Elon Musk Bio
Elon Reeve Musk (born 28 June 1971) is a technology entrepreneur and business magnate recognized for founding and leading several high-profile companies, including SpaceX, Tesla, X (formerly Twitter), Neuralink, the Boring Company, and xAI. Born in Pretoria, South Africa, he emigrated to Canada and later to the United States, earning degrees from the University of Pennsylvania. Musk founded SpaceX in 2002 and joined Tesla in 2004, serving as chief executive officer and product architect, and his ventures have driven advances in reusable rockets, electric vehicles, satellite internet through Starlink, and brain–machine interfaces. He holds citizenship in South Africa, Canada, and the United States, and resides in Cameron County, Texas.
Elon Musk Early Life and Background
Early Life and Background
Elon Reeve Musk was born on June 28, 1971, in Pretoria, the administrative capital of South Africa. His mother, Maye Musk, is a model and dietitian born in Saskatchewan, Canada, and raised in South Africa, and his father, Errol Musk, is a South African electromechanical engineer, pilot, and property developer. Musk holds both South African and Canadian citizenship from birth. His maternal grandfather, Joshua N. Haldeman, was an American-born Canadian chiropractor, aviator, and political activist who moved to South Africa in 1950.
After his parents divorced in 1979, Elon, aged around 9, chose to live with his father. He later regretted the decision and became estranged from Errol. He has a younger brother, Kimbal, and a younger sister, Tosca, along with four paternal half-siblings. As a child, he was an enthusiastic reader of science fiction and adventure books, and at age ten he developed an interest in computing and video games, teaching himself to program from a VIC-20 user manual. At age twelve, he sold a BASIC-based game called Blastar to PC and Office Technology magazine for approximately $500.
Path to Entrepreneurship
Musk attended Waterkloof House Preparatory School, Bryanston High School, and then Pretoria Boys High School, where he graduated. He applied for a Canadian passport through his mother to avoid South Africa’s mandatory military service, which would have forced him to participate in the apartheid regime. While waiting for his application to be processed, he attended the University of Pretoria for five months.
Musk arrived in Canada in June 1989, working odd jobs on a farm and at a lumber mill before entering Queen’s University in Kingston, Ontario, in 1990. Two years later, he transferred to the University of Pennsylvania, where he studied until 1995 and ultimately received a Bachelor of Arts in physics and a Bachelor of Science in economics from the Wharton School in 1997. In 1994, he held internships in Silicon Valley at Pinnacle Research Institute and Rocket Science Games, and in 1995 he was accepted to a Stanford University graduate program in materials science, which he did not enroll in, choosing instead to join the Internet boom of the 1990s.
Elon Musk Career
Early Career (1995–2002)
In 1995, Musk, his brother Kimbal, and Greg Kouri founded the web software company Zip2 with angel funding, housing the venture in a small rented office in Palo Alto. The company developed an Internet city guide for the newspaper publishing industry, complete with maps, directions, and yellow pages. Compaq acquired Zip2 for $307 million in cash in February 1999, and Musk received $22 million for his 7 percent share.
In 1999, Musk co-founded X.com, an online financial services and e-mail payment company that became one of the first federally insured online banks. The following year, X.com merged with Confinity, whose PayPal service was more popular. Musk returned as CEO of the merged company, but the board ousted him in 2000 and replaced him with Peter Thiel. The company was renamed PayPal in 2001, and eBay acquired PayPal for $1.5 billion in stock in 2002, of which Musk, the largest shareholder with 11.72 percent of shares, received $175.8 million.
SpaceX Breakthrough (2002–2010)
With $100 million of his early fortune, Musk founded SpaceX in May 2002, becoming the company’s chief executive officer and chief engineer. The company attempted its first launch of the Falcon 1 rocket in 2006, and after two more failed attempts that nearly caused Musk to go bankrupt, SpaceX succeeded in launching the Falcon 1 into orbit in 2008. Later that year, SpaceX received a $1.6 billion NASA contract for Falcon 9-launched Dragon spacecraft flights to the International Space Station.
In 2010, the Dragon vehicle docked with the International Space Station, a first for a commercial spacecraft, marking a turning point in commercial spaceflight. Working toward its goal of reusable rockets, SpaceX successfully landed the first stage of a Falcon 9 on a land platform in 2015, and later achieved landings on autonomous spaceport drone ships. In 2018, SpaceX launched the Falcon Heavy, and the inaugural mission carried Musk’s personal Tesla Roadster as a dummy payload.
Tesla Era (2008–Present)
Tesla, Inc., originally Tesla Motors, was incorporated in July 2003 by Martin Eberhard and Marc Tarpenning. Musk led the Series A round of investment in February 2004, invested $6.35 million, became the majority shareholder, and joined the board of directors as chairman. Following escalating conflicts in 2007 and the 2008 financial crisis, Musk assumed leadership of the company as chief executive officer and product architect in 2008. A 2009 lawsuit settlement with Eberhard designated Musk as a Tesla co-founder.
Tesla began delivery of the Roadster, an electric sports car, in 2008, and it was the first mass production all-electric car to use lithium-ion battery cells. Under Musk, Tesla has launched the Model S sedan in 2012, the Model X crossover in 2015, the Model 3 sedan in 2017, the Model Y crossover in 2020, and the Cybertruck pickup in 2023. Since its initial public offering in 2010, Tesla stock has risen significantly, and it became the most valuable carmaker in summer 2020. In November 2025, a Tesla pay package worth potentially $1 trillion for Musk was approved, to be received over 10 years if he meets specific goals.
Notable Events and Milestones
In 2015, SpaceX began development of the Starlink constellation of low Earth orbit satellites to provide satellite internet access, with the first large constellation deployed in May 2019. In 2020, SpaceX launched its first crewed flight, the Demo-2, becoming the first private company to place astronauts into orbit and dock a crewed spacecraft with the International Space Station. During the Russian invasion of Ukraine, Musk provided free Starlink service to the country, permitting internet access and communication at a yearly cost to SpaceX of $400 million.
Elon Musk Career Highlights
Career Highlights
Across his career, Musk has co-founded or founded multiple billion-dollar companies, including Zip2, X.com (later PayPal), SpaceX, Tesla, SolarCity, Neuralink, the Boring Company, and xAI. He acquired Twitter in 2022 for approximately $44 billion and rebranded it as X in 2023. Forbes estimates his net worth to be around $852 billion as of February 2026, making him the wealthiest person in the world.
Other Achievements
Musk was selected as Time’s Person of the Year for 2021, and the publication listed him among the most influential people in the world in 2010, 2013, 2018, and 2021. He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 2018 and elected to the National Academy of Engineering in 2022, and he received an honorary doctorate in engineering and technology from Yale University in 2015.
Elon Musk Family
Family Background and Lineage
Elon Musk’s father, Errol Musk, is a South African electromechanical engineer, pilot, sailor, consultant, emerald dealer, and property developer, and was elected to the Pretoria City Council as a representative of the anti-apartheid Progressive Party. His mother, Maye Musk, is a model and dietitian born in Saskatchewan, Canada. Musk’s maternal grandfather, Joshua N. Haldeman, was an American-born Canadian chiropractor, aviator, and political activist in the technocracy movement who moved to South Africa in 1950.
Personal Life
Musk has fathered at least 14 children. He married Canadian author Justine Wilson in 2000, and they had six children together, including a son, Nevada Musk, who died of sudden infant death syndrome in 2002, twins born in 2004 including Vivian Jenna Wilson, and triplets born in 2006. Musk married English actress Talulah Riley in 2010, divorced her in 2012, remarried her in 2013, and finalized a second divorce in 2016. From 2018, Musk was in a relationship with Canadian musician Grimes, with whom he has three children, including a son named X Æ A-Xii born in 2020.