions.

The Boring Company spent about $47 million to build a pair of tunnels beneath the Las Vegas Convention Center. Stretching a combined 1.7 miles (2.7 km), the transportation system, called Loop, opened to the public in 2021, shuttling passengers across the 200-acre campus in under two minutes. Musk’s initial vision—cars gliding on autonomous, high-speed electric skates—was instead replaced by a fleet of human-driven Tesla cars that ferry passengers through the tunnels at speeds of up to 40 mph (64 km/h), significantly slower than the originally proposed 125 to 150 mph (200 to 240 km/h). The company has since outlined plans to expand its network of tunnels in Las Vegas. It also proposed tunnel projects in other cities, including Baltimore, Chicago, Los Angeles, and Washington, D.C., which were later discarded or indefinitely shelved.

The Boring Company also oversees development of the Hyperloop, another public transportation system Musk has championed for years. In 2013, dissatisfied with the projected $68 billion cost of California’s high-speed rail project, he proposed a faster alternative: the Hyperloop, a pneumatic tube in which a pod carrying 28 passengers would travel the 350 miles (560 km) between Los Angeles and San Francisco in 35 minutes at a top speed of 760 mph (1,220 km/h)—nearly the speed of sound. Musk claimed the Hyperloop could be built for just $6 billion and, with pods departing every two minutes, could serve the six million commuters who travel that route annually. But he said he couldn’t personally pursue the idea while running both SpaceX and Tesla.

In 2016, Musk became fascinated with developing technology that allowed humans to control computers with their minds. He founded Neuralink with a team of eight neuroscientists, engineers, and biomedical researchers to develop neural lace technology (inspired in part by the science fiction of Ian M. Banks), a brain-computer interface that could be surgically implanted in the human brain and enable wireless interaction with computers and mobile devices controlled purely by thought. Building on decades of existing research, the company’s initial goal was to create a medical device to alleviate neurological conditions such as epilepsy and paralysis. Musk’s stated long-term goal is to create a brain chip that would protect individuals from potentially dangerous applications of artificial intelligence.

Following animal testing, Neuralink began human clinical trials in 2023, and by early 2024 had implanted a brain chip called Telepathy in a 29-year-old with quadriplegia. The recipient could control a mouse on a screen, browse the web, and play chess using thought. Later that year, the company successfully implanted an improved version of the chip in a second patient, who had sustained a spinal injury. Musk said the company’s next product, Blindsight, would help restore vision in patients with partial or complete blindness.

Musk’s political views shifted rightward in the early 2020s, and he became one of the most prominent supporters of Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump in the 2024 election. Through America PAC, Musk spent hundreds of millions of dollars supporting Trump and other Republican candidates.

After Trump returned to office in 2025, Musk became a special government employee and helped lead the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), an initiative intended to reduce federal spending and streamline government operations. DOGE sought to shrink the federal workforce, review agency spending, and eliminate programs that Musk and the administration viewed as inefficient. Among its most controversial actions was its role in dismantling much of the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), the federal agency responsible for administering foreign aid.

DOGE’s actions generated significant controversy and numerous lawsuits. Critics argued that some of its efforts exceeded executive authority and disrupted government services, while supporters said the initiative was addressing wasteful spending and bureaucratic inefficiency.

Musk stepped down from DOGE in May 2025 after expressing disappointment with Trump’s proposed “one big beautiful bill,” arguing that it would increase federal deficits and undermine DOGE’s cost-cutting efforts. The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office estimated that the legislation could add trillions of dollars to the federal deficit over the following decade.

In the weeks after Musk’s departure, he and Trump publicly criticized one another, with Trump threatening to revoke government contracts held by Musk’s companies.

Musk was a major Republican political donor ahead of the 2026 midterm elections. Between July and October 2026, he contributed more than $276 million to Republican political groups, including $158 million to the Senate Leadership Fund, a super PAC supporting Republican Senate candidates.

In June 2026, SpaceX (SPCX) completed its IPO, selling 555.6 million shares at $135 each. The offering—the largest IPO in history at the time—raised $75 billion and valued the company at about $1.77 trillion. After SpaceX shares began trading publicly, Musk became the world’s first trillionaire.

In October 2026, Musk announced plans to give one share of SpaceX stock to every child under age 18 in the U.S. in 2027. Based on the company’s stock price at the time, the proposed giveaway would be worth about $10.5 billion. Musk provided no details about how the shares would be distributed.

In September 2026, Musk, a nearly four-hour documentary about Musk by Academy Award-winning filmmaker Alex Gibney, premiered at the Venice International Film Festival. The film examines Musk’s rise from technology entrepreneur to one of the world’s wealthiest and most influential figures, including his business ventures and involvement in the Trump administration. Musk, who declined to be interviewed for the film, criticized it as a “hit piece,” and his attorney threatened to sue Gibney and his production company for defamation. The documentary opened in U.S. theaters that October.