AFRICA IS THE FUTURE:
Inside Story of how ELON REEVE MUSK, Greatest Technology Genius in 21st Century, a South African, becomes Richest Man in the World, a Trillionaire, net worth of $304 billion
âŚKing of Business is brain behind Zip2, X.com and PayPal, SpaceX, Starlink; Tesla, SolarCity and Tesla Energy, Neuralink, Twitter / X, Hyperloop; OpenAI and xAI companies
*At the tender age of 10-years-old, Musk developed an interest in computing and video games, taught self how to program from the VIC-20 user manual and two years later, sold his BASIC-based game Blastar to PC Office Technology magazine for $500
*Attended Pretoria Boys High School (South Africa), eelier enrolled in Queen’s University in Kingston, Ontario (Canada), got transferred two years later to the University of Pennsylvania (USA), where he studied till 1995, Accepted to a graduate program in materials science at Stanford University.
*Worked at a farm and a lumber mill after arrival in Canada in June 1989, connected with a second cousin in Saskatchewan
*Established Musk Foundation in 2001 to provide solar-power energy systems in disaster areas; support research, development, and advocacy
*Musk’s mother, Maye (nĂŠe Haldeman), is a model, dietitian born in Saskatchewan, Canada, and raised in South Africa, His father, Errol Musk, is a South African electromechanical engineer, pilot, sailor; consultant, emerald dealer, and property developer, who partly owned a rental lodge at Timbavati Private Nature Reserve, blessed with a younger brother, Kimbal, and a younger sister, Tosca and four paternal half-siblings
*PLUS his Private Jets & How he turned a Musician, formed his own label Emo G Records, released a rap track, titled: ‘RIP Harambe’, on SoundCloud
*BY GEORGE ELIJAH OTUMU/AMERICA Senior Investigative Editor, NAIJA STANDARD NEWSPAPER & EDITORIAL BOARD MEMBERS, NAIJA STANDARD NEWSPAPER
HE’S REGARDED AN OUTSIDE-THE-BOX DEEP THINKER. He’s got the blood of the African continent flowing in his vein. His name is ELON REEVE MUSK- the richest business man from Madiba’s native country of Pretoria in the Republic of South Africa. At the age of 53-years old, his fortune, net worth and vast businesses is standing at the whooping sum of $304Billion. This Computer Czar is also gifted in the art of music, as he enjoys his life on his private jets at every opportunity in the course of work.
This Genius born June 28, 1971 is a businessman, investor and public servant known for his key roles in the space company SpaceX and the automotive company Tesla, Inc. Other involvements include ownership of X Corp., the company that operates the social media platform X (formerly Twitter), and his role in the founding of the Boring Company, xAI, Neuralink, and OpenAI. Following the 2024 U.S. presidential election, he is to become the co-commissioner of the United States Department of Government Efficiency. He is the wealthiest individual in the world; as of November 2024 Forbes estimates his net worth to be US$304 billion.
Born a native of Pretoria, South Africa, to Maye (nĂŠe Haldeman), a model, and Errol Musk, a businessman and engineer. Musk briefly attended the University of Pretoria before immigrating to Canada at the age of 18, acquiring citizenship through his Canadian-born mother.
Two years later he matriculated at Queen’s University at Kingston in Canada.
Musk later transferred to the University of Pennsylvania and received bachelor’s degrees in economics and physics. He moved to California in 1995 to attend Stanford University but never enrolled in classes, and with his brother Kimbal co-founded the online city guide software company Zip2.
The startup was acquired by Compaq for $307 million in 1999. That same year, Musk co-founded X.com, a direct bank. X.com merged with Confinity in 2000 to form PayPal. In 2002, Musk acquired US citizenship, and that October eBay acquired PayPal for $1.5 billion. Using $100 million of the money he made from the sale of PayPal, Musk founded SpaceX, a spaceflight services company, in 2002.
In 2004, Musk was an early investor in electric-vehicle manufacturer Tesla Motors, Inc. (later Tesla, Inc.), providing most of the initial financing and assuming the position of the company’s chairman. He later became the product architect and, in 2008, the CEO. In 2006, Musk helped create SolarCity, a solar energy company that was acquired by Tesla in 2016 and became Tesla Energy. In 2013, he proposed a hyperloop high-speed vactrain transportation system.
In 2015, he co-founded OpenAI, a nonprofit artificial intelligence research company. The following year Musk co-founded Neuralink, a neurotechnology company developing brainâcomputer interfaces, and The Boring Company, a tunnel construction company. In 2018 the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) sued Musk, alleging that he had falsely announced that he had secured funding for a private takeover of Tesla.
To settle the case Musk stepped down as the chairman of Tesla and paid a $20 million fine. In 2022, he acquired Twitter for $44 billion, merged the company into the newly-created X Corp. and rebranded the service as X the following year. In March 2023, Musk founded xAI, an artificial-intelligence company.
Musk’s actions and expressed views have made him a polarizing figure. He has been criticized for making unscientific and misleading statements, including COVID-19 misinformation, promoting right-wing conspiracy theories, and endorsing an anti-Semitic trope; he has since apologized for the latter.
His ownership of Twitter has been controversial because of the layoffs of large numbers of employees, an increase in hate speech, misinformation and disinformation posts on the website, and changes to website features, including verification. In early 2024, Musk became active in American politics as a vocal and financial supporter of Donald Trump, becoming Trump’s second-largest individual donor in October 2024.
In November 2024, Musk was appointed by Trump to lead the future Department of Government Efficiency alongside Vivek Ramaswamy.
Childhood and family:
Musk is of British and Pennsylvania Dutch ancestry. His mother, Maye (nĂŠe Haldeman), is a model and dietitian born in Saskatchewan, Canada, and raised in South Africa.
His father, Errol Musk, is a South African electromechanical engineer, pilot, sailor, consultant, emerald dealer, and property developer, who partly owned a rental lodge at the Timbavati Private Nature Reserve. Elon has a younger brother, Kimbal, and a younger sister, Tosca. Elon has four paternal half-siblings.
The family was wealthy during Elon’s youth. Despite both Elon and Errol previously stating that Errol was a part owner of a Zambian emerald mine, in 2023, Errol recounted that the deal he made was to receive “a portion of the emeralds produced at three small mines”. Errol was elected to the Pretoria City Council as a representative of the anti-apartheid Progressive Party and has said that his children shared their father’s dislike of apartheid.
Elon’s maternal grandfather, Joshua N. Haldeman, was an American-born Canadian who took his family on record-breaking journeys to Africa and Australia in a single-engine Bellanca airplane; Haldeman died when Elon was still a toddler. Elon has recounted trips to a wilderness school that he described as a “paramilitary Lord of the Flies” where “bullying was a virtue” and children were encouraged to fight over rations.
After his parents divorced in 1980, Elon chose to live primarily with his father. Elon later regretted his decision and became estranged from his father. Elon attended Bryanston High School. In one incident, after an altercation with a fellow pupil, Elon was thrown down concrete steps and beaten severely by the boy and his friends, leading to him being hospitalized for his injuries.
Elon described his father berating him after he was discharged from the hospital, saying: “I had to stand for an hour as he yelled at me and called me an idiot and told me that I was just worthless.” Errol denied berating Elon but claimed, “The boy had just lost his father to suicide and Elon had called him stupid. Elon had a tendency to call people stupid. How could I possibly blame that child?”. After the incident, Elon was enrolled in private school.
Elon was an enthusiastic reader of books, later attributing his success in part to having read The Lord of the Rings, the Foundation series, and The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. At age ten, he developed an interest in computing and video games, teaching himself how to program from the VIC-20 user manual. At age twelve, Elon sold his BASIC-based game Blastar to PC and Office Technology magazine for approximately $500.
Education:
Musk attended Waterkloof House Preparatory School, Bryanston High School, and then Pretoria Boys High School, where he graduated. Musk was a good but not exceptional student, earning a 61 in Afrikaans and a B on his senior math certification.
Musk applied for a Canadian passport through his Canadian-born mother to avoid South Africaâs mandatory military service, which would have forced him to participate in the apartheid regime, and to ease his path to immigration to the United States. While waiting for his application to be processed, he attended the University of Pretoria for five months.
Musk arrived in Canada in June 1989, connected with a second cousin in Saskatchewan, and worked odd jobs including at a farm and a lumber mill. In 1990, he entered Queen’s University in Kingston, Ontario. Two years later, he transferred to the University of Pennsylvania, where he studied until 1995.
Although Musk has said that he earned his degrees in 1995, the University of Pennsylvania did not award them until 1997-a Bachelor of Arts in physics and a Bachelor of Science in economics from the university’s Wharton School. He reportedly hosted large, ticketed house parties to help pay for tuition, and wrote a business plan for an electronic book-scanning service similar to that.
In 1994, Musk held two internships in Silicon Valley: one at energy storage startup Pinnacle Research Institute, which investigated electrolytic ultracapacitors for energy storage, and another at Palo Altoâbased startup Rocket Science Games. In 1995, he was accepted to a graduate program in materials science at Stanford University, but did not enroll. Musk decided to join the Internet boom, applying for a job at Netscape, to which he reportedly never received a response.
The Washington Post reported that Musk lacked legal authorization to remain and work in the United States after failing to enroll at Stanford. In response, Musk claimed he was allowed to work at that time and that his student visa transitioned to an H1-B. According to numerous former business associates and shareholders, Musk claimed he was on a student visa at the time.
Business career:
Elon Musk has started a number of businesses since 1995, with initial business success and liquidity gained from sales of equity in one business providing the capital for him to start subsequent business enterprises. Musk is widely considered a serial entrepreneur. By the 2020s, several Musk businesses had formed strategic partnerships with some employees playing roles simultaneously in more than one of Musk’s companies.
Zip2:
In 1995, Musk, his brother Kimbal, and Greg Kouri founded Global Link Information Network, later renamed to Zip2. The company developed an Internet city guide with maps, directions, and yellow pages, and marketed it to newspapers. They worked at a small rented office in Palo Alto, with Musk coding the website every night.
Musk and his brother’s immigration statuses during this period was described by Musk as a “gray area”, although Kimbal maintained they were working as illegal immigrants.
A Washington Post exposĂŠ from October 2024 reported Musk worked illegally while building the company, citing an email from Musk submitted as evidence during a 2005 defamation trial and the funding agreement from venture capital firm Mohr Davidow Ventures.
Eventually, Zip2 obtained contracts with The New York Times and the Chicago Tribune. The brothers persuaded the board of directors to abandon a merger with CitySearch; however, Musk’s attempts to become CEO were thwarted. Compaq acquired Zip2 for $307 million in cash in February 1999, and Musk received $22 million for his 7-percent share.
X.com and PayPal:
In March 1999, Musk co-founded X.com, an online financial services and e-mail payment company with $12 million of the money he made from the Compaq acquisition. X.com was one of the first online banks that was federally insured, and over 200,000 customers joined in its initial months of operation.
Musk’s friends expressed skepticism about the naming of the online bank, fearing it might have been mistaken for a pornographic site. Musk brushed off their concerns, emphasizing that the name was meant to be straightforward, memorable, and easy to type. Additionally, he was fond of the email addresses derived from it, such as “e@x.com”. Although Musk founded the company, investors regarded him as inexperienced and replaced him with Intuit CEO Bill Harris by the end of the year.
In 2000, X.com merged with the online bank Confinity to avoid competition, as the latter’s money-transfer service PayPal was more popular than X.com’s service. Musk then returned as CEO of the merged company. His preference for Microsoft- over Unix-based software caused a rift among the company’s employees, and eventually led Confinity co-founder Peter Thiel to resign.
With the company suffering from compounding technological issues and the lack of a cohesive business model, the board ousted Musk and replaced him with Thiel in September 2000. Under Thiel, the company focused on the money-transfer service and was renamed PayPal in 2001.
In 2002, PayPal was acquired by eBay for $1.5 billion in stock, of which Musk-PayPal’s largest shareholder with 11.7% of shares-received $176 million. In 2017, more than 15 years later, Musk purchased the X.com domain from PayPal for its “sentimental value”. In 2022, Musk discussed a goal of creating “X, the everything app.
SpaceX:
In early 2001, Musk became involved with the nonprofit Mars Society and discussed funding plans to place a growth-chamber for plants on Mars. In October of the same year, he traveled to Moscow, Russia with Jim Cantrell, Adeo Ressi, and future NASA Administrator Michael D. Griffin to buy refurbished intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs) that could send the greenhouse payloads into space.
He met with the companies NPO Lavochkin and Kosmotras; however, Musk was seen as a novice and the group returned to the United States without an agreement to purchase Russian launch services. In February 2002, the group returned to Russia to look for three ICBMs.
They had another meeting with Kosmotras and were offered one rocket for $8 million, which Musk rejected. He instead decided to start a company that could build affordable rockets. With $100 million of his own money, Musk founded SpaceX in May 2002 and became the company’s CEO and chief engineer.
SpaceX attempted its first launch of the Falcon 1 rocket in 2006. Although the rocket failed to reach Earth orbit, it was awarded a Commercial Orbital Transportation Services program contract from NASA, now led by Michael D. Griffin as Administrator.
After two more failed attempts that nearly caused Musk and his companies to go bankrupt, SpaceX succeeded in launching the Falcon 1 into orbit in 2008. Later that year, SpaceX received a $1.6 billion Commercial Resupply Services contract from NASA for 12 flights of its Falcon 9 rocket and Dragon spacecraft to the International Space Station (ISS), replacing the Space Shuttle after its 2011 retirement. In 2012, the Dragon vehicle docked with the ISS, a first for a commercial spacecraft.
Working towards its goal of reusable rockets, in 2015 SpaceX successfully landed the first stage of a Falcon 9 on a land platform. Later landings were achieved on autonomous spaceport drone ships, an ocean-based recovery platform.
In 2018, SpaceX launched the Falcon Heavy; the inaugural mission carried Musk’s personal Tesla Roadster as a dummy payload. Since 2019, SpaceX has been developing Starship, a fully-reusable, super-heavy-lift launch vehicle intended to replace the Falcon 9 and the Falcon Heavy.
In 2020, SpaceX launched its first crewed flight, the Demo-2, becoming the first private company to place astronauts into orbit and dock a crewed spacecraft with the ISS. In 2024, NASA awarded SpaceX an $843 million contract to deorbit the ISS at the end of its lifespan.
Starlink:
In 2015, SpaceX began development of the Starlink constellation of low-Earth-orbit satellites to provide satellite Internet access, with the first two prototype satellites launched in February 2018. A second set of test satellites, and the first large deployment of a piece of the constellation, occurred in May 2019, when the first 60 operational satellites were launched.
The total cost of the decade-long project to design, build, and deploy the constellation was estimated by SpaceX in 2020 to be $10 billion.[108][b] Some critics, including the International Astronomical Union, have alleged that Starlink blocks the view of the sky and poses a collision threat to spacecraft.
During the March 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine, Musk sent Starlink terminals to Ukraine to provide Internet access and communication. In October 2022, Musk stated that about 20,000 satellite terminals had been donated to Ukraine, together with free data transfer subscriptions, which cost SpaceX $80 million.
After asking the United States Department of Defense to pay for further units and future subscriptions on behalf of Ukraine, Musk publicly stated that SpaceX would continue to provide Starlink to Ukraine for free, at a yearly cost to itself of $400 million. At the same time, Musk refused to block Russian state media on Starlink, declaring himself “a free speech absolutist”.
In September 2023, Ukraine asked for the activation of Starlink satellites over Crimea to attack Russian naval vessels located at the port Sevastopol; Musk denied the request, citing concerns that Russia would respond with a nuclear attack.
Tesla:
Tesla, Inc., originally Tesla Motors, was incorporated in July 2003 by Martin Eberhard and Marc Tarpenning. Both men played active roles in the company’s early development prior to Musk’s involvement.
Musk led the Series A round of investment in February 2004; he invested $6.35 million, became the majority shareholder, and joined Tesla’s board of directors as chairman. Musk took an active role within the company and oversaw Roadster product design, but was not deeply involved in day-to-day business operations.
Following a series of escalating conflicts in 2007, and the financial crisis of 2007-2008, Eberhard was ousted from the firm. Musk assumed leadership of the company as CEO and product architect in 2008. A 2009 lawsuit settlement with Eberhard designated Musk as a Tesla co-founder, along with Tarpenning and two others. As of 2019, Musk was the longest-tenured CEO of any automotive manufacturer globally. In 2021, Musk nominally changed his title to “Technoking” while retaining his position as CEO.
Tesla began delivery of the Roadster, an electric sports car, in 2008. With sales of about 2,500 vehicles. It was the first serial production all-electric car to use lithium-ion battery cells. Tesla began delivery of its four-door Model S sedan in 2012.
A crossover, the Model X was launched in 2015. A mass-market sedan, the Model 3, was released in 2017. In 2020, the Model 3 became the all-time bestselling plug-in electric car worldwide, and in June 2021 it became the first electric car to sell 1 million units globally.
A fifth vehicle, the Model Y crossover, was launched in 2020, and in December 2023, became the best-selling vehicle of any type, as well as the all-time best-selling electric car. The Cybertruck, an all-electric pickup truck, was unveiled in 2019, and delivered in November 2023. Under Musk, Tesla has also constructed multiple lithium-ion battery and electric vehicle factories, named Gigafactories.
Since its initial public offering in 2010, Tesla stock has risen significantly; it became the most valuable carmaker in summer 2020, and it entered the S&P 500 later that year. In October 2021, it reached a market capitalization of $1 trillion, the sixth company in US history to do so.
In November 2021, Musk proposed on Twitter to sell some of his Tesla stock. After more than 3.5 million Twitter accounts supported the sale, Musk sold $6.9 billion of Tesla stock within a week, and a total of $16.4 billion by year end, reaching the 10% target.
In February 2022, The Wall Street Journal reported that both Musk and his brother Kimbal were under investigation by the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) for possible insider trading related to the sale.
In 2022, Musk unveiled Optimus, a robot being developed by Tesla. In June 2023, Musk met with Indian prime minister Narendra Modi in New York City, stating he was interested in investing in India “as soon as humanly possible”.
SEC and shareholder lawsuits regarding tweets:
In 2018, Musk was sued by the SEC for a tweet stating that funding had been secured for potentially taking Tesla private. The lawsuit characterized the tweet as false, misleading, and damaging to investors, and sought to bar Musk from serving as CEO of publicly traded companies.
Two days later, Musk settled with the SEC, without admitting or denying the SEC’s allegations. As a result, Musk and Tesla were fined $20 million each, and Musk was forced to step down for three years as Tesla chairman but was able to remain as CEO.
Shareholders filed a lawsuit over the tweet, and in February 2023, a jury found Musk and Tesla not liable. Musk has stated in interviews that he does not regret posting the tweet that triggered the SEC investigation.
In 2019, Musk stated in a tweet that Tesla would build half a million cars that year. The SEC reacted by asking a court to hold him in contempt for violating the terms of the 2018 settlement agreement. A joint agreement between Musk and the SEC eventually clarified the previous agreement details, including a list of topics about which Musk needed preclearance.
In 2020, a judge blocked a lawsuit that claimed a tweet by Musk regarding Tesla stock price (“too high imo”) violated the agreement. Freedom of Information Act (FOIA)-released records showed that the SEC concluded Musk had subsequently violated the agreement twice by tweeting regarding “Tesla’s solar roof production volumes and its stock price”.
SolarCity and Tesla Energy:
Musk provided the initial concept and financial capital for SolarCity, which his cousins Lyndon and Peter Rive founded in 2006. By 2013, SolarCity was the second largest provider of solar power systems in the United States.
In 2014, Musk promoted the idea of SolarCity building an advanced production facility in Buffalo, New York, triple the size of the largest solar plant in the United States. Construction of the factory started in 2014 and was completed in 2017. It operated as a joint venture with Panasonic until early 2020.
Tesla acquired SolarCity for $2 billion in 2016 and merged it with its battery unit to create Tesla Energy. The deal’s announcement resulted in a more than 10% drop in Tesla’s stock price; at the time, SolarCity was facing liquidity issues. Multiple shareholder groups filed a lawsuit against Musk and Tesla’s directors, stating that the purchase of SolarCity was done solely to benefit Musk and came at the expense of Tesla and its shareholders. Tesla directors settled the lawsuit in January 2020, leaving Musk the sole remaining defendant. Two years later, the court ruled in Musk’s favor.
Neuralink:
In 2016, Musk co-founded Neuralink, a neurotechnology startup company, with an investment of $100 million. Neuralink aims to integrate the human brain with artificial intelligence (AI) by creating devices that are embedded in the brain. Such technology could enhance memory or allow the devices to communicate with software. The company also hopes to develop devices with which to treat neurological conditions such as Alzheimer’s disease, dementia, and spinal cord injuries.
In 2019, Musk announced work on a device akin to a sewing machine that could embed threads into a human brain. In an October 2019 paper that detailed some of Neuralink’s research, Musk was listed as the sole author, which rankled Neuralink researchers.
At a 2020 live demonstration, Musk described one of their early devices as “a Fitbit in your skull” that could soon cure paralysis, deafness, blindness, and other disabilities. Many neuroscientists and publications criticized these claims, with MIT Technology Review describing them as “highly speculative” and “neuroscience theater”.
During the demonstration, Musk revealed a pig with a Neuralink implant that tracked neural activity related to smell. In 2022, Neuralink announced that clinical trials would begin by the end of the year.
Neuralink has conducted further animal testing on macaque monkeys at the University of California, Davis’ Primate Research Center. In 2021, the company released a video in which a Macaque played the video game Pong via a Neuralink implant.
The company’s animal trials-which have caused the deaths of some monkeys-have led to claims of animal cruelty. The Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine has alleged that Neuralink’s animal trials have violated the Animal Welfare Act.
Employees have complained that pressure from Musk to accelerate development has led to botched experiments and unnecessary animal deaths. In 2022, a federal probe was launched into possible animal welfare violations by Neuralink. In September 2023, the Food and Drug Administration approved Neuralink to initiate human trials, and it plans to conduct a six-year study.
The Boring Company:
In 2017, Musk founded The Boring Company to construct tunnels, and revealed plans for specialized, underground, high-occupancy vehicles that could travel up to 150 miles per hour (240 km/h) and thus circumvent above-ground traffic in major cities.
Early in 2017, the company began discussions with regulatory bodies and initiated construction of a 30-foot (9.1 m) wide, 50-foot (15 m) long, and 15-foot (4.6 m) deep “test trench” on the premises of SpaceX’s offices, as that required no permits.[200] The Los Angeles tunnel, less than two miles (3.2 km) in length, debuted to journalists in 2018. It used Tesla Model Xs and was reported to be a rough ride while traveling at suboptimal speeds.
Two tunnel projects announced in 2018, in Chicago and West Los Angeles, have been canceled. However, a tunnel beneath the Las Vegas Convention Center was completed in early 2021.[204] Local officials have approved further expansions of the tunnel system.
Twitter / X:
Musk expressed interest in buying Twitter as early as 2017, and had questioned the platform’s commitment to freedom of speech. Additionally, his ex-wife Talulah Riley had urged him to buy Twitter to stop the “woke-ism”. In January 2022, Musk started purchasing Twitter shares, reaching a 9.2% stake by April, making him the largest shareholder.
When this was publicly disclosed, Twitter shares experienced the largest intraday price surge since the company’s 2013 initial public offering. On April 4, Musk agreed to a deal that would appoint him to Twitter’s board of directors and prohibit him from acquiring more than 14.9% of the company.
However, on April 13, Musk made a $43 billion offer to buy Twitter, launching a takeover bid to buy 100% of Twitter’s stock at $54.20 per share. In response, Twitter’s board adopted a “poison pill” shareholder rights plan to make it more expensive for any single investor to own more than 15% of the company without board approval. Nevertheless, by the end of the month Musk had successfully concluded his bid for approximately $44 billion.
This included about $12.5 billion in loans against his Tesla stock and $21 billion in equity financing.
Tesla’s stock market value sank by over $100 billion the next day in reaction to the deal. He subsequently tweeted to his 86 million followers criticism of Twitter executive Vijaya Gadde’s policies, which led to some of them engaging in sexist and racist harassment against her. Exactly a month after announcing the takeover, Musk stated that the deal was “on hold” following a report that 5% of Twitter’s daily active users were spam accounts.
Although he initially affirmed his commitment to the acquisition, he sent notification of his termination of the deal in July; Twitter’s board of directors responded that they were committed to holding him to the transaction. On July 12, 2022, Twitter formally sued Musk in the Chancery Court of Delaware for breaching a legally binding agreement to purchase Twitter. In October 2022, Musk reversed again, offering to purchase Twitter at $54.20 per share. The acquisition was officially completed on October 27.
Immediately after the acquisition, Musk fired several top Twitter executives including CEO Parag Agrawal; Musk became the CEO instead. He instituted a $7.99 monthly subscription for a “blue check”, and laid off a significant portion of the company’s staff. Musk lessened content moderation, including reinstating accounts like The Babylon Bee. The Southern Poverty Law Center noted that Twitter has verified numerous extremists; hate speech also increased on the platform after his takeover.
In December 2022, Musk released internal documents relating to Twitter’s moderation of Hunter Biden’s laptop controversy in the leadup to the 2020 presidential election. Comments on these internal documents by journalists Matt Taibbi, Bari Weiss, Michael Shellenberger and others were posted on Twitter as the Twitter Files.
Musk and many Republicans alleged the documents showed the FBI had engaged in government censorship by ordering Twitter to suppress a New York Post story about the laptop. Upon review of the documents, Taibbi said he had found no evidence to support the allegation, and Twitter attorneys denied the allegation in a subsequent court filing. The United States House Committee on the Judiciary held hearings on the Twitter Files on March 9, 2023, at which Taibbi and Shellenberger gave testimony.
In late 2022, Musk promised to step down as CEO after a Twitter poll posted by Musk found that a majority of users wanted him to do so. Five months later, Musk stepped down from CEO and placed former NBCUniversal executive Linda Yaccarino in the position and transitioned his role to executive chairman and chief technology officer.
On November 20, 2023, in a U.S. District Court in Texas, X filed a lawsuit stating that Media Matters “manipulated” the X platform, in that it used accounts that followed major brands, and “resorted to endlessly scrolling and refreshing” the feed until it found ads next to extremist posts.
The Wall Street Journal reported in August 2024 that the $13 billion Musk borrowed to buy Twitter “is now considered the worst deal in merger finance that banks have participated in since the 2008 to ’09 financial crisis”, adding that “the allure of banking Elon Musk, providing capital for him to buy a company, not only would reward them handsomely if things went according to plan” but “you can certainly say things have not gone according to plan”.
The Washington Post reported in September 2024 that the company had lost $24 billion in equity value, “a vaporization of wealth that has little parallel outside the realm of economic or industry-specific crashes, or devastating corporate scandals”. Two years after the acquisition, Fidelity Investments estimated the value of its stake in X that implied the company had lost 79% of its value.
Musk is often described as a micromanager and has called himself a “nano-manager”. The New York Times has characterized his approach as absolutist. Musk does not make formal business plans. He has forced employees to adopt the company’s own jargon and launched ambitious, risky, and costly projects against his advisors’ recommendations, such as removing front-facing radar from Tesla Autopilot.
His insistence on vertical integration causes his companies to move most production in-house. While this resulted in saved costs for SpaceX’s rocket, vertical integration (as of 2018) has caused many usability problems for Tesla’s internal corporate software.
Musk’s handling of employees-whom he communicates with directly through mass emails-has been characterized as “carrot and stick”, rewarding those “who offer constructive criticism” while also being known to impulsively threaten, swear at, and fire his employees. Musk said he expects his employees to work for long hours, sometimes 80 hours per week.
He has his new employees sign strict non-disclosure agreements and often fires in sprees, such as during the Model 3 “production hell” in 2018. In 2022, Musk revealed plans to fire 10 percent of Tesla’s workforce, due to his concerns about the economy. That same month, he suspended remote work at SpaceX and Tesla and threatened to fire employees who do not work 40 hours per week in the office. He laid off more than 10 percent of the Tesla workforce in early 2024.
Musk’s leadership has been praised by some, who credit it with the success of Tesla and his other endeavors, and criticized by others, who see him as callous and his managerial decisions as “showing a lack of human understanding”.
The 2021 book Power Play contains anecdotes of Musk berating employees. The Wall Street Journal reported that, after Musk insisted on branding his vehicles as “self-driving”, he faced criticism from his engineers for putting customer “lives at risk”, with some[quantify] employees resigning in 2017 in consequence.
Musk Foundation:
Musk is president of the Musk Foundation he founded in 2001, whose stated purpose is to: provide solar-power energy systems in disaster areas; support research, development, and advocacy (for interests including human space exploration, pediatrics, renewable energy and “safe artificial intelligence”); and support science and engineering educational efforts.
As of 2020, the foundation has made 350 donations. Around half of them were made to scientific research or education nonprofits. Notable beneficiaries include the Wikimedia Foundation, his alma mater the University of Pennsylvania, and his brother Kimbal’s nonprofit Big Green.
From 2002 to 2018, the foundation gave $25 million directly to nonprofit organizations, nearly half of which went to Musk’s OpenAI, which was a nonprofit at the time. The Foundation also allocated $100 million of donations to be used to establish a new higher education university in Texas.
In 2012, Musk took the Giving Pledge, thereby committing to give the majority of his wealth to charitable causes either during his lifetime or in his will. He has endowed prizes at the X Prize Foundation, including $100 million to reward improved carbon capture technology.
Vox said in February 2021, “the Musk Foundation is almost entertaining in its simplicity and yet is strikingly opaque”, noting that its website was only 33 words in plain-text.[271] In 2020, Forbes gave Musk a philanthropy score of 1, because he had given away less than 1% of his net worth.
In November 2021, Musk donated $5.7 billion of Tesla’s shares to charity, according to regulatory filings.
However, Bloomberg News noted that all of it went to his own foundation, bringing Musk Foundation’s assets up to $9.4 billion at the end of 2021. The foundation disbursed $160 million to nonprofits that year.
Reporting by The New York Times found that in 2022, the Musk Foundation gave away $230 million less than the minimum required by law to maintain tax-deductible status, and that in 2021 and 2022 over half the foundation’s funds went to causes connected to Musk, his family, or his businesses.
Hyperloop:
In August 2013, Musk announced plans for a version of a vacuum tube train and assigned a dozen engineers from SpaceX and Tesla to establish the conceptual foundations and create initial designs.
Later that year, Musk unveiled the concept, which he dubbed the Hyperloop. The alpha design for the system was published in a whitepaper posted to the Tesla and SpaceX blogs. The document scoped out the technology and outlined a notional route where such a transport system could be built between the Greater Los Angeles Area and the San Francisco Bay Area, at an estimated cost of $6 billion.
The proposal, if technologically feasible at the costs cited, would make Hyperloop travel cheaper than any other mode of transport for such long distances. Biographer Ashlee Vance noted that Musk hoped Hyperloop would “make the public and legislators rethink the high-speed train” proposal current in California at the time and consider more “creative” ideas.
In 2015, Musk announced a design competition for students and others to build Hyperloop pods, to operate on a SpaceX-sponsored mile-long track, for a 2015â2017 Hyperloop pod competition. The track was used in January 2017, and Musk also announced that the company had started a tunnel project, with Hawthorne Municipal Airport as its destination.
In July 2017, Musk said that he had received “verbal government approval” to build a Hyperloop from New York City to Washington, D.C., with stops in Philadelphia and Baltimore. Mention of the projected DC-to-Baltimore leg was removed from The Boring Company website in 2021. The tunnel project to Hawthorne was discontinued in 2022 and is planned to be converted into parking spots for SpaceX workers.
Mobility experts have criticized the Hyperloop concept for potential safety issues, planning complexity, low passenger capacity, and extremely high costs.[289][290] Jose Gomez-Ibanez, a professor of urban planning and public policy at Harvard, said, “It gives me pause to think that otherwise intelligent people are buying into this kind of utopian vision.”
OpenAI and xAI:
In December 2015, Musk co-founded OpenAI, a not-for-profit artificial intelligence (AI) research company aiming to develop artificial general intelligence intended to be safe and beneficial to humanity.
A particular focus of the company was to democratize artificial superintelligence systems, against governments and corporations. Musk pledged $1 billion of funding to OpenAI. In 2023, Musk tweeted that he had ended up giving a total of $100 million to OpenAI. TechCrunch later reported that, according to its own investigation of public records, “only $15 million” of OpenAI’s funding could be definitively traced to Musk. Musk subsequently stated that he had donated about $50 million.
In 2018, Musk left the OpenAI board to avoid possible future conflicts with his role as CEO of Tesla as Tesla increasingly became involved in AI through Tesla Autopilot. Since then, OpenAI has made significant advances in machine learning, producing neural networks such as ChatGPT (producing human-like text), and DALL-E (generating digital images from natural language descriptions).
On July 12, 2023, Elon Musk launched an artificial intelligence company called xAI, which aims to develop a generative AI program that competes with existing offerings like ChatGPT. The company hired engineers from Google and OpenAI. Musk obtained funding from investors in SpaceX and Tesla.
Music:
In March 2019, Musk, through his own label Emo G Records, released a rap track, “RIP Harambe”, on SoundCloud. The track refers to the killing of Harambe the gorilla and the subsequent Internet sensationalism surrounding the event.
The following year, Musk released an EDM track, “Don’t Doubt Ur Vibe”, featuring his own lyrics and vocals. While Guardian critic Alexi Petridis described it as “indistinguishable⌠from umpteen competent but unthrilling bits of bedroom electronica posted elsewhere on SoundCloud”, TechCrunch said it was “not a bad representation of the genre”.
Private jet:
Musk uses a private jet owned by Falcon Landing LLC, a SpaceX-linked company, and acquired a second jet in August 2020. His heavy use of the jets-which flew over 150,000 miles in 2018 alone-and the consequent fossil fuel usage has received criticism.
Musk’s flight usage is tracked on social media through ElonJet. After Musk said that his son X AE A-XII had been harassed by a stalker after the account posted the airport at which his jet had landed, Musk banned the ElonJet account on Twitter, as well as the accounts of journalists that posted stories regarding the incident, including Donie O’Sullivan, Keith Olbermann, and journalists from The New York Times, The Washington Post, CNN, and The Intercept.
Musk equated the reporting to doxxing. Police do not believe there is a link between the account and alleged stalker. Musk later took a Twitter poll on whether the journalists’ accounts should be reinstated, which resulted in reinstating the accounts.
Company towns:
After 2020, thousands of acres of land just outside Austin, Texas, were acquired by Musk and his companies with a total value of $2.5 billion. The project to build the company town named Snailbrook in Bastrop County, Texas began in 2021 according to reports by The Wall Street Journal.
Musk’s then-girlfriend Grimes and Kanye West were involved in the planning. The name “Snailbrook” alludes to The Boring Company’s stated goal of building a machine that can bore tunnels faster than a snail can move. In 2023 the town had a reported population of 12 people. There are plans to establish a school and a university there.
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