Elon Reeve Musk FRS (EE-lon; born on June 28, 1971), is an investor and business magnate.

SpaceX's
founder, CEO, and chief engineer are all him; CEO of Tesla, Inc., angel investor, and product
architect; CEO of Twitter, Inc. and owner; The Boring Company's founder; co-founder of OpenAI and
Neuralink; as well as the Musk Foundation's president. Musk is the second wealthiest person in the
world, according to both the Bloomberg Billionaires Index and Forbes' real-time billionaires list. He
was born in Pretoria, South Africa, and attended the University of Pretoria for a brief period of time
before moving to Canada at the age of 18, acquiring citizenship through his Canadian-born mother.
As of February 15, 2023, Musk's estimated net worth is approximately $196 billion. He transferred to
the University of Pennsylvania, where he earned bachelor's degrees in economics and physics two
years later after enrolling at Queen's University. In 1995, he made the move to California to attend
Stanford University. He quit after two days and co-founded the online city guide software company
Zip2 with his brother Kimbal. Compaq purchased Zip2 for $307 million in 1999, and Musk co-
founded X.com, a direct bank. In 2000, X.com and Confinity merged to form PayPal. In 2002, eBay
purchased PayPal for $1.5 billion.

Musk established SpaceX in 2002 as a spaceflight services company with $175.8 million. He was one
of the early investors in Tesla Motors, Inc.—which is now Tesla, Inc.—in 2004. After serving as its
chairman and product architect, he was promoted to CEO in 2008. He contributed to the creation of
SolarCity in 2006, a solar energy company that Tesla later acquired and transformed into Tesla
Energy. He was a co-founder of the non-profit research company OpenAI in 2015. He co-founded
The Boring Company and Neuralink, a neurotechnology company working on brain–computer
interfaces, the following year. A hyperloop high-speed vactrain transportation system has also been
proposed by Musk. His $44 billion acquisition of Twitter was completed in 2022.

Musk is a polarizing figure who has made statements about politics and technology that have been
criticized, particularly on Twitter. He has been criticized for making statements that are erroneous
and based on false information, including spreading false information about COVID-19. Musk was
sued by the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) of the United States in 2018 for tweeting
falsely that he had secured funding for a private Tesla takeover. As part of a deal with the SEC, Musk
quit his position as chairman of Tesla and paid a fine of $20 million.