Elon Musk runs X, SpaceX, The Boring Company, Tesla, and xAI.
He is the world's richest person with a net worth of $262 billion.
Musk has been divorced three times, dated celebrities, and has at least 11 children with three women.
Tesla CEO Elon Musk is the cofounder of other major companies, including SpaceX.
He was born in 1971 in South Africa. Musk's parents are Maye and Errol, who divorced in 1979. In the 1990s, he founded his first startup, Zip2, with his brother, Kimbal, and began a decadeslong career in tech.
Musk's second venture, online banking company X.com, merged with a startup of Peter Thiel's to form PayPal. When PayPal sold to eBay in 2002, Musk made $165 million.
Musk is the third richest person in the world. He's frequently trading places with other billionaires, but as of July 2024, Musk's net worth stands at $262 billion, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index. That puts him well ahead of Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, as well as French luxury tycoon Bernard Arnault.
Musk's net worth peaked at about $340 billion in November 2021.
X/Twitter
Elon Musk started buying shares in Twitter, now called X, in January 2022 and initiated an acquisition three months later.
By the time Elon Musk took control of Twitter for $44 billion in October 2022, he had actually spent months trying to back out of the agreement. At the start of July, he sent a letter to Twitter purporting to terminate the acquisition. Twitter promptly sued him.
When the sale went through, Musk immediately ousted a number of Twitter executives, including its CEO, CFO, and chief legal officer. In November, Musk issued an ultimatum: work at an "extremely hardcore" rate or accept a three-month severance package. He would go on to lay off about 80% of Twitter's staff.
In May 2023, Musk named Linda Yaccarino as Twitter's new CEO. "Looking forward to working with Linda to transform this platform into X, the everything app," Musk said in a tweet.
In July 2023, Twitter was rebranded to X.
SpaceX
Musk founded SpaceX in 2002, investing $100 million he made from the sale of PayPal.
The company nearly failed. After three unsuccessful launches between 2006 and 2008, funding was running out. Then, on September 28, 2008, SpaceX became the first private company to achieve a successful orbital launch. That same year, SpaceX received a $1.5 billion NASA contract.
"Fate liked us that day," Musk told CNBC when reflecting on the events nine years later.
SpaceX launches now happen on a regular basis. The company publishes a SpaceX launch schedule on its website. Launches typically take place at Cape Canaveral Space Force Base or the Kennedy Space Center in Florida.
SpaceX runs the Starlink satellite internet system that operate in Earth's lower orbit, with a constellation of up to 42,000 planned.
The company launched its first batch of Starlink satellites in 2019 and now has thousands in orbit.
The SpaceX Falcon 9, a partially reusable two-stage rocket, is often used for launches. The Falcon 9 family of rockets is a key asset for NASA in servicing the International Space Station since the retirement of the Space Shuttle program in 2011.
SpaceX is valued at about $180 billion under Musk's unique leadership style.
The company remains private and Musk has said that SpaceX won't file for an IPO until the "Mars Colonial Transporter" is flying regularly. SpaceX's long-term goal is to make colonizing Mars affordable.
The Boring Company
Musk's The Boring Company was created as a subsidiary of SpaceX and later became its own entity. Inspired by LA traffic gridlock, the tunneling venture has several ongoing projects on the West Coast.
In April 2022, the company raised $675 million at a valuation of almost $5.7 billion, according to a Boring Company news release. Boring Company stock is not publicly traded.
In 2018, Musk sold 20,000 Boring Company flamethrowers in just five days. The product, called "Not-A-Flamethrower," has been off the market for years. However, it's acquired something of a cult status among the tech mogul's fans, and some people have been paying hundreds of dollars to buy them on eBay.
Among Musk's other innovative products is a 5'8" humanoid Tesla robot named Optimus, announced in 2021. The robot is designed to help reduce the labor shortage, according to Musk, and keep workers safer.
Musk said in June 2024 he thinks people will think of their personal Optimus robot as "sort of a friend," and remained optimistic they will start shipping next year.
Neuralink
Musk's brain-chip company Neuralink has begun implanting its devices in human skulls — and like many of Musk's ventures, the new technology has been met with both fanfare and skepticism.
Neuralink aims to treat patients with neurological conditions, such as paralysis and blindness. Initially, in the first human trial, Neuralink's goal is to help patients with paralyzed limbs control devices like a computer mouse or keyboard with only their thoughts.
Noland Arbaugh became the first person to receive Neuralink's brain-chip implant in January 2024. The 29-year-old quadriplegic told Business Insider it had helped him regain independence and reconnect socially.
Musk has said he wants Neuralink to ultimately help humans achieve "symbiosis" with artificial intelligence so that they don't get "left behind" as AI evolves over time.
xAI
Musk founded startup xAI in March 2023, which has since launched a chatbot called Grok. In May 2024, xAI announced it had raised $6 billion.
The billionaire wants xAI to build a supercomputer and have it running by fall 2025, powered by Nvidia chips.
Elon Musk's wives and kids
Musk's spouses are Justine Musk, who he met at Queen's University in Ontario, Canada, and Talulah Riley, whom he married in 2010. He met Riley at a bar in London, and the couple divorced and remarried before splitting again.
Five of Musk's children were born during his eight-year marriage with his ex-wife, Justine.
It is unclear if Musk is dating. Musk reportedly split in 2022 with actor Natasha Bassett, who is believed to be his last public girlfriend.
Before that, Musk briefly dated actor Amber Heard in 2017 amid her divorce from actor Johnny Depp. The two first connected on the red carpet of the 2016 Met Gala, which Depp was expected to attend but did not.
He and the musician Grimes started dating in 2018. Since then, they've broken up and gotten back together a few times. They appear to be on reasonable terms again after a contentious legal battle over the three children they share.
Musk quietly had twins in November 2021 with one of his top executives, Shivon Zilis. In June he confirmed he'd had another child with Zilis, meaning he's fathered at least 11 offspring.
