Elon Musk
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| Elon Musk | |
| Known for | Co-founded X.com, SpaceX, and Tesla Purchased Twitter for $44 billion USD |
|---|---|
| Birth | June 28, 1971 |
| Death | |
Elon Reeve Musk (born June 28, 1971) is a businessman who was the world's richest man from September 2021 to December 7, 2022 and again beginning on December 8, 2022.
As of December 1, 2023, Musk was worth an estimated $245 billion USD.
X.com
With Harris Fricker, Christopher Payne, and Ed Ho, Musk co-founded the online bank X.com in 1999. X.com merged with Confinity in 2000 and ceased banking operations in October of that year. The same month, Musk was replaced as CEO by Peter Thiel. X.com was renamed PayPal in 2001. Musk received $100 million USD after selling his interest in the company.
SpaceX
Elon Musk founded SpaceX, a commercial spaceflight company, on March 14, 2002.
The National Aeronautics and Space Administration of the United States ended its space shuttle program on July 21, 2011. SpaceX began transporting cargo to and from the International Space Station in 2012. In 2020, SpaceX also began transporting people under NASA's Commercial Crew Program.
Tesla
On July 1, 2003, the electric car company Tesla was founded by Martin Eberhard and Marc Tarpenning. In February 2004, Musk invested $6.5 million USD in Tesla.
In 2009, Eberhard was replaced by Musk as CEO of Tesla and Musk claimed to be a co-founder of the company. Eberhard sued the company claiming that Musk was trying to rewrite the company's history by removing mention of the former as a co-founder.
A settlement was reached where Eberhard, Tarpenning, and Musk were considered co-founders in the company along with Tesla's third employee Ian Wright and its first chief technical officer J. B. Straubel.
Twitter acquisition
Twitter, Inc. was purchased by Elon Musk on October 27, 2022 for $44 billion USD which was borrowed against the collateral of his shares of stock in Tesla and SpaceX. Musk fired the top three executives immediately after the purchase and fired approximately half of the company's nearly 7,500 employees the next week.
On November 9, 2022, Musk launched a reorganized Twitter Blue on iOS, giving a checkmark to anyone who paid $8 USD for the subscription. Immediately after the service went live, accounts began abusing the system by impersonating companies and celebrities.
Twitter was merged with a newly founded X Corp. on March 9, 2023. The resulting company retained the name X Corp. Musk's X.com domain was redirected to Twitter on July 23, 2023.
