biography of elon musk

South African entrepreneur Elon Musk is known for founding Tesla Motors and SpaceX, which launched a landmark commercial spacecraft in 2012.

Who Is Elon Musk?

Elon Musk is a South African-born American entrepreneur and businessman who founded X.com in 1999 (which later became PayPal), SpaceX in 2002 and Tesla Motors in 2003. Musk became a multimillionaire in his late 20s when he sold his start-up company, Zip2, to a division of Compaq Computers.

In January 2021, Musk reportedly surpassed Jeff Bezos as the wealthiest man in the world.

Musk was born on June 28, 1971, in Pretoria, South Africa. As a child, Musk was so lost in his daydreams about inventions that his parents and doctors ordered a test to check his hearing.

At about the time of his parents’ divorce, when he was 10, Musk developed an interest in computers. He taught himself how to program, and when he was 12 he sold his first software: a game he created called Blastar.

In grade school, Musk was short, introverted and bookish. He was bullied until he was 15 and went through a growth spurt and learned how to defend himself with karate and wrestling.

Musk’s mother, Maye Musk , is a Canadian model and the oldest woman to star in a Covergirl campaign. When Musk was growing up, she worked five jobs at one point to support her family.

Musk’s father, Errol Musk, is a wealthy South African engineer.

Musk spent his early childhood with his brother Kimbal and sister Tosca in South Africa. His parents divorced when he was 10.

At age 17, in 1989, Musk moved to Canada to attend Queen’s University and avoid mandatory service in the South African military. Musk obtained his Canadian citizenship that year, in part because he felt it would be easier to obtain American citizenship via that path.

In 1992, Musk left Canada to study business and physics at the University of Pennsylvania. He graduated with an undergraduate degree in economics and stayed for a second bachelor’s degree in physics.

After leaving Penn, Musk headed to Stanford University in California to pursue a PhD in energy physics. However, his move was timed perfectly with the Internet boom, and he dropped out of Stanford after just two days to become a part of it, launching his first company, Zip2 Corporation in 1995. Musk became a U.S. citizen in 2002.

Zip2 Corporation

Musk launched his first company, Zip2 Corporation, in 1995 with his brother, Kimbal Musk. An online city guide, Zip2 was soon providing content for the new websites of both The New York Times and the Chicago Tribune . In 1999, a division of Compaq Computer Corporation bought Zip2 for $307 million in cash and $34 million in stock options.

In 1999, Elon and Kimbal Musk used the money from their sale of Zip2 to found X.com, an online financial services/payments company. An X.com acquisition the following year led to the creation of PayPal as it is known today.

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 percent of PayPal stock.

Musk founded his third company, Space Exploration Technologies Corporation, or SpaceX, in 2002 with the intention of building spacecraft for commercial space travel. By 2008, SpaceX was well established, and 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.

Falcon 9 Rockets

On May 22, 2012, Musk and SpaceX made history when the company launched its Falcon 9 rocket into space with an unmanned capsule. The vehicle was sent to the International Space Station with 1,000 pounds of supplies for the astronauts stationed there, marking the first time a private company had sent a spacecraft to the International Space Station. Of the launch, Musk was quoted as saying, "I feel very lucky. ... For us, it's like winning the Super Bowl."

In December 2013, a Falcon 9 successfully carried a satellite to geosynchronous transfer orbit, a distance at which the satellite would lock into an orbital path that matched the Earth's rotation. In February 2015, SpaceX launched another Falcon 9 fitted with the Deep Space Climate Observatory (DSCOVR) satellite, aiming to observe the extreme emissions from the sun that affect power grids and communications systems on Earth.

In March 2017, SpaceX saw the successful test flight and landing of a Falcon 9 rocket made from reusable parts, a development that opened the door for more affordable space travel.

A setback came in November 2017, when an explosion occurred during a test of the company's new Block 5 Merlin engine. SpaceX reported that no one was hurt, and that the issue would not hamper its planned rollout of a future generation of Falcon 9 rockets.

The company enjoyed another milestone moment in February 2018 with the successful test launch of the powerful Falcon Heavy rocket. Armed with additional Falcon 9 boosters, the Falcon Heavy was designed to carry immense payloads into orbit and potentially serve as a vessel for deep space missions. For the test launch, the Falcon Heavy was given a payload of Musk's cherry-red Tesla Roadster, equipped with cameras to "provide some epic views" for the vehicle's planned orbit around the sun.

In July 2018, Space X enjoyed the successful landing of a new Block 5 Falcon rocket, which touched down on a drone ship less than 9 minutes after liftoff.

BFR Mission to Mars

In September 2017, Musk presented an updated design plan for his BFR (an acronym for either "Big F---ing Rocket" or "Big Falcon Rocket"), a 31-engine behemoth topped by a spaceship capable of carrying at least 100 people. He revealed that SpaceX was aiming to launch the first cargo missions to Mars with the vehicle in 2022, as part of his overarching goal of colonizing the Red Planet.

In March 2018, the entrepreneur told an audience at the annual South by Southwest festival in Austin, Texas, that he hoped to have the BFR ready for short flights early the following year, while delivering a knowing nod at his previous problems with meeting deadlines.

The following month, it was announced that SpaceX would construct a facility at the Port of Los Angeles to build and house the BFR. The port property presented an ideal location for SpaceX, as its mammoth rocket will only be movable by barge or ship when completed.

Starlink Internet Satellites

In late March 2018, SpaceX received permission from the U.S. government to launch a fleet of satellites into low orbit for the purpose of providing Internet service. The satellite network, named Starlink, would ideally make broadband service more accessible in rural areas, while also boosting competition in heavily populated markets that are typically dominated by one or two providers.

SpaceX launched the first batch of 60 satellites in May 2019, and followed with another payload of 60 satellites that November. While this represented significant progress for the Starlink venture, the appearance of these bright orbiters in the night sky, with the potential of thousands more to come, worried astronomers who felt that a proliferation of satellites would increase the difficulty of studying distant objects in space.

Tesla Motors

Musk is the co-founder, CEO and product architect at Tesla Motors, a company formed in 2003 that is dedicated to producing affordable, mass-market electric cars as well as battery products and solar roofs. Musk oversees all product development, engineering and design of the company's products.

Five years after its formation, in March 2008, Tesla unveiled the Roadster, a sports car capable of accelerating from 0 to 60 mph in 3.7 seconds, as well as traveling nearly 250 miles between charges of its lithium ion battery.

With a stake in the company taken by Daimler and a strategic partnership with Toyota, Tesla Motors launched its initial public offering in June 2010, raising $226 million.

In August 2008, Tesla announced plans for its Model S, the company's first electric sedan that was reportedly meant to take on the BMW 5 series. In 2012, the Model S finally entered production at a starting price of $58,570. Capable of covering 265 miles between charges, it was honored as the 2013 Car of the Year by Motor Trend magazine .

In April 2017, Tesla announced that it surpassed General Motors to become the most valuable U.S. car maker. The news was an obvious boon to Tesla, which was looking to ramp up production and release its Model 3 sedan later that year.

In September 2019, using what Musk described as a "Plaid powertrain," a Model S set a speed record for four-door sedan at Laguna Seca Raceway in Monterey County, California.

The Model 3 was officially launched in early 2019 following extensive production delays. The car was initially priced at $35,000, a much more accessible price point than the $69,500 and up for its Model S and X electric sedans.

After initially aiming to produce 5,000 new Model 3 cars per week by December 2017, Musk pushed that goal back to March 2018, and then to June with the start of the new year. The announced delay didn't surprise industry experts, who were well aware of the company's production problems, though some questioned how long investors would remain patient with the process. It also didn't prevent Musk from garnering a radical new compensation package as CEO, in which he would be paid after reaching milestones of growing valuation based on $50 billion increments.

By April 2018, with Tesla expected to fall short of first-quarter production forecasts, news surfaced that Musk had pushed aside the head of engineering to personally oversee efforts in that division. In a Twitter exchange with a reporter, Musk said it was important to "divide and conquer" to meet production goals and was "back to sleeping at factory."

After signaling that the company would reorganize its management structure, Musk in June announced that Tesla was laying off 9 percent of its workforce, though its production department would remain intact. In an email to employees, Musk explained his decision to eliminate some "duplication of roles" to cut costs, admitting it was time to take serious steps toward turning a profit.

The restructuring appeared to pay dividends, as it was announced that Tesla had met its goal of producing 5,000 Model 3 cars per week by the end of June 2018, while churning out another 2,000 Model S sedans and Model X SUVs. "We did it!" Musk wrote in a celebratory email to the company. "What an incredible job by an amazing team."

The following February, Musk announced that the company was finally rolling out its standard Model 3. Musk also said that Tesla was shifting to all-online sales, and offering customers the chance to return their cars within seven days or 1,000 miles for a full refund.

In November 2017, Musk made another splash with the unveiling of the new Tesla Semi and Roadster at the company's design studio. The semi-truck, which was expected to enter into production in 2019 before being delayed, boasts 500 miles of range as well as a battery and motors built to last 1 million miles.

Model Y and Roadster

In March 2019, Musk unveiled Tesla’s long-awaited Model Y. The compact crossover, which began arriving for customers in March 2020, has a driving range of 300 miles and a 0 to 60 mph time of 3.5 seconds.

The Roadster, also set to be released in 2020, will become the fastest production car ever made, with a 0 to 60 time of 1.9 seconds.

In August 2016, in Musk’s continuing effort to promote and advance sustainable energy and products for a wider consumer base, a $2.6 billion dollar deal was solidified to combine his electric car and solar energy companies. His Tesla Motors Inc. announced an all-stock deal purchase of SolarCity Corp., a company Musk had helped his cousins start in 2006. He is a majority shareholder in each entity.

“Solar and storage are at their best when they're combined. As one company, Tesla (storage) and SolarCity (solar) can create fully integrated residential, commercial and grid-scale products that improve the way that energy is generated, stored and consumed,” read a statement on Tesla’s website about the deal.

The Boring Company

In January 2017, Musk launched The Boring Company, a company devoted to boring and building tunnels in order to reduce street traffic. He began with a test dig on the SpaceX property in Los Angeles.

In late October of that year, Musk posted the first photo of his company's progress to his Instagram page. He said the 500-foot tunnel, which would generally run parallel to Interstate 405, would reach a length of two miles in approximately four months.

In May 2019 the company, now known as TBC, landed a $48.7 million contract from the Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority to build an underground Loop system to shuttle people around the Las Vegas Convention Center.

In October 2022, Musk officially bought Twitter and became the social media company's CEO after months of back and forth.

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Musk’s Tweet and SEC Investigation

On August 7, 2018, Musk dropped a bombshell via a tweet: "Am considering taking Tesla private at $420. Funding secured." The announcement opened the door for legal action against the company and its founder, as the SEC began inquiring about whether Musk had indeed secured the funding as claimed. Several investors filed lawsuits on the grounds that Musk was looking to manipulate stock prices and ambush short sellers with his tweet.

Musk’s tweet initially sent Tesla stock spiking, before it closed the day up 11 percent. The CEO followed up with a letter on the company blog, calling the move to go private "the best path forward." He promised to retain his stake in the company, and added that he would create a special fund to help all current investors remain on board.

Six days later, Musk sought to clarify his position with a statement in which he pointed to discussions with the managing director of the Saudi Arabian sovereign wealth fund as the source of his "funding secured" declaration. He later tweeted that he was working on a proposal to take Tesla private with Goldman Sachs and Silver Lake as financial advisers.

The saga took a bizarre turn that day when rapper Azealia Banks wrote on Instagram that, as a guest at Musk's home at the time, she learned that he was under the influence of LSD when he fired off his headline-grabbing tweet. Banks said she overheard Musk making phone calls to drum up the funding he promised was already in place.

The news quickly turned serious again when it was reported that Tesla's outside directors had retained two law firms to deal with the SEC inquiry and the CEO's plans to take the company private.

On August 24, one day after meeting with the board, Musk announced that he had reversed course and would not be taking the company private. Among his reasons, he cited the preference of most directors to keep Tesla public, as well as the difficulty of retaining some of the large shareholders who were prohibited from investing in a private company. Others suggested that Musk was also influenced by the poor optics of an electric car company being funded by Saudi Arabia, a country heavily involved in the oil industry.

On September 29, 2018, it was announced that Musk would pay a $20 million fine and step down as chairman of Tesla's board for three years as part of an agreement with the SEC.

Inventions and Innovations

In August 2013, Musk released a concept for a new form of transportation called the "Hyperloop," an invention that would foster commuting between major cities while severely cutting travel time. Ideally resistant to weather and powered by renewable energy, the Hyperloop would propel riders in pods through a network of low-pressure tubes at speeds reaching more than 700 mph. Musk noted that the Hyperloop could take from seven to 10 years to be built and ready for use.

Although he introduced the Hyperloop with claims that it would be safer than a plane or train, with an estimated cost of $6 billion — approximately one-tenth of the cost for the rail system planned by the state of California — Musk's concept has drawn skepticism. Nevertheless, the entrepreneur has sought to encourage the development of this idea.

After he announced a competition for teams to submit their designs for a Hyperloop pod prototype, the first Hyperloop Pod Competition was held at the SpaceX facility in January 2017. A speed record of 284 mph was set by a German student engineering team at competition No. 3 in 2018, with the same team pushing the record to 287 mph the next year.

AI and Neuralink

Musk has pursued an interest in artificial intelligence, becoming co-chair of the nonprofit OpenAI. The research company launched in late 2015 with the stated mission of advancing digital intelligence to benefit humanity.

In 2017, it was also reported that Musk was backing a venture called Neuralink, which intends to create devices to be implanted in the human brain and help people merge with software. He expanded on the company's progress during a July 2019 discussion, revealing that its devices will consist of a microscopic chip that connects via Bluetooth to a smartphone.

High-Speed Train

In late November 2017, after Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel asked for proposals to build and operate a high-speed rail line that would transport passengers from O'Hare Airport to downtown Chicago in 20 minutes or less, Musk tweeted that he was all-in on the competition with The Boring Company. He said that the concept of the Chicago loop would be different from his Hyperloop, its relatively short route not requiring the need for drawing a vacuum to eliminate air friction.

In summer 2018 Musk announced he would cover the estimated $1 billion needed to dig the 17-mile tunnel from the airport to downtown Chicago. However, in late 2019 he tweeted that TBC would focus on completing the commercial tunnel in Las Vegas before turning to other projects, suggesting that plans for Chicago would remain in limbo for the immediate future.

Flamethrower

Musk also reportedly found a market for The Boring Company's flamethrowers. After announcing they were going on sale for $500 apiece in late January 2018, he claimed to have sold 10,000 of them within a day.

Relationship with Donald Trump

In December 2016, Musk was named to President Trump’s Strategy and Policy Forum; the following January, he joined Trump's Manufacturing Jobs Initiative. Following Trump’s election, Musk found himself on common ground with the new president and his advisers as the president announced plans to pursue massive infrastructure developments.

While sometimes at odds with the president's controversial measures, such as a proposed ban on immigrants from Muslim-majority countries, Musk defended his involvement with the new administration. "My goals," he tweeted in early 2017, "are to accelerate the world’s transition to sustainable energy and to help make humanity a multi-planet civilization, a consequence of which will be the creating of hundreds of thousands of jobs and a more inspiring future for all."

On June 1, following Trump's announcement that he was withdrawing the U.S. from the Paris climate accord, Musk stepped down from his advisory roles.

Personal Life

Wives and children.

Musk has been married twice. He wed Justine Wilson in 2000, and the couple had six children together. In 2002, their first son died at 10 weeks old from sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS). Musk and Wilson had five additional sons together: twins Griffin and Xavier (born in 2004) and triplets Kai, Saxon and Damian (born in 2006).

After a contentious divorce from Wilson, Musk met actress Talulah Riley. The couple married in 2010. They split in 2012 but married each other again in 2013. Their relationship ultimately ended in divorce in 2016.

Girlfriends

Musk reportedly began dating actress Amber Heard in 2016 after finalizing his divorce with Riley and Heard finalized her divorce from Johnny Depp . Their busy schedules caused the couple to break up in August 2017; they got back together in January 2018 and split again one month later.

In May 2018, Musk began dating musician Grimes (born Claire Boucher). That month, Grimes announced that she had changed her name to “ c ,” the symbol for the speed of light, reportedly on the encouragement of Musk. Fans criticized the feminist performer for dating a billionaire whose company has been described as a “predator zone” among accusations of sexual harassment.

The couple discussed their love for one another in a March 2019 feature in the Wall Street Journal Magazine , with Grimes saying “Look, I love him, he’s great...I mean, he’s a super-interesting goddamn person.” Musk, for his part, told the Journal, “I love c’s wild fae artistic creativity and hyper-intense work ethic.”

Grimes gave birth to their son on May 4, 2020, with Musk announcing that they had named the boy "X Æ A-12." Later in the month, after it was reported that the State of California wouldn't accept a name with a number, the couple said they were changing their son's name to "X Æ A-Xii."

Musk and Grimes welcomed their second child, a daughter named Exa Dark Sideræl Musk, in December 2021. The child was delivered via a surrogate.

Nonprofit Work

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.

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.

QUICK FACTS

• Name: Elon Musk
• Birth Year: 1971
• Birth date: June 28, 1971
• Birth City: Pretoria
• Birth Country: South Africa
• Gender: Male
• Best Known For: South African entrepreneur Elon Musk is known for founding Tesla Motors and SpaceX, which launched a landmark commercial spacecraft in 2012.
• Space Exploration
• Internet/Computing
• Astrological Sign: Cancer
• University of Pennsylania
• Queen's University, Ontario
• Stanford University
• Nacionalities
• South African
• Interesting Facts
• Elon Musk left Stanford after two days to take advantage of the Internet boom.
• In April 2017, Musk's Tesla Motors surpassed General Motors to become the most valuable U.S. car maker.

We strive for accuracy and fairness.If you see something that doesn't look right, contact us !

CITATION INFORMATION

• Article Title: Elon Musk Biography
• Author: Biography.com Editors
• Website Name: The Biography.com website
• Url: https://www.biography.com/business-leaders/elon-musk
• Access Date:
• Publisher: A&E; Television Networks
• Last Updated: October 31, 2022
• Original Published Date: April 2, 2014
• I'm very pro-environment, but let's figure out how to do it better and not jump through a dozen hoops to achieve what is obvious in the first place.
• Failure is an option here. If things are not failing, you are not innovating enough.

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Eight things we learned from the Elon Musk biography

Widespread access to world’s richest man allowed biographer Walter Isaacson to detail a number of illuminating anecdotes

A new biography of Elon Musk was published on Tuesday and contains colourful details of the life of the world’s richest man.

Musk afforded widespread access to his biographer, Walter Isaacson, the author of the bestselling biography of the Apple co-founder Steve Jobs, and the book contains a series of illuminating anecdotes about Musk. Here are eight things we learned from the book.

1. Musk’s difficult relationship with his father

Musk, 52, was born and raised in South Africa and endured a fraught relationship with his father, Errol, an engineer. Isaacson writes that Errol “bedevils Elon”.

Musk’s brother, Kimbal, says the worst memory of his life was watching Errol berate Musk after he was hospitalised after a fight at school (the book says Musk was still getting corrective surgery for the injuries decades later). “My father just lost it,” says Kimbal.

Musk and Kimbal, who are estranged from their father, describe Errol as a “volatile fabulist”. Interviewed by Isaacson, Errol admits he encouraged a “physical and emotional toughness” in his sons.

Grimes, the artist who is mother to three of his 10 children, says PTSD from Musk’s childhood shaped an aversion to contentment: “I just don’t think he knows how to savor success and smell the flowers.” Musk tells Isaacson he agrees: “Adversity shaped me. My pain threshold became very high.”

2. Elon Musk has an issue with the ‘woke mind virus’

Shortly before taking over Twitter, or X as it is now called, Musk told Isaacson that the “woke mind virus” – a derogatory term for progressive politics and culture – would prevent extraplanetary settlement (one of Musk’s fixations).

“Unless the woke mind virus, which is fundamentally anti-science, anti-merit, and anti-human in general, is stopped, civilization will never become multiplanetary,” said Musk.

3. Musk gave Twitter executives short shrift

Musk fired Twitter’s executive team as soon as he completed the takeover of Twitter in October last year and it had been coming. When Musk bought a significant stake in Twitter months before, he agreed to meet the CEO, Parag Agrawal. After the meeting, Musk said: “What Twitter needs is a fire-breathing dragon and Parag is not that.”

They soon fell out. Agrawal texted Musk to say his tweet asking if Twitter was “dying” was not helpful. Musk, on a break in Hawaii, replied: “What did you get done this week?” He added: “I’m not joining the board. This is a waste of time. Will make an offer to take Twitter private.”

This was during discussions about Musk joining the board. Agrawal’s reply underlined the power imbalance, and Twitter’s fear of Musk. He texted: “Can we talk?” Musk soon lodged an official bid for Twitter, which he tried unsuccessfully to wriggle out of, but the die was cast for Agrawal and his colleagues.

4. Sam Bankman-Fried tried to get in on the Twitter takeover

The founder and CEO of the fallen cryptocurrency exchange FTX, Sam Bankman-Fried, offered via his banker to put $5bn (£4.1bn) into the Twitter takeover, the book claims. Bankman-Fried also wanted to discuss putting Twitter on a blockchain – the technological underpinning for cryptocurrencies such as bitcoin.

A subsequent call between Musk and Bankman-Fried in May 2022 went badly, Isaacson wrote. “My bullshit detector went off like red alert on a Geiger counter,” Musk is quoted as saying.

Bankman-Fried’s offer to invest or to roll over $100m of Twitter stock that he claimed he had invested, came to nothing.

5. Musk tried to recruit Rudy Giuliani as an adviser

In his early tycoon career, Musk pondered recruiting the then mayor of New York as a political fixer to help him turn his PayPal business into a bank in 2001. Musk sought a meeting with Giuliani, then coming to the end of his tenure in office, because he wanted to turn PayPal – an online payments company – into a “social network that would disrupt the whole banking industry”.

In 2001, Musk and an investor, Michael Moritz, went to New York to see if they could hire Giuliani to guide them through the process of turning PayPal into a bank. It didn’t go well.

“It was like walking into a mob scene,” Moritz says in the book. Giuliani “was surrounded by goonish confidantes. He didn’t have any idea whatsoever about Silicon Valley, but he and his henchmen were eager to line their pockets”.

“‘This guy occupies a different planet,’ Musk told Moritz.”

6. Musk is concerned about a dwindling human population

One of Musk’s reasons for founding a new artificial intelligence company , xAI, is addressing the threat of population collapse. In one face-to-face conversation with Isaacson, the multi-billionaire said human intelligence was in danger of being surmounted by digital intelligence.

“The amount of human intelligence, he noted, was levelling off because people were not having enough children. Meanwhile, the amount of computer intelligence was going up exponentially, like Moore’s law on steroids. At some point, biological brainpower would be dwarfed by digital brainpower.”

This conversation was conducted at the Austin, Texas house of Shivon Zilis, an executive at Musk’s Neuralink business who is the mother of two of his children. Zilis told Isaacson she agreed to have children with Musk via IVF after listening to his arguments about having children as a “kind of social duty”. She said: “He really wants smart people to have kids, so he encouraged me to.”

7. Musk is very concerned about AI

Musk tells Isaacson that human consciousness is under threat from the prospect of super-intelligent, and uncontrollable, AI systems.

He says: “What can be done to make AI safe? I keep wrestling with that. What actions can we take to minimize AI danger and assure that human consciousness survives?”

8. Musk’s complicated role in the Ukraine conflict

Musk’s satellite communications unit, Starlink, has a key role in Ukraine’s defence against the Russian invasion. When a Russian cyber-attack crippled Ukraine’s satellite comms network an hour before the invasion, Musk stepped in following an appeal for help from Ukrainian officials and the country’s deputy prime minister.

However, the book alleges that Musk told his engineers to “turn off” Starlink coverage that would have facilitated an attack by drone submarines on Russia’s navy at the Sevastopol base in Crimea.

However, Isaacson has subsequently clarified this excerpt after Musk used his X platform to state that there was no Starlink coverage in that area and he refused a Ukrainian request to activate it. Musk posted: “If I had agreed to their request, then SpaceX would be explicitly complicit in a major act of war and conflict escalation.”

Elon Musk by Walter Isaacson is published by Simon & Schuster. To support the Guardian and Observer order your copy at guardianbookshop.com . Delivery charges may apply.

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Most viewed.

Elon Musk co-founded and leads Tesla, SpaceX, Neuralink and The Boring Company.

As the co-founder and CEO of Tesla, Elon leads all product design, engineering and global manufacturing of the company's electric vehicles, battery products and solar energy products.

Since the company’s inception in 2003, Tesla’s mission has been to accelerate the world’s transition to sustainable energy. The first Tesla product, the Roadster sports car, debuted in 2008, followed by the Model S sedan, which was introduced in 2012, and the Model X SUV, which launched in 2015. Model S received Consumer Reports’ Best Overall Car and has been named the Ultimate Car of the Year by Motor Trend, while Model X was the first SUV ever to earn 5-star safety ratings in every category and sub-category in the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration’s tests. In 2017, Tesla began deliveries of Model 3 , a mass-market electric vehicle with more than 320 miles of range, and unveiled Tesla Semi , which is designed to save owners at least $200,000 over a million miles based on fuel costs alone. In 2019, Tesla unveiled Cybertruck , which will have better utility than a traditional truck and more performance than a sports car, as well as the Model Y compact SUV, which began customer deliveries in early 2020.

Tesla also produces three energy storage products, the Powerwall home battery, the Powerpack commercial-scale battery, and Megapack , which is designed for utility-scale installations. In 2016, Tesla became the world’s first vertically-integrated sustainable energy company with the acquisition of SolarCity, the leading provider of solar power systems in the United States, and in 2017 released Solar Roof – a beautiful and affordable energy generation product.

As lead designer at SpaceX , Elon oversees the development of rockets and spacecraft for missions to Earth orbit and ultimately to other planets. In 2008, the SpaceX Falcon 1 was the first privately developed liquid fuel rocket to reach orbit, and SpaceX made further history in 2017 by re-flying both a Falcon 9 rocket and Dragon spacecraft for the first time. Soon after, Falcon Heavy , the most powerful operational rocket in the world by a factor of two, completed its first flight in 2018. In 2019, SpaceX’s crew-capable version of the Dragon spacecraft completed its first demonstration mission, and the company will fly NASA astronauts to the International Space Station for the first time in 2020. Building on these achievements, SpaceX is developing Starship – a fully reusable transportation system that will carry crew and cargo to the Moon, Mars and beyond ­– and Starlink , which will deliver high speed broadband internet to locations where access has been unreliable, expensive, or completely unavailable. By pioneering reusable rockets, SpaceX is pursuing the long-term goal of making humans a multi-planet species by creating a self-sustaining city on Mars.

Elon is also CEO of Neuralink , which is developing ultra-high bandwidth brain-machine interfaces to connect the human brain to computers.

He also launched The Boring Company , which combines fast, affordable tunneling technology with an all-electric public transportation system in order to alleviate soul-crushing urban congestion and enable high-speed, long-distance travel. The Boring Company built a 1.15 mile R&D tunnel in Hawthorne, and is currently constructing Vegas Loop, a public transportation system at the Las Vegas Convention Center.

Previously, Elon co-founded and sold PayPal, the world's leading Internet payment system, and Zip2, one of the first internet maps and directions services.

Walter Isaacson on Musk’s Legacy and Criticism of His Biography

Isaacson, a former editor of TIME and an acclaimed biographer of Steve Jobs, Albert Einstein, among others, is the author of the new book Elon Musk

In an excerpt from a new podcast, On Musk with Walter Isaacson , biographer Isaacson, the bestselling author of Elon Musk (and a former TIME editor), talks with host Evan Ratliff about criticism of his book, Musk's geopolitical influence, and why he took over Twitter .

Evan Ratliff: I want to talk about some of the criticism that comes up around the book and giving you a chance to respond. There's Musk being a difficult and demanding person, even an asshole, whether that matters for how creative he is, how innovative he is. And then there's these sort of larger societal accusations. Let's say like, allowing misinformation or encouraging misinformation, or the self-driving and people getting killed or the sort of lawsuit against Tesla when it comes to racial discrimination. Those seem to be two separate ideas, and I'm wondering, we've talked a lot about the first one and how you feel about that second basket, that question of whether, aside from whether he is or isn't a bad person to his employees, there are things that he's doing in the world that have negative implications.

Walter Isaacson: Yeah, I think when you barrel ahead impulsively, you do things that have negative implications. You know, bad workplace environments. Well, it starts at the top because he's all in, hardcore driven. He's not there to what he thinks are touchy feely HR, guidelines. And that's bad. Likewise, he pushes a little fast on full self driving. I mean, he feels that humans will kill 10 or 100 times more people than a self-driving car will. So he doesn't get the fact that a self driving just, you know, one time as it did this once hit a side of a big white truck, you know, and that's been in the news after three, four years. It's still in the news. He says, you know, people focus on that, not the million of people got killed by humans. It's because he doesn't have a real feel for human feelings and emotions. He doesn't realize that a self-driving car smashing somebody into a truck is gonna really shake people up more than the fact that a bad driver, you know, here on Claiborne Avenue in New Orleans got into an accident. So these are the things that his engineering mindset doesn't feel as well.

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And I feel like when people bring those things up, they're often saying, they want you to engage with those things more. And we've talked about, you know, explaining what's going on versus moralizing. But how do you feel about how you engaged with sort of that aspect of Musk?

I like the fact that people who say I'm not as tough on Musk as I should be are always using anecdotes from my book to show why we should be tough on Musk. And a couple people have pointed that out. Certainly if you're looking at the bad workplace environments that he may engender either at Tesla or at Twitter–that's in the book, you know, in no uncertain terms. Likewise, the accidents on the self-driving cars are definitely in the book starting with Autonomy Day in 2019 all the way to the present. There's a lot of evidence that his obsession with this might be moving things too fast.

So, I'm perfectly happy when people say I should have been tougher on Musk, but also say, man, read the book. If you want ammunition, both of how amazing he can be at times and getting things done, but also the rubble he leaves in his wake.

When it came to the Ukraine Starlink situation, you've talked about that…the thing that got corrected in the post and Musk tweeting, but maybe you've talked about this, but I haven't heard it yet, but I'm interested in what it felt like for you. Like you strike me as someone who's like relatively unbothered by some of the noise that's around these things.

I think you have to be unbothered by the noise and you have to keep the essence of the story. And the essence of that story was fine, it was correct, which was that night he was deciding whether or not to allow Starlink to be enabled or not be enabled to allow a sneak attack on Crimea. And there was a fix that had to be made because it had already been geofenced, so his decision was not to permit the movement of the geofencing.

I hadn't gone into it enough, I just said he turned it off, so that was oversimplifying. But I didn't want to get distracted from the main thing, which is this private citizen is suddenly deciding that night whether or not Ukraine gets to do a sneak attack on the Russian fleet in Crimea. The essence is a private citizen has that power to decide and neither he nor anybody else corrected that.

Read More: Inside Elon Musk's Struggle for the Future of AI

And then I talked to him, I said, have you talked to the U. S. government? And he turns over power to these satellites to the U. S. government.

At a later point.

Yeah, at a later point, after that night where we talk about it. So you see... All of these things happen, and I try to have it shown in real time. And the essence of the story being, how does somebody acquire this much power? Why is it that the rest of government and other contractors have become so paralyzed and sclerotic that they can't do some of these things? And then how does he, with his megalomania, finally back down and say, maybe I should give up some of this power.

There's something chilling about Musk's power and influence growing beyond his companies, beyond the rocket launch pad and the Tesla factory floor. And in the case of Starlink satellite's use in Ukraine, even Musk himself finds this a little unsettling. From failing to understand how people might respond to self driving car deaths, to his outwardly blasé approach to controlling global geopolitics with a thumbs up or thumbs down, like a Roman emperor in the Colosseum. People are not Elon Musk's forte, by his own admission. But we are increasingly in his hands.

And depending on where you stand on Musk, some of his ideas can seem either sinister, logical, or simply baffling. Take, for example, his stated concern about underpopulation and declaration that people need to be having more children. More specifically, smart people need to be having more children. It's a creed he's lived with all 10 of his surviving children born by IVF. He's put his money behind it too, funding a University of Texas at Austin research group called the Population Well Being Initiative, to the tune of $10 million. What I wanted to know from Isaacson… was given his front row seat to Musk's unusual family dramas, what are we supposed to make of this particular Musk obsession?

Like a lot of things with Elon Musk, he goes back to the father a bit. It also goes to Musk's theory that consciousness in the human species is a fragile thing. And one of the threats is a low birth rate. Most of us probably don't think that way. We think we're overpopulated. But there is a decline in birth rate in many, many countries. And Musk deeply feels that that's a problem. And you know, people can totally disagree with that and say, hey, overpopulation is a big problem. They can also think he's weird to fund IVF for other people or fund clinics.

That's it. It feels like such a classic Musk thing that I've learned from reading this book, which is it's the kind of thing where people can look at it and they can say, he has this vision for humanity and it involves like people having more children. And then there are people who dislike him who kind of see it through a lens of, is this some kind of eugenics situation…I feel like people bring these lenses to it and I'm wondering if that has happened in your past work, or if this is a unique situation.

I think it's somewhat unique that people have such extraordinarily strong feelings for and against Musk. When I started working on this book, he was one of the most popular people on earth. There's some people who didn't like him, but his politics was generally a supporter of Obama. He had done really bad, dumb tweets in the past, like saying he was going to take Tesla private or calling some cave diver a pedophile. But generally, he wasn't that controversial. And then his politics shift, and it's reflected in his tweets, and he buys Twitter.

And so I end up with a book in which people either think he's an absolute hero or an absolute villain. And if you come at it from a frame of Musk is inherently an evil person, even having a lot of kids seems like something evil. And, pushing for self driving cars or robots seems evil. Likewise, if you're one of these starry eyed fans, even the weird, dark things he does on Twitter, people will be slamming me for telling the stories of his behavior, both at Twitter and at factories. So, yeah, it's a difficulty that people frame his every action, often based on their own love or hatred for him.

There's a tension it feels like between the way that Musk talks about that epic idea, getting to Mars, helping save humanity with interplanetary species, et cetera, and the way he treats individual people, like he doesn't like people, sometimes he can be very cruel. And I'm wondering does he really care or is he just trying to make himself an epic figure or is he actually trying to solve the energy problem and send us to Mars for humanity reasons?

When Musk first started talking about his three great missions: space travel, artificial intelligence, and sustainable energy, I thought it was a type of pontifications that you'd do for a biographer or do for a podcaster, do for a pep talk. And then I'd see him over and over again, just chanting to himself, like walking around the factory for building Starship and things are getting delayed.

And he would keep saying to himself and others around him, we have to have an urgency of getting humanity to Mars. And I came to believe that I don't know if he always fully believed it, but I know he believed he believed it. I know that they sound strange, but sometimes, as Shakespeare teaches us, we become the mask we wear. And he had internalized and externalized this so much that he was driven by a fierce urgency that we've got to get rockets that can get us to Mars within the next few decades, or that we have to sustain solar and battery and electric vehicle energy on this planet. And I am totally convinced that he is driven by his belief in those missions, and then he backfills and figures out, well, how can I make money on the way.

But if you're driven mainly by financial or selfish reasons, you're not going to start a rocket company. That's not a good idea for making money. You're not going to start an EV company when every other car company is getting out of the business. You're not going to worry about robots, and you're not going to buy Twitter, so I don't think he was motivated by money. He was motivated by this almost man child epic sense of him as a hero in a comic book or a video game.

Twitter one is interesting because I felt like the way you wrote that almost reversed the poles there in which he decides to buy Twitter, impulsively decides, gets stuck with it, and then he almost seems to be back filling the mission where he says, like, actually...

I ask him at one point, how does this fit into your mission? Makes no sense. I mean, I'm thinking it's idiotic to buy Twitter because he doesn't have a fingertip feel for social emotional networks, and he admits, he said, yes, maybe it's a lark, maybe it doesn't really fit in. And then later he says, well, maybe it will help democracy so that civilization will survive long enough that we'll be able to become multi-planetary.

And that's where I just didn't believe him, and I'm not even sure he believed himself. That's just a bull crap explanation. But he had to try to justify it to himself. But my own opinion is he kind of stumbled into that impulsively and had mixed feelings about it, and if he had to do it all over again, I'm not sure he would.

The other reason Musk gives for buying Twitter—one he seems to get a lot of play for in some corners of the world—is that he is fighting against wokeness, or more specifically, what Musk calls anti-woke-mind virus. When he talks about, anti-woke mind virus, he uses that phrase. And that really touches on things that have become, you know, third rails in society in terms of how they're discussed. I'm curious how you kind of engaged with that idea with him. I mean, he's someone who grew up in apartheid South Africa. So obviously like his views on race and other societal issues are going to be colored by that. Like, what does he mean when he says something like that?

The way I engage with it, and you see it in the book, is I question it. I say, why do you, why are you following this particular conspiracy?

And I'll even talk about Occam's razor, which is the simplest explanation, maybe the best one, instead of thinking there's a vast conspiracy of drug makers and. COVID vaccines, or people trying to lockdown so they control government, or any of these things that he goes to. I'm not that way. I'm not conspiratorial.

Uh,  and I find that anti-political correctness and wokeness sentiment… it's a little hard for me to explain because my head's not there. You know, I think sometimes what we call being woke is being polite and sensitive to other people's feelings.  And I'll ask him about that. I say, Hey, did you understand, you've got a daughter who transitioned.

And he'll say things when he's in a more rational mood of, well, I don't mind people using pronouns, but you know, it gouges my eyes out when I see it too much. I'm going, why? What's the problem?

But it's when he's in his dark moods, this eats away at him. And the book, I describe his political evolution from being an Obama supporter to being  supporting Bobby Kennedy, then Ron DeSantis, you know, people who are worried about wokeness or worried about conspiracy theories. And I never try to excuse it in the book. I don't excuse what I call the rabbit hole, going down these rabbit holes of conspiracy. Uh,  I do try to explain it, from his childhood, from his father, whatever. And until you read the book. I think critics can have a difficulty saying, is he explaining it or is he excusing it?  And the simple mantra I always use is–let me tell you a story.

So, I'll explain something. And then I'll tell a story about  a particularly horrible tweet he did, like: “Prosecute Fauci are my pronouns.” I mean, just in a few words, he’s able to attack transgender pronouns and Anthony Fauci. And...  I talk about his father having said all these sort of things and him being in a hotbox room in Twitter, and he's going dark and giddy and one of the people in the room starts joking about Fauci and pronouns.

But if you read that anecdote or that story, you're not going to say, Walter excused it.  You're not going to say he tried to sugarcoat it. You're going to see the rawness that's there sometimes in Elon Musk

You've talked about how you think Twitter will just be a blip of his legacy, but he certainly can and is getting mired in it. And there's this quote in the book. It's him saying, I probably spent too much time on Twitter. It's a good place to dig your own grave. You get your shoulder into it and you keep on digging.

Do you feel that he could be undoing some of that magic– that vision that you captured when it comes to space or electric cars?

Yeah, I personally feel that the time he spends on Twitter and the mindshare he devotes to it is not as important, it's not as high value as him doing something else. And I don't think he's particularly good at the social interactions and human emotions that come in Twitter. And he admits he's just addicted to it.

I don't think it's going to be an important part of his legacy. It's not going to be a great part of his legacy. I think it makes the book more interesting for this guy to go down this rabbit hole. But also, near the end of the book, to say, you know, this isn't the best use of my time, even talking about Twitter, he said, we probably could be talking about more important things.

It's also…it's made him disliked in a way that I feel like he wasn't disliked before. I mean, if you look at the category of things that people dislike him for– Twitter and things he's said on Twitter and done with Twitter–occupy a large percentage of those things.

Absolutely. When you look at the controversy he's caused, and for that matter, the enmity and hatred that he's engendered, about 95 percent of that comes either from what he says on Twitter, or what he does on Twitter, or what he does to Twitter.

Musk is polarizing, arguably, one of the two most polarizing figures of our time. I'll let you guess the other. His fans can be slavishly adoring. His critics can be blind with rage. But if there was one common thread among the more critical takes on Isaacson's biography, it was a demand for more judgment or at least analysis from Isaacson. What was the ultimate meaning in all these stories he'd gathered, these hours at Musk's side? Were we supposed to believe that he was some kind of tortured genius?

I'm here to be as straightforward as I can, with the reader in mind, to tell you stories that I think are very revealing, somewhat exciting, somewhat appalling, but always informative. And in face of the criticism that, well, maybe I didn't render too much judgment, I tried pretty hard to pull back a bit. You can kind of tell what I think by the way I'm telling this story, but I'm not going to hammer that into you. You should wrestle with each of these things and figure out how it fits with your own vision of life.

From the new podcast On Musk with Walter Isaacson , a production of Kaleidoscope and iHeart , available wherever podcasts are .

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Early Life and Education

Notable accomplishments, personal eccentricities, the bottom line.

• Business Leaders
• Entrepreneurs

Who Is Elon Musk?

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Elon Musk, born in Pretoria, South Africa, is one of the most successful entrepreneurs of all time. Musk has achieved global fame as the chief executive officer (CEO) of electric automobile maker Tesla ( TSLA ) and the private space company SpaceX. Musk was an early investor in several tech companies, and in October 2022, he completed a deal to take X (formerly Twitter) private.

His success and personal style have given rise to comparisons to other colorful tycoons from U.S. history, including Steve Jobs , Howard Hughes, and Henry Ford . He was named the richest person in the world in 2021, surpassing Amazon ( AMZN ) founder Jeff Bezos. Musk is the richest person in the world as of Feb. 15, 2024.

Let’s look briefly at the life of the man who has scaled the pinnacle of the business world.

Key Takeaways

• Elon Musk is the charismatic CEO of electric car maker Tesla and rocket manufacturer SpaceX.
• Following a contested process, Musk completed a deal to buy the company behind X in October 2022, becoming the owner of the social media company.
• Born and raised in South Africa, Musk spent time in Canada before moving to the United States.
• Educated at the University of Pennsylvania in physics, Musk started getting his feet wet as a serial tech entrepreneur with early successes like Zip2 and X.com, which merged with a company that became PayPal.
• Musk has behaved eccentrically from time to time.

Bailey Mariner / Investopedia

Elon Reeve Musk was born in 1971 in Pretoria, South Africa, the oldest of three children. His father was a South African engineer, and his mother was a Canadian model and nutritionist. After his parents divorced in 1980, Musk lived primarily with his father. He would later dub his father “a terrible human being...almost every evil thing you could possibly think of, he has done.”

“I had a terrible upbringing. I had a lot of adversity growing up. One thing I worry about with my kids is they don’t face enough adversity,” Musk would later say.

Bullied as a Child

Musk attended the private, English-speaking Waterkloof House Preparatory School—he started a year early—and later graduated from Pretoria Boys High School. A self-described bookworm, he made few friends in those places.

“They got my best (expletive) friend to lure me out of hiding so they could beat me up. And that (expletive) hurt,” Musk said. “For some reason, they decided that I was it, and they were going to go after me nonstop. That’s what made growing up difficult. For a number of years, there was no respite. You get chased around by gangs at school who tried to beat the (expletive) out of me, and then I’d come home, and it would just be awful there as well.”

Early Accomplishments

Technology became an escape for Musk. At 10, he became acquainted with programming using a Commodore VIC-20, an early and relatively inexpensive home computer. Before long, Musk had become proficient enough to create Blastar—a video game in the style of Space Invaders. He sold the BASIC code for the game to a PC magazine for $500.

In one telling incident from his childhood, Musk and his brother planned to open a video game arcade near their school. Their parents nixed the plan.

Musk’s College Years

At 17, Musk moved to Canada. He would later obtain Canadian citizenship through his mother.

After emigrating to Canada, Musk enrolled at Queen’s University in Kingston, Ontario. It was there that he met Justine Wilson, an aspiring writer. They would marry and have six sons together, a first son, twins, and then triplets, before divorcing in 2008.

Entering the U.S.

After two years at Queen’s University, Musk transferred to the University of Pennsylvania. He took on two majors, but his time there wasn’t all work and no play. With a fellow student, he bought a 10-bedroom fraternity house, which they used as an ad hoc nightclub.

Musk graduated with a bachelor of science degree in physics, in addition to a bachelor of arts in economics from the  Wharton School . The two majors foreshadowed Musk’s career, but it was physics that left the deepest impression.

“(Physics is) a good framework for thinking,” he would say later. “Boil things down to their fundamental truths and reason up from there.”

Musk was 24 years old when he moved to California to pursue a Ph.D. in applied physics at Stanford University. But, with the Internet exploding and Silicon Valley booming, Musk had entrepreneurial visions dancing in his head. He left the Ph.D. program after just two days.

In 1995, with $15,000 and his younger brother Kimbal at his side, Musk started Zip2, a web software company that would help newspapers develop online city guides.

In 1999, Zip2 was acquired by Compaq Computer Corp. for $341 million. Musk used his Zip2 buyout money to create X.com, a fintech venture before that term was in wide circulation.

X.com merged with a money transfer firm called Confinity, and the resulting company came to be known as PayPal. Peter Thiel ousted Musk as PayPal CEO before eBay ( EBAY ) bought the payments company for $1.5 billion, but Musk still profited from the buyout via his 11.7% PayPal stake.

“My proceeds from PayPal after tax were about $180 million,” Musk said in a 2018 interview. “$100 (million) of that went into SpaceX, $70 (million) into Tesla, and $10 (million) into SolarCity. And I literally had to borrow money for rent.”

In 2017, Musk purchased the X.com domain name back from PayPal, citing its sentimental value.

Musk became involved with the electric cars venture as an early investor in 2004, ultimately contributing about $6.3 million, to begin with, and joined the team, including engineer Martin Eberhard, to help run a company then known as Tesla Motors. Following a series of disagreements, Eberhard was ousted in 2007, and an interim CEO was hired until Musk assumed control as CEO and product architect. Under his watch, Tesla has become the world’s most valuable automaker.

In addition to producing electric vehicles, Tesla maintains a robust presence in the solar energy space, thanks to its acquisition of SolarCity. The company currently produces two rechargeable solar batteries. The smaller Powerwall was developed for home backup power and off-the-grid use, while the larger Powerpack is intended for commercial or electric utility grid use.

Musk used most of the proceeds from his PayPal stake to found Space Exploration Technologies Corp., the rocket's developer commonly known as SpaceX. By his own account, Musk spent $100 million to found SpaceX in 2002 .

Under Musk’s leadership, SpaceX landed several high-profile contracts with the U.S. National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) and the U.S. Air Force to design space launch rockets. Musk has publicized plans to send an astronaut to Mars by 2025 in a collaborative effort with NASA.

The company was founded in March 2006 as Twitter by Jack Dorsey, Noah Glass, Biz Stone, and Evan Williams. Originally a private company, it went public in November 2013. It raised $1.8 billion through its initial public offering (IPO) .

Musk joined the site in June 2009. A frequent poster on the messaging network, Musk disclosed a 9.2% stake in X in April 2022. The company responded by offering Musk a seat on the board, which he accepted before declining days later. Musk then sent a bear hug letter to the board proposing to buy the company at $54.20 per share.

The company’s board adopted a poison pill provision to discourage Musk from accumulating an even larger stake, but they ultimately accepted Musk’s offer after he disclosed $46.5 billion in committed financing for the deal in a securities filing.

In July 2022, Musk attempted to cancel the deal , arguing that X had failed to provide certain information regarding fake accounts. The company sued Musk to require him to complete the deal.

After months of legal wrangling, the billionaire’s plan to buy the social media platform came to fruition, and Musk took control of the company on Oct. 28, 2022. The company was renamed X the following year.

During his May 8, 2021, appearance on the TV show Saturday Night Live , Musk revealed that he has Asperger’s syndrome, an autism spectrum disorder. “I’m actually making history tonight as the first person with Asperger’s to host SNL . Or at least the first to admit it,” he said. How does the neurodevelopment condition manifest itself? “I don’t always have a lot of intonation or variation in how I speak, which I’m told makes for great comedy,” Musk explained.

On Sept. 7, 2018, Musk smoked cannabis during a filmed interview for a podcast.

Just a month earlier, Musk posted an infamous tweet claiming he was considering taking Tesla private and had secured the needed funding. Musk subsequently settled a Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) complaint alleging he knowingly misled investors with the tweet by paying a $20 million fine along with the same penalty for Tesla and agreeing to let Tesla’s lawyers approve tweets with material corporate information before posting.

In March 2022, Musk filed a court motion to overturn the consent decree stemming from that case. In April 2022 during a live TED Talk, Musk called the SEC regulators on the case “bastards.”

Is Elon Musk Married?

Elon Musk has been divorced three times—twice from his second wife, Talulah Riley. From 2018 to 2022, he was in a relationship with Canadian singer/songwriter Claire Elise Boucher, professionally known as Grimes, with whom he had a son in 2020, a daughter in 2022, and a third child revealed in 2023. They remain best friends. He also has six boys from his first marriage to Justine Musk. He also shares twins with Shivon Zilis. Musk has a total of 11 children.

How Rich Is Elon Musk?

Elon Musk’s net worth was estimated at $205 billion as of Feb. 15, 2024, making him the wealthiest person on the planet.

Was Elon Musk Born Rich?

No, Elon Musk was born into a middle-class family. In 1995, when he founded X.com, he reportedly had more than $100,000 in student debt and struggled to pay rent.

What Does Elon Musk Do at Tesla?

Elon Musk is officially listed as the co-founder and chief executive officer of Tesla on the company’s website. In a 2021 securities filing, the company disclosed an additional Musk title as “Technoking of Tesla.”

What Companies Does Elon Musk Own?

Elon Musk is a large stakeholder in several companies, including Tesla, SpaceX, The Boring Co., Neuralink, and X Corp.

Musk’s early interests in philosophy, science fiction, and fantasy novels are reflected in his idealism and concern with human progress—and in his business career. He works in fields he has identified as crucial to humanity’s future, notably the transition to renewable energy sources, space exploration, and the Internet.

Musk has defied critics, disrupted industries, and made the most money anyone ever has from PayPal, Tesla Motors, SolarCity, and SpaceX—game changers all, despite the inevitable missteps.

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TODAY. " Who Are Elon Musk's Children? "

X. “ Grimes, March 10, 2022, 11:32 AM .”

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Elon Musk Hardcover – September 12, 2023

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• Print length 688 pages
• Language English
• Publisher Simon & Schuster
• Publication date September 12, 2023
• Dimensions 6.13 x 1.9 x 9.25 inches
• ISBN-10 1982181281
• ISBN-13 978-1982181284
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• Publisher ‏ : ‎ Simon & Schuster (September 12, 2023)
• Language ‏ : ‎ English
• Hardcover ‏ : ‎ 688 pages
• ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 1982181281
• ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-1982181284
• Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 2.28 pounds
• Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 6.13 x 1.9 x 9.25 inches
• #1 in Computer & Technology Biographies
• #2 in Scientist Biographies
• #3 in Business Professional's Biographies

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About the author

Walter isaacson.

Walter Isaacson is writing a biography of Elon Musk. He is the author of The Code Breaker: Jennifer Doudna, Gene Editing, and the Future of the Human Race; Leonardo da Vinci; Steve Jobs; Einstein: His Life and Universe; Benjamin Franklin: An American Life; The Innovators: How a Group of Hackers, Geniuses, and Geeks Created the Digital Revolution; and Kissinger: A Biography. He is also the coauthor of The Wise Men: Six Friends and the World They Made. He is a Professor of History at Tulane, has been CEO of the Aspen Institute, chairman of CNN, and editor of Time magazine.

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Elon Musk Wants to Save Humanity. The Only Problem: People.

Walter Isaacson’s biography of the billionaire entrepreneur depicts a mercurial “man-child” with grandiose ambitions and an ego to match.

Credit... Illustration by Jan Robert Dünnweller; Photo reference by Steven Ferdman/Getty Images

Supported by

By Jennifer Szalai

• Published Sept. 9, 2023 Updated Sept. 11, 2023
• Apple Books
• Barnes and Noble
• Books-A-Million

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ELON MUSK , by Walter Isaacson

At various moments in “Elon Musk,” Walter Isaacson’s new biography of the world’s richest person , the author tries to make sense of the billionaire entrepreneur he has shadowed for two years — sitting in on meetings, getting a peek at emails and texts, engaging in “scores of interviews and late-night conversations.” Musk is a mercurial “man-child,” Isaacson writes, who was bullied relentlessly as a kid in South Africa until he grew big enough to beat up his bullies. Musk talks about having Asperger’s, which makes him “bad at picking up social cues.” As the people closest to him will attest, he lacks empathy — something that Isaacson describes as a “gene” that’s “hard-wired.”

Yet even as Musk struggles to relate to the actual humans around him, his plans for humanity are grand. “A fully reusable rocket is the difference between being a single-planet civilization and being a multiplanet one”: Musk would “maniacally” repeat this message to his staff at SpaceX, his spacecraft and satellite company, where every decision is motivated by his determination to get earthlings to Mars. He pushes employees at his companies — he now runs six, including X, the platform formerly known as Twitter — to slash costs and meet brutal deadlines because he needs to pour resources into the moonshot of colonizing space “before civilization crumbles.” Disaster could come from climate change, from declining birthrates, from artificial intelligence. Isaacson describes Musk stalking the factory floor of Tesla, his electric car company, issuing orders on the fly. “If I don’t make decisions,” Musk explained, “we die.”

By “we,” Musk presumably meant Tesla in that instance. But Musk likes to speak of his business interests in superhero terms, so it’s sometimes hard to be sure. Isaacson, whose previous biographical subjects include Leonardo da Vinci and Steve Jobs, is a patient chronicler of obsession; in the case of Musk, he can occasionally seem too patient — a hazard for any biographer who is given extraordinary access. At one point, Isaacson asks why Musk is so offended by anything he deems politically correct, and Musk, as usual, has to dial it up to 11. “Unless the woke-mind virus, which is fundamentally anti-science, anti-merit and anti-human in general, is stopped,” he declares, “civilization will never become multiplanetary.” There are a number of curious assertions in that sentence, but it would have been nice if Isaacson had pushed him to answer a basic question: What on earth does any of it even mean?

Isaacson has ably conveyed that Musk doesn’t truly like pushback. Some of his lieutenants insist that he will eventually listen to reason, but Isaacson sees firsthand Musk’s habit of deriding as a saboteur or an idiot anyone who resists him. The musician Grimes, the mother of three of Musk’s children (the existence of the third, Techno Mechanicus, nicknamed Tau, has been kept private until now), calls his roiling anger “demon mode” — a mind-set that “causes a lot of chaos.” She also insists that it allows him to get stuff done.

It’s a convenient assessment, one that Isaacson seems mostly to accept. “As Shakespeare teaches us,” he writes, “all heroes have flaws, some tragic, some conquered, and those we cast as villains can be complex.” Well, yes — but couldn’t this describe anyone? What is there to say specifically about Musk himself?

For that we can turn to Isaacson’s reporting, of which there is plenty. (Another thoroughly reported biography, by Ashlee Vance , was published in 2015 — four years before SpaceX started launching Starlink satellites and seven years before Musk acquired Twitter.) Isaacson even managed to get Errol, Elon’s intermittently estranged father, to talk — though mostly what Errol offers are rambling bigoted comments (while insisting he isn’t racist) and self-aggrandizing tales (at least one of which turns out to be “provably false”).

Errol has two children with his stepdaughter. As for Elon, he has 10 children with three women, one of whom — Shivon Zilis, who bore his twins in 2021 — is an executive at one of his companies. (Another child, Musk’s first, born in 2002, died from Sudden Infant Death Syndrome when he was 10 weeks old.)

“He really wants smart people to have kids,” Zilis said of Musk, who offered to be her sperm donor so that, Isaacson adds, “the kids would be genetically his.” At the time, Grimes and Musk were expecting their second child, a girl. Musk didn’t tell Grimes that he had just had twins with one of his employees.

But the details of such domestic intrigues are, in the book and in Musk’s life, largely beside the point. He is mostly preoccupied with his businesses, where he expects his staff to abide by “the algorithm,” his workplace creed, which commands them to “question every requirement” from a department, including “the legal department” and “the safety department”; and to “delete any part or process” they can. “Comradery is dangerous,” is one of the corollaries. So is this: “The only rules are the ones dictated by the laws of physics. Everything else is a recommendation.”

Still, Musk has accrued enough power to dictate his own rules. In one of the book’s biggest scoops, Isaacson describes Musk secretly instructing his engineers to “turn off” Starlink satellite internet coverage to prevent Ukraine from launching a surprise drone attack on Russian forces in Crimea. ( Isaacson has since posted on X that contrary to what he writes in the book, Musk didn’t shut down coverage but denied a request to extend the network’s range.) Musk decided that he was saving humanity from a nuclear war. When Ukraine’s vice prime minister texted him to say that Starlink service was “a matter of life and death,” Musk instructed him to “seek peace while you have the upper hand.”

Counseling the Ukrainians to “seek peace” sounds especially rich coming from someone who is “energized,” Isaacson says, by “dire threats.” But then the overall sense you get from this biography is that for all of Musk’s talk about the world-changing magic of “the algorithm,” he ultimately does what he wants. He will order his companies to scrimp fanatically on some things while insisting that they spend lavishly on others. At Tesla, Musk’s obsession with the minutiae of automotive design inflated costs and drained the company of cash. At SpaceX, instead of spending $1,500 for the kind of latch used by NASA, an engineer figured out how to modify a $30 latch intended for a bathroom stall. When Musk acquired Twitter last year, he eliminated 75 percent of the staff.

Since Musk’s acquisition, hate speech on the platform has proliferated while ad sales have plunged . Reading this book, one begins to wonder if the old bird-site will be Musk’s Waterloo. “He thought of it as a technology company,” Isaacson writes, “when in fact it was an advertising medium based on human emotions and relationships.” Isaacson believes that Musk wanted to buy Twitter because he had been so bullied as a kid and “now he could own the playground.” It’s an awkward metaphor, but that’s also what makes it perfect. Owning a playground won’t stop you from getting bullied. If you think about it, owning a playground won’t get you much of anything at all.

ELON MUSK | By Walter Isaacson | Illustrated | 670 pp. | Simon & Schuster | $35

Jennifer Szalai is the nonfiction book critic for The Times. More about Jennifer Szalai

The World of Elon Musk

The billionaire’s portfolio includes the world’s most valuable automaker, an innovative rocket company and plenty of drama..

X: An Australian court extended an injunction ordering the social media platform X to remove videos depicting the recent stabbing of a bishop , setting the country’s judicial system up for a clash with Elon Musk, who has denounced the court’s order as censorship.

A $47 Billion Pay Deal: Despite   facing criticism that Tesla is overly beholden to Elon Musk , its board of directors said that the company would essentially give him everything he wanted, including the biggest pay package in corporate history.

Tesla: Tesla reported that it made significantly less money  in the first three months of the year because of its tepid car sales, reinforcing concern among investors that the company led by Elon Musk is losing ground  in the market for electric vehicles.

SpaceX: President Biden wants companies that use American airspace for rocket launches to start paying taxes into a federal fund  that finances the work of air traffic controllers.

Business With China : Tesla and China built a symbiotic relationship that made Elon Musk ultrarich. Now, his reliance on the country may give Beijing leverage .  

The Musk Foundation: After making billions in tax-deductible donations to his charity, Musk has failed recently to donate the minimum required to justify a tax break  — and what he did give often supported his interests.

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Elon Musk biography

Elon Reeve Musk was born on the 28th of June of 1972 in Pretoria, South Africa. He is known for being one of the founders of Paypal, SpaceX, Tesla Motors, OpenAl, and Hyperloop, among other companies. The entrepreneur and inventor appears in the list of the richest in the world, occupying the position number 56, in 2017, with 17.4 billion dollars. Forbes magazine, for the December 2016 publication, named him the 21st person with the most power in the world. His greatest goal, according to Musk, is to change humanity drastically; for this purpose, he works in SolarCity, SpaceX, and Tesla. One of his interests is the abandonment of petroleum fuels in order to reduce global warming. Perhaps Elon’s most ambitious project, so far, is the establishment of a human colony on Mars, with nearly a million people.

He spent his childhood in South Africa with his parents, an engineer from South Africa and a nutritionist from Canada. At age 10, with his first computer, a Commodore VIC-20, he began to learn to programme on his own. Two years later he sold his first videogame called Blastar for about $ 200. At that time he went through difficult times; his schoolmates subjected him to bullying because of his uncommon interests for them. Elon spent his money on science fiction books, comics, and video games.

In the period between 12 and 15 years of age, he entered into an existential crisis influenced by the readings of Nietzsche and Schopenhauer. The situation went to the extreme of taking him to the hospital because of beatings by his companions. In his home things were not better, the relationship with his father was quite complicated. He suffered the emotional violence of a father unable to understand him. Compulsory military service bothered him. For these reasons, at age 17, after graduating from high school in Pretoria, he decided to leave South Africa and take refuge with his mother in Canada.

What Musk wanted most was to reach the United States. He found in that country a way to make possible everything he imagined. Elon’s father conditioned his support: he would not pay for a university outside of South Africa. In 1989, while in Canada, he found a chance to study thanks to his maternal relatives, who came from North America. By 1992, Elon counted on a scholarship in the University of Pennsylvania. The young entrepreneur began his studies in Business Administration, in parallel he began his career in Physics. He was fortunate to have the support of one of his teachers, who turned out to be the executive director of Los Gatos, a company located in the southern part of San Francisco Bay, California. The experience gained on ultracapacitors in that company, and then in Pinnacle Research, along with the inspiration it had for inventors such as Nikola Tesla, made him define the fields in which he would focus on the future: renewable energy, the Internet and outer space.

The beginning on the Internet began with Zip2, in 1995, along with his brother Kimbal Musk and a friend named Greg Curry. The company was dedicated to the development and maintenance of web pages dedicated to the media. The idea was a success, managing around 200 sites on the Internet in the year of 1999. For that year the company was sold to Compaq for 300 million dollars; money that would help him found X.com. The next plan was to systematize payments and money management through the Internet, offering security and speed. The ease offered by X.com and security made the project a very profitable idea, as well as merging, in 2000, with Confinity; company that provided a similar service, but only between Palm Pilot devices. In 2001 X.com decided to change its name to Paypal.inc a well-known company that provides the service to make online payments internationally.

With the growing success, problems soon appeared. Different companies tried to close Paypal, including eBay, which ended up buying it in October 2002, for 1.5 billion dollars. The sale of Paypal gave way to the creation, by its former members, of companies such as LinkedIn and YouTube. The next Musk project was called Tesla Motors, the company that created the first functional electric car. The main investment in Tesla was solar energy. The idea was born in 2003 in the company AC Propulsion, which had a prototype electric car. Musk wanted to help design a sports car with the same base of AC Propulsion.

In 2004, along with Matt Tappenhig and Martin Eberhard, Tesla Motors was created, with the intention of mass producing the model T-Zero of AC Propulsion. Musk invested nearly 98% of the capital. The start of the company was hard; the budget for the first models exceeded what was expected, but they managed to sell enough to continue developing models. For 2012, 2100 Tesla Roadster was sold in different countries. In 2015 the Tesla Model X was launched, designed to cover all types of terrain.

Another of Musk’s three projects involves SpaceX. Thinking of establishing a colony on Mars, he began, in 2002, to investigate how to send a rocket to Mars. His initial idea was to obtain reusable rockets to carry out the two trips for reconnaissance missions. For that year, Space Exploration Technologies was founded, focused on launching rockets and reducing fuel costs and materials for launch with increases in viability. In 2008, an agreement was made between NASA for twelve rocket flights. Currently, SpaceX is responsible for the development of Falcon rockets, which use liquid fuel.

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Nipsey Hussle

Nipsey Hussle Biography

Ermias Asghedom (August 15, 1985 – March 31, 2019), better known as Nipsey Hussle, was an American rapper, businessman, and community activist, who rose to fame in 2018 with his debut album Victory Lab . Nipsey began his career towards the mid-2000s releasing several successful mixtapes such as Slauson Boy Volume 1, Bullets Ain’t Got No Name series and The Marathon. His fame came to him, along with his first Grammy nomination, with his debut album in 2018. He had previously created his label All Money In No Money Out (2010).

Following his death, he received two posthumous Grammys for the songs Racks in the Middle and Higher. He was known for his social work on behalf of the Crenshaw community.

Early years

He was born in Los Angeles, United States, on August 15, 1985 . Son of Angelique Smith and Eritrean immigrant Dawit Asghedom, he grew up in Crenshaw, a neighborhood located south of Los Angeles, with his siblings Samiel and Samantha. He attended Hamilton High School but dropped out before graduating. Since he was little he looked for a way to help around the home, so over time, he began to work selling different products on the street.

After leaving school he became involved in the world of gangs, however, he turned away from it when he realized that it was not what he expected for his future. Decided then to dedicate himself to music, he sold everything that linked him to the gangs and worked for a time to buy his own production tools. After finishing his studies, he began to write and produce his own mixtapes, which he sold from a car. After finding inspiration from a trip he took to Eritrea with his father and spending time in prison, Nipsey turned fully to his career and business. He always looked for ways to start and help the community in which he grew up: giving jobs, helping students, renovating public spaces, etc …

Community activist

Nipsey was admired for his work at Crenshaw because instead of moving or investing in hedge funds, he preferred to help the community by boosting the local economy.

In late 2005, Nipsey Hussle released his first mixtape, Slauson Boy Volume 1, independently, to great local success. By then he already had a fan base at the regional level, so it took him a while to sign a contract with the Epic Records and Cinematic Music Group labels. Later, the first volumes of the Bullets Ain’t Got No Name series appeared, with which he expanded his popularity. Burner on My Lap, Ridin Slow, Aint No Black Superman, Hussle in the House and It’s Hard out Here , were some of the songs included in the series.

By 2009, Nipsey would make a name for himself collaborating with Drake on Killer and with Snoop Dog on Upside Down. He also released Bullets Ain’t Got No Name vol.3 and in 2010, he left Epic and opened his own label All Money In No Money Out. Under this label, he would soon release The Marathon, a mixtape in which hits such as Love ?, Mr. Untouchable, Young Rich and Famous and Late Nights and Early Mornings appeared. He also created The Marathon Clothing at that time, a sports and casual clothing brand that was based in his neighborhood. He then released the mixtape The Marathon Continues (2011), participated in the We Are the World 25 for Haiti campaign, and was featured in the popular XXL Magazine Annual Freshman Top Ten.

In 2013 came Crenshaw , a mixtape that would become famous because Jay-Z himself bought 100 copies for $ 100 each.

Victory Lap

After many delays, Nipsey would release his long-awaited debut album Victory Lap , on February 16, 2018, to great success. It was praised by critics and received a Grammy nomination for best rap album of the year. It was such a success that many singles entered the Billboard and Itunes charts. However, Nipsey did not enjoy much fame.

Hussle was assassinated on March 31, 2019, outside his store in South Los Angeles. He was shot multiple times by a man he had previously clashed with, he was arrested and charged with murder on April 2 of the same year. After his death, many personalities expressed the pain caused by the news. It is worth mentioning that the Mayor of Los Angeles himself gave his condolences to the family, recognizing Hussle’s social work in Crenshaw.

He was the partner of actress Lauren London and was the father of two children.

Sales strategies and greatest hits

Hussle was known for his sales strategies, since, he used to upload his singles in free download and then sell some limited editions for a cost of 100 to 1000 dollars . It promoted the sale of his work with campaigns such as Proud2Pay and Mailbox Money, in which he gave special incentives (autographed photos, dedication calls, tickets to his studio, and special events) to buyers. His revolutionary ideas promised him a fruitful career.

Some of his greatest hits

• Rose Clique
• Forever On My Fly Shit
• Thas Wat Hoes Do Proud of That (with Rick Ross)
• Face the world
• Bless, 1 of 1
• Where Yo Money At
• Fuck Donald Trump
• Young Rich and Famous

Jimmy Hoffa

Jimmy Hoffa Biography

James Riddle Hoffa (February 14, 1913 – July 30, 1975), better known as Jimmy Hoffa, was an American union activist. A reference to the working class of the 20th century, Hoffa began his union activity at the age of 18 within the trucker union. With time, he was gaining importance and enemies. He mixed with the mob and was the leader of the most important union organization in the U.S.A ., the International Brotherhood of Truckers. His actions took a toll on him and in 1967 he was arrested for bribery. In 1975, he disappeared after having dinner at a Detroit restaurant. To date, it is unknown what happened or where his body is. His disappearance was portrayed in Scorsese’s The Irishman .

He was born in Brazil, Indiana, on February 14, 1913. James was the son of John Hoffa and Viola Riddle. His father passed away when he was 7 years old, of Irish descent and working as a miner. When the dad died, the family moved to Detroit, where Hoffa lived the rest of his life. He studied until he was 14 years old and began working as a teenager, to help the family. At the age of 18, he began to participate in the union demonstrations of the truck driver’s union, and over time he gained recognition. However, Hoffa had never driven a truck.

Jimmy Hoffa, the truckers, and the mob

Despite his clear inexperience, Hoffa managed to earn the respect of all road workers thanks to his charisma and effective acting. He was thus elected president of the famous International Brotherhood of Truckers or “Teamsters” in 1957. From then on he would be known for his aggressive methods and connections with the Cosa Nostra (Italian mafia). It is known that Jimmy used the mob to gain notoriety and destroy his competitors, while the union served as a front to clean up dirty money from the mob.

As time went by, his relationship with Cosa Nostra became increasingly evident, becoming the target of various investigations (fraud, conspiracy, evasion, extortion, laundering…). Behind them was the prosecutor Robert Kennedy, who later became a solicitor, his sole objective being the capture of Hoffa. Although he managed to leave the courts unscathed on several occasions – thanks to his intimidation and bribery strategies – he was finally locked up in 1967.

Hoffa had faced justice several times, so the confinement did not scare him, he planned to continue running the union and all its businesses from jail, leaving someone manageable in command. But this did not turn out as he expected, his puppet rebelled and the mafia took advantage of his confinement to expand their business with more facilities. It was clear that everyone was better off without Hoffa at the helm.

The disappearance of Jimmy Hoffa

In 1971 his sentence was commuted and Hoffa returned to work, he tried to regain his place and strength, but had little luck, because the mafia was clear that the business was better without him. The day he arrived, on July 30, 1975, he was summoned by Anthony Provenzano and Anthony Giacalone, two gangster bosses who were tired of his instance. They summoned him to a restaurant in Detroit, but never showed up, Hoffa waited for more than an hour and then got into a car, disappearing ever since. Nobody saw him again.

Jimmy was powerful, but he had made many enemies and was in the crosshairs of the mob, making his disappearance one of the most famous of the 20th century. His body was never found and in 1982 he was presumed dead. Although over time many took credit for his disappearance (and his death) from him, little is known for sure.

One of the possible culprits is perhaps Frank Sheeran, the Irishman , Hoffa’s henchman, who, pressured by the gangsters, would have killed the union leader. According to Sheeran’s version, that day he would have taken Hoffa to a house, where he shot him three times, and then moved his body to a still uncertain place.

His body and his disappearance became one of the best-known mysteries of the time . To date, the fate of his body is unknown. Many say it is buried, others that it was dismembered and thrown into a river, and others that it was compacted. There were many complaints about the discovery of his body, but all false.

His legacy was continued by his son, the current head of the International Brotherhood of Truckers, James P. Hoffa.

He was married to Josephine Poszywak and was the father of James P. Hoffa and Barbara Ann Crancer.

On July 30, 1982, he was declared legally dead.

Scorsese’s The Irishman

Scorsese’s The Irishman premiered on Netflix in 2019. The film follows Hoffa’s hitman and right-hand man, Frank Sheeran, as he thus narrates his story and participation in the disappearance of Hoffa. In the film, Hoffa is played by Al Pacino , while Sheeran and the prosecutor Kennedy are played by Robert De Niro and Jack Huston.

Peter Drucker

Peter Drucker biography

Peter Drucker (November 19, 1909 – November 11, 2005) writer, consultant, entrepreneur, and journalist. He was born in Vienna, Austria. He is considered the father of the Management to which he devoted more than 60 years of his professional life. His parents of Jewish origin and then converted to Christianity moved to a small town called Kaasgrabeen. Drucker grew up in an environment in which new ideas and social positions created by intellectuals, senior government officials and scientists were emerging. He studied at the Döbling Gymnasium and in 1927, Drucker moved to the German city of Hamburg, where he worked as an apprentice in a cotton company.

Then he began to train in the world of journalism, writing for the Der Österreichische Volkswirt. Then he got a job in Frankfurt, his job was to write for the Daily Frankfurter General-Anzeiger. Meanwhile, he completed a doctorate in International Law. Drucker began to integrate his two facets and for that, he was a recognized journalist. Drucker worked in this place until the fall of the Weimar Republic. After this period he decided to move to London, where he worked in a bank and was also a student of John Maynard Keynes .

Although he was a disciple of Keynes, he assured, decades later, that Keynesianism failed as an economic thesis where it was applied. Because of the ravages of Nazism and persecution of Jews, he emigrated to the United States, where he served as a professor at Sarah Lawrence College in New York, from 1939 to 1949 and simultaneously was a writer. His first job as a consultant was in 1940. He then returned to teaching at Bennington College in Vermont. Thanks to his popularity he received a position to teach in the faculty of Business Administration of the University of New York.

He was an active contributor for a long period of time to magazines such as The Atlantic Monthly and was a columnist for The Wall Street Journal. The quality and recognition of his writings assured him important contracts both as a writer and as a consultant with large companies, government agencies, and non-profit organizations in the United States, Europe, Latin America, and Asia. Quickly and surprisingly his fortune grew. Drucker served as honorary president of the Peter F. Drucker Foundation for Nonprofit Management.

In 1971, he obtained the Clarke Chair of Social Sciences and Administration at the Graduate School of Management at the University of Claremont. Now, at present Drucker is considered the most successful of the exponents in matters of administration, his ideas and terminologies have influenced the corporate world since the 40s. Drucker was the first social scientist to use the expression “post-modernity” something that caught the attention of this man is that he does not like receiving compliments. He was simple, visionary, satirical and vital.

Within his studies, he says that his greatest interest is people. His work as a consultant began in the General Motors Multinational Companies, from that moment begins to raise the theory of Management, Management trends, the knowledge society. Thanks to this theory he has published several books, these are consulted often and are fundamental for the career of business administrator. In his works, he deals with the scientific, human, economic, historical, artistic and philosophical stage.

He was founder and director of a business school that bears his name. For Drucker, it was beneficial that many of his ideas have been reformed because of the innovative way of thinking and analyzing business issues. Although approaches such as the knowledge society are the basis of the current company and the future is still maintained. He has published more than thirty books, which include studies of Management, studies of socio-economic policies and essays. Some are Best Sellers. The first book was The end of economic man (1939), The future of industrial man (1942), The concept of Corporation (1946). Later he published The Effective Executive (1985). He focused on personal effectiveness and changes in the direction of the 21st century. In 2002 the society of the future was published.

His first book caused much controversy because he talked about the reasons why fascism initiated and analyzed the failures of established institutions. He urged the need for a new social and economic order. Although he had finished the book in 1933, he had to wait because no editor wanted to accept such horrible visions. Now, Drucker has dealt with such controversial issues as individual freedom, industrial society, big business, the power of managers, automation, monopoly, and totalitarianism.

We must indicate that his analysis of the Administration, is a valuable guide for the leaders of companies that need to study their own performance, diagnose its failures and improve its productivity, as well as that of your company. Several companies have taken their approaches and put them into practice, such as Sears Roebuck & Co., General Motors, Ford, IBM, Chrysler, and American Telephone & Telegraph.

The consultant assured that there are some differences between the figure of the manager and that of the leader. For him, true leaders recognize their shortcomings as mortal beings, but they systematically concentrate on the essentials and work tirelessly to acquire the decisive competences of management. Actually, the contributions of this character in the world of administration and in the economic and social world have been significant. Drucker died on November 11, 2005, leaving a great legacy.

Jeff Bezos biography

Jeff Bezos (January 12, 1964). His birth name is Jeffrey Preston Bezos. Businessman and founder and CEO of Amazon. He was born in Albuquerque, New Mexico, United States. His mother, Jacklyn Gise, had him as a teenager and his biological father, Ted Jorgensen, left them as soon as he heard the news. Years later his mother married Miguel Bezos a Cuban. Now, Miguel adopted Jeffrey and he received his last name. The family moved to Houston, Texas. Jeffrey Bezos studied at River Oaks Elementary, he was always a very smart and witty little boy.

They moved to Miami, where he studied at Miami Palmetto Senior High School. And upon graduating he entered Princeton University to study Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, his thesis was cum laude. In 1996, he started working in a fiber optic company, FITEL, where he was responsible for the development of computer systems, his performance was so good that he became vice president. After moving to New York with the idea of ​​entering the world of finance, in Bankers Trust, he also held the position of vice president in 1990. In the following four years, Bezos worked with another Wall Street company: D.E. Shaw and Co.

Bezos realized that the purchase/sale of products and services on the internet or other electronic means would be a great field to explore and exploit. For this reason, he founded the electronic commerce company Amazon in 1995. Its service was something new for the netizens, which produced an increase in the visits quickly. Only in the first month of operation had books been sold in all corners of the United States. Months later it reached 2,000 daily visitors, a figure that would multiply abysmally in the next year. In 1997, the success made Amazon become one of the most important companies online.

Bezos had managed to conquer the internet business. Encouraged by the reception of consumers, he undertook the diversification of products, including CD and DVD media and electronic devices. As demand increased, this ingenious man included new products to his virtual store. The growth and its popularity were such that today it distributes from food to home, clothes and shoes, video games and music, to toilet paper and diapers. Amazon has experimented with the lucrative benefit of advertising since it gives the possibility to companies to advertise their products and mark them as featured products.

Bezos established independent Amazon websites for United States, Canada, United Kingdom, Australia, Germany, Austria, France, China, Italy, Spain, Japan, the Netherlands, Brazil, India and Mexico, the variety of products can be several in each country. Currently, the services are enjoyed by companies such as Target Corporation, Marks & Spencer, the NBA, Sears Canada, Timex or Bombay Company. The AOL online sales service also supports. In 2007, Bezos shook the world with the creation and launch of Amazon’s alter ego: Amazon Kindle, a device specially designed for the visualization of electronic books. Amazon Kindle was launched for the first time in North America and is currently available in 45 countries.

In 2011, The Economist awarded Bezos and Gregg Zehr an Innovation Award for the Amazon Kindle. The following year, Bezos was named Entrepreneur of the Year by Fortune. It is part of the Bilderberg Group. Bezos has given several conferences in St. Moritz, Switzerland, and participated in the conference in Watford, Hertfordshire, England. He was a member of the Executive Committee of the Business Council in 2011 and 2012. In 2018, he appeared on the Forbes list, where a net wealth of 106 billion dollars was estimated. He has also received other awards as the best CEO in the world by Harvard Business Review. Jeff Bezos has also been on Fortune’s list of the 50 best leaders in the world. In September 2016, he was awarded the Heinlein Prize for advances in Space Marketing. He donated the prize money to the international student organization Students for the Exploration and Development of Space by Bezos.

Since 2017, he has seen an increase in Amazon shares. They went up more than 130%, which made him have a profit of more than 100 billion dollars, after this, he returned to be the richest person in the world. He was named Person of the Year in Time magazine and was awarded an honorary Doctor of Science and Technology degree at Carnegie Mellon University in 2008. Really, the awards and awards have been impressive. Much of this is because Bezos, started in the field of journalism, looking beyond its commercial horizons; beyond the web. Bezos entered the world of media, acquiring the traditional newspaper The Washington Post for the sum of 250 thousand dollars.

Henry Gantt

Henry Gantt Biography

Henry Laurence Gantt (May 20, 1861 – November 23, 1919) industrial engineer . He was born in Calvert County, Maryland, United States. During his childhood and youth, he and his family lived devastating moments, especially in the economic part. His parents owned crops in Calvert but remained in ruins after the devastation caused during the Civil War. After that political and social event, they did not overlap economically so they had to live various hardships.

In spite of this, his parents did everything possible so that the young Gantt finished his school training at McDonogh School in 1878 and went to Johns Hopkins University to study industrial engineering. His performance was very good, when he graduated he started working as a teacher and draftsman, Gantt had a great skill for drawing since he was a kid. Then he studied mechanical engineering at the same university. In 1887, he was hired in Frederick W. Taylor to carry out an application of the principles of the Scientific Administration with his work in Midvale Steel and Bethlehem Steel, he carried out this work until 1893. In his career as a consultant, he invented the Gantt diagram.

Later, he designed some systems to measure the efficiency and productivity of workers, such as task bonds and the payment system and other methods that facilitate this process. This diagram became very popular for its simplicity, performance, and quality at that time, as well as at this time, pointed out the various tasks to be performed in a horizontal timeline, it has been used as a tool in operations that require strict temporal planning. However, Henry Gantt’s studies focused on the analysis of the performance of work methods, which depends on his judgment of the willingness to use the correct methods and skills.

Gantt was very concerned about leaving his knowledge embodied in paper, therefore, in 1908 presented before the American Society of Mechanical Engineers the text: Training of workers in habits of diligence and collaboration, in which he exposed the need to change the employer’s tactics; it is not a way of acting in the place, in the techniques, in the work, in the information, in the habits, in the possibilities, in the efficiency and in the efficiency of his work. As a complement to this, it is a bonus system that has been added to work and work done in a standardized time standard.

With these measures we tried to raise, not only the quantity, but above all the quality of work, following Taylor’s theory, the so-called common prosperity theory: what he says is that the worker has a kind of personal satisfaction to do the job well, this generates a feeling of pride that will make you try harder. For his part, the employer will notice an increase in productivity and the sum of a reduction in labor disputes. This is exposed with mastery in work, wages, and benefits (1913).

In the field of administration, his most known contribution is the graph of the bars such as the chart or the Gantt chart, which is composed in a diagram in which the horizontal axis represents the units of time, and in the vertical is recorded the different functions, which are represented by horizontal bars. With the help of this engineer, companies and the discipline of business administration is very broad, some of them are: the Gantt diagram, the development of the concept of industrial efficiency, the implementation of the system of Bonds of Tasks, with this adopted the premium to the workers. And he also implemented the Daily Balance Chart.

It was also very emphatic to ensure that companies have a social responsibility, in their opinion, companies have obligations for the welfare of society. His support for the scientific organization of work is also highlighted. When he worked for Frederick W. Taylor, with whom he collaborated in the application of his own doctrine to improve productivity, and in the second stage of the Industrial Revolution .

After 14 years of being at Taylor’s side, he made the decision to separate from this because his interest was the humanization of industrial practices and the dehumanized theories of Frederick Taylor . Unfortunately, in his last years of life, Gantt did not have the opportunity to finish several of his projects because his health was undermined. Finally, Henry Gantt died on November 23, 1919, in the town of Pine Island in New York .

His importance lies in the fact that it is the founder of scientific administration , an activity developed in the United States that later spread throughout the world with the idea of ​​achieving humanization, rationalization, and performance.

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Elon Musk has his demons. Walter Isaacson does his best to dissect them.

Isaacson’s new biography, ‘elon musk,’ attempts to reconcile the tech billionaire’s flaws with his achievements.

If you were trying to reverse-engineer from Elon Musk’s life a blueprint for creating the sort of tech icon who, at 52 years old, merits a 688-page biography by Walter Isaacson, the resulting plans would be fairly straightforward — just rather hard to execute.

Take a bright, exceedingly headstrong, socially maladjusted young boy and forge his character in an abusive, friendless childhood. For solace, give him only science fiction novels, superhero comics, and a cadre of younger siblings and cousins to boss around, imbuing him with delusions of grandeur and a taste for unchecked power.

If he survives that, send him to Silicon Valley during the dot-com boom. Give him a relentless work ethic, an addiction to risk and a moral compass that puts his own interests at its magnetic north pole. Add a keen eye for brilliant engineering minds he can mine for ideas and push to achieve the seemingly impossible, while he hogs the profits and credit. And then hope that he gets very lucky at pivotal moments along the way, so that his compulsive risk-taking doesn’t blow up in his face, even when his rockets do.

The traits that conspired to make Musk the world’s richest man were all in evidence when Isaacson decided in 2021 to make him the subject of his next biography. “ Elon Musk ,” being published Tuesday, must have seemed a natural extension of Isaacson’s “great man” canon, which includes biographies of Albert Einstein, Benjamin Franklin and Steve Jobs . (Isaacson’s subjects are almost all men.)

But Einstein, Franklin and Jobs were dead by the time Isaacson’s biographies hit bookstores (albeit by just weeks in Jobs’s case), whereas Musk — chief executive of Tesla and SpaceX and owner of X (formerly Twitter) — remains very alive. In the past two years, Musk’s public image has morphed from that of the hard-charging high-tech visionary who inspired Robert Downey Jr.’s portrayal of Tony Stark in “ Iron Man ” into something more disturbing and polarizing.

How do you take the full measure of an increasingly troubled figure whose life’s work and legacy still hang in the balance? At stake is not just Musk’s place in history, but also his place in the present and the future. If Isaacson fails to pin that down in a satisfying way, it might be because Musk is such a fast-moving target, and Isaacson prioritizes revealing anecdotes and behind-the-scenes reportage over a sophisticated critical lens.

Fortunately, the juicy details are plentiful, especially in the book’s final third, which covers the two especially volatile years Isaacson spent shadowing Musk. (There are wild capers and personal dramas worthy of a soap opera throughout, but most of the ones you’ll encounter earlier in the book have been well documented before, including in Ashlee Vance’s thorough 2015 Musk biography.)

New details include that Musk single-handedly scuttled a Ukrainian sneak attack on a Russian naval fleet in Crimea (more on that below). We learn that Musk’s girlfriend Grimes was in an Austin hospital visiting a surrogate pregnant with their then-secret second child in 2021 at the same time Musk’s employee Shivon Zilis was in the same hospital pregnant with then-secret twins fathered by Musk via IVF, unbeknownst to Grimes. (“Perhaps it is no surprise,” Isaacson deadpans, “that Musk decided to fly west that Thanksgiving weekend to deal with the simpler issues of rocket engineering.”) And we discover that Musk and Grimes have a third, previously unreported child, named Techno Mechanicus Musk, bringing Musk’s tally of known offspring to 11.

This being an Isaacson biography, though, it’s clear he intends for “Elon Musk” to be more than a bunch of interesting stories about a controversial guy. He frames it as a character study, a quest to understand and perhaps reconcile the contradictions at Musk’s core. But the central question he sets out to answer in the book’s prologue feels a bit too easy. It’s the same one that lay at the heart of “ Steve Jobs ”: Are Musk’s personal demons and flaws also what make his spectacular achievements possible? Seven pages in, there are no prizes for guessing what Isaacson’s answer will be. Though the destination lacks suspense, the ride is entertaining enough, particularly for those who haven’t closely followed Musk’s high jinks. And despite the book’s length, it zips along thanks to Isaacson’s economical prose and short chapters.

Musk, who at age 5 traipsed solo across Pretoria to reach a cousin’s birthday party after his parents left him home as a punishment, has always had a little crazy in him. To help explain it, Isaacson introduces us early on to Elon’s brutal, “Jekyll-and-Hyde” father, Errol Musk. He’s a man Elon mostly despises but also, in his worst moments, resembles. When Musk’s first wife, Justine, reached her wit’s end with him, she would warn, “You’re turning into your father.”

Elon’s childhood in South Africa reads like the origin story for a superhero, or maybe a supervillain, at least as he and his family members tell it. That may be by design: Musk has a penchant for self-mythologizing, casting himself as the sole hero of complex origin stories like that of Tesla’s founding.

Already, one of the book’s critical passages has sparked geopolitical drama — and an embarrassing public walk-back by Isaacson. In an excerpt from the book published in The Washington Post on Friday , Isaacson recounts how Musk single-handedly foiled a Ukrainian sneak attack on a Russian naval fleet in Crimea by cutting off the Starlink satellite internet service Ukraine’s drones were relying on. Isaacson writes that Musk made the decision because he feared that the attack could lead to nuclear war, based on his conversation weeks earlier with a Russian ambassador.

But when CNN obtained the excerpt and reported on it, Musk tweeted a different account. He said he didn’t cut Ukraine’s Starlink service in Crimea; it was already deactivated there, and he refused the Ukrainians’ emergency request to activate it so they could carry out the attack. Isaacson tweeted Friday that Musk’s version of the story was accurate, meaning the passage in his book is misleading.

The larger concern is whether Isaacson’s heavy reliance on Musk as a primary source throughout his reporting kept him too close to his subject. Swaths of the book are told largely through Musk’s eyes and those of his confidants. And the majority of tales about his exploits cast him as the genius protagonist even as they expose his self-destructive tendencies or his capacity for cruelty.

To the author’s credit, the book boasts a large number of citations for sources and interviews. Isaacson also takes care to include corroborating or conflicting accounts of controversial episodes, such as Musk’s vicious grudge against Tesla’s original founders. (If you ever want to make an enemy for life, try standing between Musk and full credit for a project he was involved in.) And, contrary to some of his most adamant critics, Musk really does seem to possess a remarkable brain for physics, engineering and business — if perhaps not for running a social media firm. Isaacson persuasively dismisses the notion that Musk owes his success largely to inherited wealth, or that he’s a huckster profiting only from the inventions of others. Musk’s companies have thrived both because of and in spite of him.

Isaacson at times interjects his own, sometimes dryly funny, counterpoints to some of Musk’s more outlandish claims. After he quotes Musk enthusing about his far-fetched Hyperloop plan, “This is going to change everything,” Isaacson begins the next paragraph: “It didn’t change everything.” (What it did change, by some reckonings, were California’s plans to build a high-speed rail line, which Musk has acknowledged he sought to undermine.)

In one of his most entertaining and revealing bits of original reporting, Isaacson fills in the backstory behind a series of technical glitches that plagued Twitter in late 2022 and early 2023, and it does not disappoint.

Read an excerpt from “Elon Musk” by Walter Isaacson

Steamrolling past Twitter employees’ warnings, Musk insisted on immediately moving thousands of the company’s computer servers from a Sacramento data center to another facility to save money. When they balked, insisting it would take months to do safely, Musk dragooned a carful of friends and family into canceling their Christmas plans to drive to Sacramento, where he personally disconnected one of the servers with the help of a security guard’s pocket knife. He then called in a team of employees to start loading the rest onto a semi truck and some moving vans.

On many occasions over the years, Musk has horrified deputies with these sorts of stunts, only to be vindicated when they pay off handsomely. But in this case it turned out the employees, whom he had threatened to fire for their timidity, had been right. The move caused cascading glitches in Twitter’s software, including the ones that afflicted a highly anticipated live audio event with presidential candidate Ron DeSantis the following May.

The Musk we know today is different from the Musk Isaacson began following in 2021. Since then, he has lurched rightward politically, embracing conspiracy theories and railing that the “woke mind virus” could unravel civilization; staged a dramatic takeover of Twitter, restoring banned accounts including Donald Trump’s while alienating advertisers and the mainstream media; been accused of sexual misdeeds and revealed as the secret father of multiple additional children; founded a new AI company; and become a power broker in both the Ukraine war and Republican politics. And that’s leaving out a lot.

Isaacson pins the changes at least partly on the pandemic, which drew out Musk’s conspiratorial side, supercharged his Twitter addiction and amped up his natural mistrust of bureaucratic regulations as covid-19 restrictions hampered Tesla production in California and China. In some ways, as Isaacson points out, Musk is becoming more like his father, Errol, whom Isaacson has found in recent years to be descending into full-on paranoia, conspiracism and overt racism.

So what does Isaacson ultimately make of Elon? In a brief, final assessment, Isaacson takes us back to where he started. The tech tycoon’s “epic feats” don’t excuse his “bad behavior,” but “it’s important to understand how the strands are woven together, sometimes tightly.”

A harder but more fruitful question than how to reconcile Musk’s idealism and remarkable achievements with his “demon mode,” as Grimes calls it, might have been: What does it say about our world today that so much depends on a man like Musk? That the fate of electric vehicles, self-driving cars, public infrastructure projects, global space exploration, the rules of online discourse, and military combatants can be altered at the whim of a notoriously whimsical man? And if he ever does go full Errol, will there be anything we can do about it?

By Walter Isaacson

Simon & Schuster. 688 pp. $35

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A South Korean woman says she fell in love with a fake Elon Musk who talked up a storm about building Gigafactories and luxe helicopter rides. Then she gave him $50,000.

• A South Korean woman lost $50,000 after falling in love with a fake Elon Musk.
• The Musk impersonator befriended her on Instagram, where he told her he "contacts fans randomly."
• Fake Musk then claimed he could make the woman rich by helping her invest her money.

A South Korean woman says she lost $50,000 to a con artist who was posing as Elon Musk .

"On July 17 last year, Musk added me as a friend on Instagram. Although I have been a huge fan of Musk after reading his biography, I doubted it at first," the woman, who declined to provide her real name, told South Korean broadcaster KBS in an "In Depth 60 Minutes" interview that aired April 19, per a translation from The Korea Herald .

The woman said she began to believe that she was conversing with the real Musk after the person she was talking to sent her photos of what appeared to be Musk's ID card and images of himself at work.

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"'Musk' talked about his children and about taking a helicopter to work at Tesla or Space X," she told KBS. "He also explained that he contacts fans randomly."

The fake Musk, the woman said, even shared details about a meeting that the real Musk had with South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol in April 2023. The impersonator said Yoon told "Musk" to build Tesla's Gigafactories in Seoul and Jeju.

"'Musk' even said 'I love you, you know that?' when we made a video call," the woman said, referencing a video call with what was likely to be a deepfake of Musk.

The woman said the scammer eventually convinced her to transfer 70 million Korean won, or $50,000, to a bank account he said belonged to one of his Korean employees. The person behind the fake Musk claimed he would make the woman rich by investing her money, she told KBS.

Love scams are a very real problem in the US, too. Romance scammers made off with $1.3 billion from their victims in 2022, according to the Federal Trade Commission .

This incident also isn't the first time someone has hoped to gain fame or fortune by channeling Musk. In China, a Musk doppelgänger named Yilong Ma has been posting videos of himself on TikTok.

The videos have caught the attention of Musk himself, who has questioned if Ma is even a real person.

"I'd like to meet this guy (if he is real). Hard to tell with deepfakes these days," Musk said of Ma in an X post in May 2022.

Watch: How Elon Musk makes and spends his billions

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