Born on June 28, 1971, Elon Reeve Musk (/ˈiːlɒn mʌsk/) is a well-known businessman who holds important positions in SpaceX and Tesla, Inc. In addition, he is famous for being the owner of X Corp., which runs the social media network X, which was originally Twitter, and for having helped develop the Boring Company, xAI, Neuralink, and OpenAI. According to Forbes, Musk is the richest person in the world, with an estimated net worth of US$421.2 billion as of January 2025.
Musk, who was born in Pretoria and briefly attended the University of Pretoria, is a member of the affluent Musk family from South Africa. He arrived in Canada at the age of 18, obtaining citizenship through his mother, Maye, who was born in Canada. He enrolled at Queen’s University in Canada two years later. After transferring, Musk earned bachelor’s degrees in physics and economics from the University of Pennsylvania. He never attended Stanford University after moving to California in 1995, but he and his brother Kimbal co-founded Zip2, an online city guide software company. Compaq paid $307 million to acquire the startup in 1999. Musk co-founded the direct bank X.com that same year. In 2000, Confinity and X.com combined to become PayPal. Musk obtained U.S. citizenship in 2002, and that same October, eBay paid $1.5 billion to acquire PayPal. In 2002, Musk established SpaceX, a spaceflight services company, with $100 million raised from the sale of PayPal.
Musk provided the majority of the original funding and took on the role of chairman of the electric vehicle manufacturer Tesla Motors, Inc. (later Tesla, Inc.) in 2004 as an early investor. He went on to become the CEO in 2008 after serving as the product architect. Musk was a co-founder of SolarCity, a solar energy startup founded in 2006 that Tesla purchased in 2016 to become Tesla Energy. He put out a high-speed vactrain hyperloop transportation plan in 2013. He was a co-founder of the nonprofit artificial intelligence research firm OpenAI in 2015. The next year, Musk co-founded the Boring Company, a tunnel construction company, and Neuralink, a neurotechnology startup that develops brain–computer interfaces. The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) filed a lawsuit against Musk in 2018, claiming that he had misrepresented that he had obtained capital for a private buyout of Tesla. Musk resigned as Tesla’s chairman and paid a $20 million fine to resolve the dispute. He paid $44 billion for Twitter in 2022, merged the business into the newly established X Corp., and changed the service’s name to X the next year. Musk established the artificial intelligence startup xAI in March 2023.
Musk has become a divisive character due to his words and deeds. He has come under fire for propagating conspiracy theories, endorsing antisemitic and transphobic remarks, and making unfounded and deceptive claims, including false information on COVID-19. Due to significant staff reductions, a rise in hateful tweets, misinformation, and disinformation on the platform, and modifications to services like verification, his ownership of Twitter has generated controversy.
Musk entered American politics in early 2024 as a vocal and monetary backer of Donald Trump, who in October 2024 became Musk’s second-largest individual contribution. Following his election victory in November 2024, Trump declared that Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy would co-lead his proposed Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) advisory board. The DOGE’s mission is to eliminate regulations to cut costs and improve government efficiency.
Early life and education
The administrative capital of South Africa, Pretoria, is where Elon Reeve Musk was born on June 28, 1971. He has Pennsylvania Dutch and British ancestry. Maye (née Haldeman), his mother, is a dietician and model who was born in Saskatchewan, Canada, and brought up in South Africa. A rental lodge at the Timbavati Private Nature Reserve was partially owned by his father, Errol Musk, a South African electromechanical engineer, aviator, sailor, consultant, emerald dealer, and real estate developer. Elon has a younger sister named Tosca and a younger brother named Kimbal. Elon has four half-siblings from his father.
When Elon Musk was a child, the Musk family was rich. Errol recalled in 2023 that the agreement he made was to collect “a portion of the emeralds produced at three small mines,” even though Elon and Errol had previously claimed that Errol was a co-owner of an emerald mine in Zambia. Errol, who represents the anti-apartheid Progressive Party in the Pretoria City Council, has stated that his kids disliked apartheid as much as their father did.
Joshua N. Haldeman, Elon’s maternal grandpa, was a Canadian of American descent who, in a single-engine AviaBellanca aircraft, took his family on historic trips to Australia and Africa. Haldeman passed away when Elon was just a child. In his account of his visits to a wilderness school, Elon referred to it as a “paramilitary Lord of the Flies” where “bullying was a virtue” and kids were urged to fight over food.
Elon made the decision to live mostly with his father following his parents’ divorce in 1980. Elon later began to regret his choice and lost contact with his father. Bryanston High School was where Elon went to school. Elon was hospitalized for his injuries in one incident when he and his pals got into a fight with a fellow student and the youngster threw him down concrete steps and badly beat him. After being released from the hospital, Elon recounted his father scolding him, stating, “I had to stand for an hour as he yelled at me and called me an idiot and told me that I was just worthless.”Errol said, “The boy had just lost his father to suicide and Elon had called him stupid,” but he denied criticizing Elon. Elon was prone to labeling others as unintelligent. How could I possible hold that child accountable? Elon was enrolled at a private school following the incident.
Elon was a voracious reader who subsequently credited his success to having read The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, The Lord of the Rings, and the Foundation series. He became interested in computers and video games when he was ten years old, learning how to program from the VIC-20 user manual. Elon sold Blastar, a BASIC-based game, to PC and Office Technology magazine when he was twelve years old for about $500.
Education
Musk went to Bryanston High School, Waterkloof House Preparatory School, and finally Pretoria Boys High School, from where he graduated. Musk had a B on his senior math certification and a 61 in Afrikaans, indicating that he was a decent but unexceptional student. In order to circumvent South Africa’s necessary military duty, which would have compelled him to take part in the apartheid state, and to facilitate his immigration to the United States, Musk sought for a Canadian passport through his mother, who was born in Canada. He spent five months at the University of Pretoria as he awaited the processing of his application.
Musk came to Canada in June 1989, took odd jobs at a lumber plant and a farm, and made contact with a second cousin in Saskatchewan. He enrolled in Kingston, Ontario’s Queen’s University in 1990. He moved to the University of Pennsylvania two years later, where he remained until 1995. The University of Pennsylvania did not grant Musk a Bachelor of Arts in physics and a Bachelor of Science in economics from the Wharton School until 1997, despite Musk’s claims that he received his degrees in 1995. He allegedly prepared a business plan for an electronic book-scanning service akin to Google Books and threw big, ticketed home parties to help cover tuition.
Musk interned at two Silicon Valley companies in 1994: Palo Alto-based firm Rocket Science Games and energy storage business Pinnacle Research Institute, which studied electrolytic supercapacitors for energy storage. He was accepted to Stanford University’s doctoral program in materials science in 1995, however he chose not to enroll. Musk made the decision to join the Internet boom and applied for a position at Netscape, but it is said that he never heard back. After not enrolling at Stanford, Musk was found to have no legal right to stay and work in the United States, according to the Washington Post. Musk retorted that his student visa changed to an H1-B and that he was permitted to work at that time. Musk stated that he was on a student visa at the time, according to multiple former shareholders and business associates.
Business career
Zip2
Musk, Greg Kouri, and his brother Kimbal established Global Link Information Network (later rebranded as Zip2) in 1995. The business created an online city guide that included yellow pages, maps, and instructions and promoted it to media. Musk coded the website every night while they were working in a modest Palo Alto office that they rented. Kimbal insisted that Musk and his brother were working as illegal aliens, although Musk characterized their immigration statuses during this time as a “gray area.” An email that Musk provided as evidence in a 2005 defamation trial and the funding agreement from venture capital firm Mohr Davidow Ventures were used in an October 2024 Washington Post exposé that claimed Musk had engaged in unlawful labor while establishing the business.
Zip2 eventually secured deals with the Chicago Tribune and the New York Times. Musk’s aspirations to become CEO were blocked, but the brothers convinced the board of directors to forego a merger with Citysearch. In February 1999, Compaq paid $307 million in cash to acquire Zip2, and Musk got $22 million for his 7% stake.
X.com and PayPal
Musk used $12 million of his earnings from the Compaq acquisition to co-found X.com, an online financial services and email payment startup, in March 1999.I n its first few months of existence, X.com, one of the first federally insured internet banks, attracted over 200,000 customers.
The online bank’s name raised doubts among Musk’s acquaintances, who feared it could have been confused with a pornographic website. Musk dismissed their worries, stating that the name was intended to be simple, memorable, and simple to type. He also liked the e-mail addresses that came from it, like “e@x.com”. Despite having founded the business, investors saw Musk as inexperienced, and before the end of the year, they had replaced him with Bill Harris, the CEO of Intuit.
Since Confinity’s online bank’s money-transfer service, PayPal, was more well-liked than X.com’s, the two companies merged in 2000 to prevent rivalry. After then, Musk came back as the combined company’s CEO. Peter Thiel, a co-founder of Confinity, resigned as a result of his preference for Microsoft software over Unix-based software, which strained relations inside the company. The board fired Musk and installed Thiel in September 2000 as a result of the company’s growing technological problems and disjointed commercial plan. Under Thiel, the business concentrated on providing money transfers, and in 2001 it changed its name to PayPal.
When eBay purchased PayPal in 2002 for $1.5 billion in stock, Musk, who held 11.7% of the company’s shares, received $176 million. More than 15 years later, in 2017, Musk paid PayPal for the “sentimental value” of the X.com name. Musk talked about his intention to develop “X, the everything app” in 2022.
SpaceX
Musk got associated with the nonprofit Mars Society at the beginning of 2001, and they talked about funding plans to put a plant growth chamber on Mars. Along with Jim Cantrell, Adeo Ressi, and Michael D. Griffin, who would later become the Administrator of NASA, he proceeded to Moscow, Russia in October of that year to purchase reconditioned intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs) that could launch the greenhouse payloads into orbit. After meeting with Lavochkin and ISC Kosmotras, the party left without an agreement to buy Russian launch services since Musk was viewed as an amateur.
The team went back to Russia in February 2002 to search for three ICBMs. Musk turned down a $8 million offer for one rocket during their subsequent meeting with ISC Kosmotras. Instead, he made the decision to launch a business that would manufacture reasonably priced rockets. Musk became the CEO and chief engineer of SpaceX after founding the firm in May 2002 with $100 million of his own funds.
In 2006, SpaceX made their maiden attempt to launch the Falcon 1 rocket. Despite the rocket’s failure to enter Earth orbit, NASA, which is currently headed by Administrator Michael D. Griffin, gave it a contract for the Commercial Orbital Transportation Services program. The Falcon 1 was successfully launched into orbit by SpaceX in 2008, following two more unsuccessful efforts that almost led to Musk and his company going bankrupt. NASA awarded SpaceX a $1.6 billion Commercial Resupply Services contract later that year for 12 missions of their Dragon spacecraft and Falcon 9 rocket to the ISS, which would replace the Space Shuttle once it retired in 2011. A first for a commercial spacecraft, the Dragon ship docked with the ISS in 2012.
In 2015, SpaceX made a successful landing of the first stage of a Falcon 9 on a land platform, advancing its objective of reusable rockets. Autonomous spaceport drone ships, an ocean-based recovery platform, made subsequent landings. SpaceX launched the Falcon Heavy in 2018, with Musk’s own Tesla Roadster serving as a dummy cargo for the first voyage.
In order to replace the Falcon 9 and the Falcon Heavy, SpaceX has been working on Starship, a reusable, extremely heavy-lift launch vehicle, since 2019. The first private corporation to fly astronauts into orbit and connect a crewed spaceship with the ISS was SpaceX, which launched the Demo-2, its first crewed voyage, in 2020. NASA gave SpaceX a $843 million contract in 2024 to deorbit the ISS as its useful life was coming to an end.
Starlink
In order to provide satellite Internet connection, SpaceX started developing the Starlink constellation of low Earth orbit satellites in 2015. The first two prototype satellites were launched in February 2018. The first 60 operational satellites were launched in May 2019, marking the first significant deployment of a portion of the constellation and the launch of a second group of test satellites. In 2020, SpaceX anticipated that the design, construction, and deployment of the constellation would cost $10 billion over the course of ten years. The International Astronomical Union is among the skeptics who claim that Starlink obstructs the sky and puts spacecraft at risk of collision.
Musk deployed Starlink terminals to Ukraine to facilitate communication and Internet access during the Russian invasion of that country in March 2022. Musk said in October 2022 that SpaceX had delivered over 20,000 satellite terminals to Ukraine along with free data transfer subscriptions, which had cost the company $80 million. Musk publicly said that SpaceX would continue to offer Starlink to Ukraine for free, at an annual cost of $400 million to itself, after requesting that the US Department of Defense cover further units and future subscriptions on Ukraine’s behalf. At the same time, Musk referred to himself as “a free speech absolutist” and refused to prohibit Russian official media on Starlink.
Musk rejected Ukraine’s request in September 2023 to activate Starlink satellites over Crimeatoo strike Russian navy ships anchored in the port of Sevastopol, claiming that Russia would launch a nuclear strike in retaliation.
Tesla
In July 2003, Martin Eberhard and Marc Tarpenning incorporated Tesla, Inc., formerly kesla Motors. Before Musk became involved, both men actively participated in the early stages of the company’s development. In February 2004, Musk spearheaded the $6.35 million Series A round of funding, took the majority stake, and was appointed chairman of Tesla’s board of directors. Although he was not heavily involved in day-to-day commercial operations, Musk played an active role in the company and oversaw the creation of the Roadster product.
Eberhard was fired from the company in 2007 after a string of increasingly heated disputes during the 2007–2008 financial crisis. In 2008, Musk became the company’s CEO and product architect. Musk, Tarpenning, and two other people were named co-founders of Tesla in a 2009 court settlement with Eberhard. Musk was the CEO with the longest tenure of any automaker in the world as of 2019. While Musk remained CEO, he ostentatiously upgraded his title to “Technoking” in 2021.
In 2008, Tesla started shipping its electric sports automobile, the Roadster. It was the first mass-produced all-electric automobile to employ lithium-ion battery cells,and iold roughly 2,500 units. In 2012, Tesla started shipping its four-door Model S sedan. The Model X, a crossover, was introduced in 2015. In 2017, the Model 3, a mass-market sedan, was introduced. The Model 3 became the world’s best-selling plug-in electric vehicle in 2020, nd ite first electric vehicle to sell one million units worldwide in June 2021. Launched in 2020, the fifth vehicle was the Model Y crossover, which became the best-selling vehicle of all time and the best-selling electric car in December 2023. Delivered in November 2023, the Cybertruck is an all-electric pickup truck that was first shown in 2019. TeUnder Musk’s leadership, sla has built several Gigafactories, or factories for lithium-ion batteries and electric vehicles, under Musk’s leadership.
Tesla’s stock has increased dramatically since its 2010 IPO; in the summer of 2020, it surpassed all other automakers in value and joined the S&P 500. It became the sixth firm in US history to surpass a $1 trillion market valuation in October 2021. Musk suggested selling a portion of his Tesla stake on Twitter in November 2021. Musk sold $6.9 billion worth of Tesla stock in a week after over 3.5 million Twitter accounts backed the sale. By year’s end, he had sold $16.4 billion worth of stock, hitting the 10% objective. The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) was looking into Musk and his brother Kimbal for potential insider trading in connection with the deal, according to a February 2022 Wall Street Journal article. Musk introduced Optimus, a robot that Tesla was developing, in 2022. Musk expressed interest in making investments in India “as soon as humanly possible” at a June 2023 meeting with Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi in New York City.
SEC and shareholder lawsuits regarding tweets
The SEC sued Musk in 2018 after he claimed in a tweet that money had been obtained for the possible takeover of Tesla. The complaint aimed to prevent Musk from holding the position of CEO of publicly traded firms, describing the tweet as inaccurate, misleading, and detrimental to investors. Musk rsettledwith the SEC two days later without acknowledging or refuting the accusations made by the SEC. The SEC inquiry was prompted by the $20 million penalties imposed on Musk and Tesla, as well as Musk’s forced resignation as chairman of Tesla for three years, while he wcould stillcontinue as CEO. In interviews, Musk has said that he has no regrets about publishing the tweet that led to the SEC’s probe.
A joint agreement between Musk and the SEC eventually clarified the details of the previous agreement, including a list of topics about which Musk needed preclearance. In 2020, a judge blocked a lawsuit alleging that Musk’s tweet about Tesla’s stock price (“too high imo”) violated the agreement. According to Freedom of Information Act (FOIA)-released records, the SEC concluded Musk had subsequently violated the agreement twice by tweeting about “Tesla’s solar roof production volumes and its stock price.” In 2019, Musk said in a tweet that he would build half a million cars that year. In response, the SEC asked a court to hold him in contempt for violating the terms of the 2018 settlement agreement.
SolarCity and Tesla Energy
When his cousins Lyndon and Peter Rive launched SolarCity in 2006, Musk supplied the first idea and funding. The second-biggest supplier of solar power systems in the US bin2013 was SolarCity. Musk advocated i014 for SolarCity to construct a state-of-the-art production facility in Buffalo, New York, three times as large as the biggest solar plant in the US. The factory’s construction was finished in 2017, having begun in 2014. Up to the beginning of 2020, it fwasa joint venture with Panasonic.
When the news broke that Tesla had paid $2 billion to acquire SolarCity and combine it with its battery division to form Tesla Energy, the stock price of Tesla fell more than 10%. At the time, SolarCity was having liquidity problems, and several shareholder groups sued Musk and Tesla’s directors, claiming that the acquisition was made only for Musk’s benefit and at the expense of Tesla and its shareholders. In January 2020, the directors of Tesla reached a settlement, leaving Musk as the only defendant, and two years later, the court decided in Musk’s favor.
Neuralink
Musk invested $100 million to co-found the neurotechnology startup Neuralink in 2016. Beuralink seeks to combine artificial intelligence (AI) awithhthe human bbrain by developing gadgets integrated into the rain. Such technology might improve memory or enable software communication between the devices. Additionally, the organization wants to create tools to treat neurological disorders like dementia, Alzheimer’s disease, and spinal cord injuries.
Musk revealed plans in 2019 to develop a gadget that would resemble a sewing machine and be able to implant strands into a person’s brain. Musk was identified as the only author of a paper published in October 2019 that summarized part of Neuralink’s research, which infuriated the company’s researchers. During a live demonstration in 2020, Musk referred to one of their early gadgets as “a Fitbit in your skull” that has the potential to cure blindness, deafness, paralysis, and other afflictions ishortly According to the MIT Technology Review, these statements were deemed “neuroscience theater” and “highly speculative” by numerous neuroscientists and journals. Musk showed off a pig twitha Neuralink implant, wmonitoringsmell-related brain activity. Neuralink declared i022 that clinical trials would start by the year’s end.
Neuralink has also tested macaque monkeys at the Primate Research Center at the University of California, Davis. The business published a video in 2021 showing a macaque using a Neuralink implant to play the video game ,,Pong. There have been allegations of animal abuse as a result of the company’s animal experiments, which have killed some monkeys. The Animal Welfare Act has allegedly been broken by Neuralink’s animal experiments, according to the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine. Workers claim that Musk’s urge to speed evelopment has resulted in poorly executed studies and needless animal deaths. A government investigation into potential animal welfare violations by Neuralink was started in 2022. The Food and Drug Administration authorized Neuralink to begin human trials in September 2023, with a six-year study in the works.
The Boring Company
Musk announced plans for specialized, underground, high-occupancy vehicles that could travel up to 150 miles per hour (240 km/h) and avoid above-ground traffic in big cities when he formed the Boring Company in 2017 to build tunnels. Since there were no permissions needed, the firm started talking to regulatory agencies early in 2017 and stbeganuilding a 30-foot (9.1 m) wide, 50-foot (15 m) long, and 15-foot (4.6 m) deep “test trench” on the grounds of SpaceX’s offices. In 2018, the 3.2-kilometer (less than two-mile) Los Angeles tunnel was opened to reporters. It was said to be a bumpy ride at less-than-ideal speeds and was powered by Tesla Model Xs.
Chicago and West Los Angeles tunnel projects tnnounced in 2018 have been canceled. But in early 2021, a tunnel beneath the Las Vegas Convention Center was finished. Additional tunnel system additions have been authorized by local authorities.
Twitter / X
As early as 2017, Musk had voiced interest in purchasing Twitter and had questioned the company’s adherence to free speech. He had also been advised to purchase Twitter in order to curb “woke-ism” by his ex-wife, Talulah Riley. Musk began buying Twitter stock in January 2022, and by April, he had 9.2% of the company, making him the biggest shareholder. The biggest intraday price increase in Twitter’s history since the company’s 2013 IPO occurred when this was made public. Musk reached an agreement on April 4 that would allow him to join the board of directors of Twitter and forbid him from purchasing more than 14.9% of the business. But Musk launched a buyout proposal to purchase all of Twitter’s stock at $54.20 per share on April 13 with an offer of $43 billion. The board of Twitter responded by enacting a “poison pill” shareholder rights proposal that would make it more costly for an individual investor to control above 15% of the business without the board’s consent. However, Musk was able to complete his bid for almost $44 billion before the end of the month. This included $21 billion in equity funding and roughly $12.5 billion in loans secured by his Tesla stock.
In response to the deal, Tesla’s stock market value plummeted by more than $100 billion the next day. Following his criticism of Twitter CEO Vijaya Gadde’s rules in a message to his 86 million followers, some of them harassed her in a racist and sexist manner. Musk said the purchase was “on hold” exactly one month after announcing the buyout, after it was revealed that 5% of Twitter’s daily active users were spam accounts. In July, he sent notice that he was ending the deal, despite his original affirmation that he was committed to the acquisition. Twitter’s board of directors answered that they were determined to hold him to the arrangement. Twitter filed a formal lawsuit against Musk in the Delaware Court of Chancery on July 12, 2022, alleging that Musk had broken a legally binding contract to acquire Twitter. Musk changed his mind once more in October 2022 and offered to buy Twitter for $54.20 per share. On October 27, the acquisition was formally finalized.
Musk became the CEO of Twitter after firing numerous high-ranking Twitter personnel, including CEO Parag Agrawal, right after the acquisition. During this time, he implemented a $7.99 monthly membership for a “blue check” and let go of a large number of employees. Musk reinstated accounts like The Babylon Bee and relaxed content moderation. Numerous extremists have been confirmed by Twitter, according to the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC), and hate speech on the site has escalated since his takeover.
Internal documents about Twitter’s handling of the Hunter Biden laptop issue in the run-up to the 2020 presidential election were made public by Musk in December 2022. Journalists Matt Taibbi, Bari Weiss, Michael Shellenberger, and others shared their thoughts on these internal documents on Twitter as the Twitter Files. Musk and other Republicans claimed the records demonstrated that the FBI had ordered Twitter to delete a New York Post article on the laptop, so engaging in government censorship. In a later court filing, Twitter lawyers refuted the accusation, and Taibbi stated that he had examined the materials and found no evidence to back it up. Taibbi and Shellenberger testified at hearings on the Twitter Files held by the U.S. House Committee on the Judiciary on March 9, 2023.
After a Twitter poll he posted revealed that most users wanted him to resign as CEO, Musk pledged to do so in late 2022. Five months later, Musk became executive chairman and chief technology officer (CTO), resigning his job as CEO and replacing it with veteran NBCUniversal executive Linda Yaccarino.
Media Matters for America “manipulated” the X platform by using accounts that followed well-known brands and “resorted to endlessly scrolling and refreshing” the feed until it discovered advertisements next to extremist posts, according to a lawsuit filed by X in a U.S. District Court in Texas on November 20, 2023.
In August 2024, the Wall Street Journal stated that Musk’s $13 billion loan to purchase Twitter “is now considered the worst deal in merger finance that banks have participated in since the 2008 to ’09 financial crisis.” The article also stated that “you can certainly say things have not gone according to plan” despite the fact that “the allure of banking Elon Musk, providing capital for him to buy a company, not only would reward them handsomely if things went according to plan.” “A vaporization of wealth that has little parallel outside the realm of economic or industry-specific crashes, or devastating corporate scandals” was the headline of the September 2024 Washington Post article describing the company’s $24 billion equity value loss. According to Fidelity Investments’ estimation of the worth of its ownership stake in X two years after the acquisition, the company had lost 79% of its original value.
Leadership style
Musk has referred to himself as a “nano-manager” and is frequently characterized as a micromanager. His method has been described as autocratic by the New York Times. Musk doesn’t create official company plans. In defiance of the advice of his advisors, he has pushed staff members to use the company’s vocabulary and started ambitious, pricey, and hazardous projects—like taking front-facing radar out of Tesla Autopilot. His businesses transfer the majority of their production in-house as a result of his concentration on vertical integration. Although SpaceX’s rocket was able to save money as a result, Tesla’s internal business software has experienced numerous usability issues after vertical integration (as of 2018).
It has been said that Musk treats his staff members, with whom he interacts directly via bulk emails, in a “carrot and stick” fashion, rewarding those “who offer constructive criticism” while simultaneously firing, threatening, and cursing at them on the spur of the moment. Musk stated that he wants his workers to put in long hours—up to 80 hours a week. He frequently fires people in anger, as was the case with the Model 3 “production hell” in 2018, and requires his new hires to sign stringent non-disclosure agreements. Musk stated in 2022 that he intended to lay off 10% of Tesla’s employees because he was worried about the state of the economy. In the same month, he threatened to dismiss workers who did not put in 40 hours a week in the office and suspended remote work at SpaceX and Tesla. In early 2024, he let go of over 10% of Tesla’s employees.
Some have applauded Musk’s leadership, attributing success to Tesla and his other ventures, while others have attacked him, finding his managerial choices to be “showing a lack of human understanding” and him to be cold-hearted. There are accounts of Musk reprimanding staff members in the 2021 book Power Play: Tesla, Elon Musk, and the Bet of the Century. According to the Wall Street Journal, Musk’s engineers criticized him for putting customers’ “lives at risk” when he persisted on calling his cars “self-driving.” As a result, some staff quit in 2017.
Other activities
Musk Foundation
Musk is the president of the Musk Foundation, which he established in 2001 with the following stated goals: to support research, development, and advocacy (for causes such as pediatrics, human space exploration, renewable energy, and “safe artificial intelligence”); to support science and engineering education initiatives; and to supply solar-power energy systems in disaster areas.
The foundation received 350 gifts as of 2020. Nonprofits involved in education or scientific research received around half of them. His alma institution, the University of Pennsylvania, the Wikimedia Foundation, and his brother Kimbal’s charity organization, Big Green, are among the notable recipients. Nearly half of the $25 million that the foundation donated to nonprofits between 2002 and 2018 went to Musk’s OpenAI, which was then a nonprofit. Additionally, the Foundation set aside $100 million in donations to build a new university in Texas for higher education.
Musk made the Giving Pledge in 2012, pledging to donate the majority of his fortune to worthy organizations either in his will or during his lifetime. He has donated $100 million to the Xprize Foundation to support advancements in carbon capture technology.
“The Musk Foundation is almost entertaining in its simplicity and yet is strikingly opaque,” Vox wrote in February 2021, pointing out that the website’s plain-text content amounted to just 33 words. Since Musk had donated less than 1% of his total worth, Forbes awarded him a philanthropy score of 1 in 2020. According to regulatory documents, Musk gave $5.7 billion worth of Tesla shares to charity in November 2021. But all of it went to his own foundation, according to Bloomberg News, increasing the Musk Foundation’s assets to $9.4 billion by the end of 2021. In that year, the foundation gave $160 million to charity organizations. Over half of the foundation’s money in 2021 and 2022 went to causes related to Musk, his family, or his enterprises, according to a report by The New York Times. In 2022, the Musk Foundation donated $230 million less than the legal minimum needed to maintain tax-deductible status.
Hyperloop
Musk revealed plans for a vactrain in August 2013 and tasked a dozen engineers from SpaceX and Tesla with laying the theoretical groundwork and developing preliminary concepts. Musk introduced the idea later that year and called it the Hyperloop. A white paper containing the system’s alpha design was uploaded to the blogs of SpaceX and Tesla. In addition to outlining a hypothetical path where such a transportation system may be constructed between Greater Los Angeles and the San Francisco Bay Area, the study scoped out the technology and estimated the cost at $6 billion. If the plan is technically possible at the stated costs, the Hyperloop would be more affordable than any other form of transportation for such vast distances. Musk hoped Hyperloop would “make the public and legislators rethink the high-speed train” project that was then in vogue in California and consider more “creative” alternatives, according to biographer Ashlee Vance.
Musk launched a design competition in 2015 for students and others to construct Hyperloop pods that would run on a mile-long track sponsored by SpaceX. The competition would run from 2015 to 2017. In January 2017, Musk declared that the business has begun a tunnel project, with Hawthorne Municipal Airport as its destination, and the track was put into use. Musk claimed to have “verbal government approval” in July 2017 to construct a Hyperloop that would connect New York City to Washington, D.C., with stops in Philadelphia and Baltimore. In 2021, the Boring Company’s website stopped mentioning the anticipated DC-to-Baltimore leg. In 2022, the tunnel project to Hawthorne was abandoned, and it will now be used to create parking spaces for SpaceX employees.
The Hyperloop concept has drawn criticism from mobility experts due to its poor passenger capacity, planning complexity, potential safety concerns, and exorbitant prices. “It gives me pause to think that otherwise intelligent people are buying into this kind of utopian vision,” said Jose Gomez-Ibanez, a Harvard professor of planning and public affairs.
OpenAI and xAI
Then, in December 2015, Musk co-founded OpenAI, a non-profit artificial intelligence (AI) research company that aims to develop artificial general intelligence that is safe and beneficial to humanity, with a focus on democratizing artificial superintelligence systems against governments and corporations. Musk pledged $1 billion in funding to OpenAI, and in 2023, he tweeted that he had donated a total of $100 million to the company, although TechCrunch later reported that, based on its own investigation of public records, “only $15 million” of OpenAI’s funding could be definitively traced to Musk.
As Tesla grew more involved in AI through Tesla Autopilot, Musk resigned from the OpenAI board in 2018 to avoid potential future conflicts with his position as CEO of Tesla. Since then, OpenAI has made tremendous strides in machine learning, creating neural networks like DALL-E, which creates digital images from natural language descriptions, and ChatGPT, which generates text that is human-like.
Elon Musk established xAI, an artificial intelligence startup, on July 12, 2023, with the goal of creating a generative AI program that rivals current products like ChatGPT. Google and OpenAI engineers were employed by the startup. Musk raised money from SpaceX and Tesla investors.
On February 29, 2024, Musk sued OpenAI, its Chief Executive Sam Altman, and its President Greg Brockman. He accused the firm of breaking its founding agreement by prioritizing money over AI safety.
Tham Luang cave rescue and defamation case
Musk organized his staff to construct a miniature submarine in July 2018 in order to aid in the rescue of kids who were stranded in a flooded tunnel in Thailand. The international rescue diving team’s head, Richard Stanton, urged Musk to help build the vehicle as a contingency in case the floods got worse. Stanton, however, stated that Musk’s involvement “distracted from the rescue effort” and came to the conclusion that the mini-submarine would not succeed. In eight hours, engineers from the Boring Company and SpaceX constructed the mini-submarine out of a Falcon 9 liquid oxygen transfer tube, which they then personally transported to Thailand. In the end, Thai officials refused to utilize the submarine, claiming that it was impractical for the rescue effort. Musk was one of 187 individuals who were given various honors by the King of Thailand in March 2019 for their contributions to the rescue operation.
Musk “had no conception of what the cave passage was like” and “can stick his submarine where it hurts,” according to British recreational caver Vernon Unsworth, who had been exploring the cave for the past six years and had played a crucial advisory role in the operation. Unsworth criticized the submarine on CNN shortly after the rescue, calling it nothing more than a futile public relations stunt. Musk called Unsworth a “pedo guy” and said on Twitter that the device would have functioned. He then removed the tweets, expressed regret, and removed his replies to software engineer Cher Scarlett’s critical tweets that had led to harassment from his followers. Musk later referred to Unsworth as a “child rapist” and claimed to have married a youngster in an email to BuzzFeed News.
Unsworth sued in September for defamation and demanded $190 million. Musk said that “‘pedo guy’ was a common insult used in South Africa when I was growing up … synonymous with ‘creepy old man’ and is used to insult a person’s appearance and demeanor.”Musk once more expressed regret for the tweet to Unsworth throughout the trial. Musk was found not guilty by the jury in December of 2019.
2018 cannabis incident
Musk appeared to smoke a marijuana during an appearance on The Joe Rogan Experience podcast in September 2018. According to Musk’s 2022 statement, the Drug-Free Workplace Act of 1988 mandated that he and other SpaceX employees submit to random drug testing for approximately a year after the incident. “I don’t smoke pot,” Musk stated in a 2019 60 Minutes interview. I have no idea how to smoke weed, as anyone who listened to the podcast could see.
Music
Musk posted the rap song “RIP Harambe” to SoundCloud in March 2019 under the name Emo G Records. The killing of Harambe the gorilla and the ensuing Internet hype around the incident are discussed in the song. Musk released the EDM song “Don’t Doubt Ur Vibe” the next year, which featured his own vocals and lyrics. TechCrunch stated that it was “not a bad representation of the genre,” but Guardian reviewer Alexi Petridis called it “indistinguishable… from umpteen competent but unthrilling bits of bedroom electronica posted elsewhere on SoundCloud.”
Private jet
In August 2020, Musk purchased a second private plane, which is held by Falcon Landing LLC, a firm associated with SpaceX. His extensive use of the jets, which traveled more than 150,000 miles in 2018 alone, and the resulting consumption of fossil fuels have drawn criticism. ElonJet tracks Musk’s flight utilization on social media. Musk banned the ElonJet account on Twitter and the accounts of journalists who posted stories about the incident, including Donie O’Sullivan, Keith Olbermann, and journalists from The New York Times, The Washington Post, CNN, and The Intercept, after claiming that his son X Æ A-Xii had been harassed by a stalker after the account shared the airport where his jet had landed. The reporting was compared to doxxing by Musk. Police don’t think the account and the alleged stalker are related. Later, Musk conducted a Twitter survey to determine whether or not the journalists’ accounts should be restored, and the results showed that they should.
Company towns
Following 2020, Musk and his businesses paid $2.5 billion for thousands of acres of land just outside Austin, Texas. According to The Wall Street Journal, work on the project to construct the company town of Snailbrook in Bastrop County, Texas, started in 2021. Kanye West and Musk’s ex-girlfriend Grimes participated in the preparation. “Snailbrook” refers to the Boring Company’s declared objective of creating a device that could excavate tunnels more quickly than a snail. The town was estimated to have 12 residents in 2023. There are proposals to build a university and a school there.
Wealth
With a $2 billion net worth, Musk was first included on Forbes’ Billionaires List in 2012.
Personal actions, views, and social media usage
Musk attributes many of his personal beliefs and commercial endeavors, such as SpaceX, Grok, and his libertarian tendencies, to science fiction authors, especially Robert A. Heinlein. Musk has been an enthusiastic user of Twitter (now called X) since 2009, and as of November 2023, he had amassed over 163 million followers. He comments on current political and cultural issues, posts memes, and advances commercial interests. Musk’s remarks have sparked controversy, including his support of the far-right German Alternative for Germany party, his mockery of preferred gender pronouns, and his comparison of Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau to Adolf Hitler.
His contributions to international relations are described as “chaotic” by the New York Times, and Musk’s detractors contend that his commercial interests and ideas are not clearly distinct from one another. Musk, the CEO of Twitter, became known for spreading false information and right-wing conspiracy theories. For instance, he implied that internet information on mass murderer Mauricio Garcia’s seeming interest in Nazism might have been a psyop. In reaction to steps done by Twitter under his direction, some have accused him of being transphobic.
Finance
Musk stated that in order to lower greenhouse gas emissions, the US government should impose a carbon tax rather than give subsidies to businesses. He believed that the best solution would come from the free market, and that making cars that are bad for the environment should have repercussions.
Tesla has been subsidized with billions of dollars. By February 2024, Tesla had earned $9 billion from zero-emissions credit programs started by the government. Tax incentives provided by the California government, the federal government of the United States, and other governments have made Tesla’s battery electric vehicles more affordable than those with internal combustion engines and have made it easier for consumers to initially purchase Tesla automobiles.
Longtime opponent of short-selling Musk has frequently denounced the practice and maintained that it ought to be prohibited. According to Wired magazine, Musk is against short selling because it gives short sellers an incentive to spread negative information about his businesses. He supported the GameStop short squeeze at the beginning of 2021.
Musk sold 22 million shares of Tesla in December 2022, for a total of $3.6 billion, even though he had earlier in the year promised not to sell any further shares.
Technology
Musk has advocated for and supported cryptocurrencies over fiat money provided by the government. Some, like economist Nouriel Roubini, have considered Musk’s remarks regarding cryptocurrencies as market manipulation due to the impact of his tweets on cryptocurrency markets. Prices of Dogecoin and Bitcoin rose as a result of Musk’s social media praise. In light of Musk’s social media activity, Tesla’s 2021 statement that it had purchased $1.5 billion worth of Bitcoin sparked concerns. Because bitcoin mining has an adverse effect on the environment, investors and environmentalists questioned Tesla’s statement that it would take Bitcoin as payment. Musk responded to the criticism a few months later by declaring on Twitter that Tesla would stop taking Bitcoin payments and would not use Bitcoin for any transactions until the environmental problems were resolved.
Even though The Boring Company is involved in the construction of mass transit infrastructure, Musk has advocated for private vehicles and attacked public transportation. His remarks have been referred to as “elitist” and have drawn harsh condemnation from experts in urban planning and transportation, who have noted that public transit is more cost-effective, energy-efficient, and space-efficient than private vehicles in crowded cities.
Existential threats
Musk has been characterized as a long-termist who prioritizes the concerns of future generations. Musk has so claimed that the most existential threat to civilization is artificial intelligence (AI). He has called for government regulation of the safe development of AI and warned of a “Terminator-like” AI apocalypse. Along with hundreds of other people, including Stephen Hawking, Musk cosigned an open letter on artificial intelligence in 2015 that demanded the prohibition of deadly autonomous weaponry. Critics including Mark Zuckerberg, the CEO of Meta Platforms, and computer scientist Yann LeCun have referred to Musk’s AI positions as sensationalist and alarmist. In 2016, Musk received the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation’s Annual Luddite Award.
Musk has argued for a carbon tax and called climate change the biggest threat to civilization after artificial intelligence. Following President Donald Trump’s 2017 decision to pull the United States out of the Paris Agreement, Musk withdrew from two presidential business advisory councils and voiced his disapproval of Trump’s climate change policies. Musk gave $100 million in 2021 to support a contest for innovative carbon removal concepts. However, SpaceX has been found to have violated environmental standards by repeatedly polluting Texas waters, and Musk’s lifestyle has been questioned for its high greenhouse gas emissions. Musk attempted to teach Trump on climate change in an August 2024 interview, before of the 2024 US presidential election, by endorsing solar and nuclear energy. However, Musk declined to confront Trump’s contemptuous comments on the subject. Musk reiterated earlier claims that it was incorrect to “vilify” the oil and gas sectors in the same interview, saying that the economy would implode without them.
Musk has long advocated for humankind to become a “multiplanetary species” and for the colonization of Mars. He has proposed terraforming Mars with nuclear weapons. There would be more votes needed to make laws than to repeal them, according to his concept of a direct democracy on Mars. Musk has previously expressed worries about the dwindling human population, claiming that “there are no humans on Mars.” To create a multiplanet civilization, we need a large population.Speaking at the 2021 CEO Council session of The Wall Street Journal, Musk asserted that one of the greatest threats to human civilization is the ostensibly dropping birth rate and the resulting population decline. Musk has offered his sperm on several occasions to aid with the colonization of Mars, according to unnamed SpaceX insiders who spoke to The New York Times. He has refuted this assertion.
Politics
Among businessmen who generally steer clear of partisan political advocacy, Musk stands out. Musk had turned into a vocal and monetary supporter of Donald Trump by the beginning of 2024. He was the biggest individual fundraiser to both his 2024 presidential campaign and the 2024 election.
Prior to acquiring Twitter in 2022, Musk was regarded as somewhat apolitical and moderate, but since then, he has moved to the right and grown more outspoken about his opinions, which are now typically characterized as conservative and right-wing. He has spread a lot of conspiracy theories and far-right false information. Nevertheless, he continues to reject the term conservative and characterizes himself as politically moderate.
When Musk lived in California, he was a registered independent voter. In the past, he has given to both Republicans and Democrats, many of whom are elected to office in states where he has a stake. His political contributions have been almost exclusively in favor of Republicans since the late 2010s.
In the 2016 US presidential election, Musk supported Hillary Clinton. Musk backed Andrew Yang in the 2020 Democratic Party presidential primary and voiced support for his universal basic income proposal. He also supported Kanye West’s bid for president in 2020. In the 2020 US presidential election, he cast his ballot for Joe Biden. Musk tweeted in May 2022 that he could “no longer support” the Democrats because they are the “party of division & hate” and urged “independent-minded voters” to cast Republican ballots in the US elections of that year. In the fall of that year, he donated more than $50 million to Citizens for Sanity, a conservative PAC that ran ads in battleground states criticizing Democrats on issues like illegal immigration and transgender care. He donated $10 million to Republican Ron DeSantis’ campaign in 2023, sponsored DeSantis’s announcement on a Twitter Spaces event, and backed DeSantis in the 2024 US presidential election. Musk proposed in August 2023 that Vivek Ramaswamy, the Republican presidential candidate, be the vice presidential nominee on the Republican ticket.
In a July 2024 post on X, Musk shared a deepfake video of Vice President Kamala Harris, Trump’s opponent in the 2024 presidential election, claiming that she was the “ultimate diversity hire” and that she did not know how to manage the United States. Musk claimed that the video was “amazing” and did not disclose that it was edited, despite X’s ban on “synthetic, manipulated” content “that may deceive.” Musk also wished Trump a speedy recovery and endorsed him for president after the attempted assassination. In August 2024, Musk and Trump engaged in a two-hour livestream on X, during which Musk proposed that Trump form a government efficiency commission, which he offered to serve on. After stating that he would “love” to have Musk engaged, Trump said that he required Musk’s assistance in order to abolish the Department of Education. Musk commented on X on September 15, 2024, following the second attempt on Donald Trump’s life, that it was strange that no one had attempted to assassinate Biden or Harris. He removed the post when it was widely condemned, but the US Secret Service announced it was starting an investigation. Musk took the stage with Trump during a campaign rally in October 2024. Musk was “sharing and posting demonstrably false anti-Harris disinformation to his 200 million followers” on X in November 2024, according to news outlets, and spreading conspiracy theories and lies about Democrats, election fraud, and immigration in order to promote Trump. Trump declared Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy would serve as advisors to a new Department of Government Efficiency when he was elected president. Musk was accused of posting a number of false and misleading statements about the content of a continuing resolution bill to fund the government in December 2024 on his X account. These statements included false claims that the law required vaccine requirements and funded bioweapons laboratories.
Musk is against a “billionaire tax” and has engaged in Twitter debates with more left-leaning Democratic leaders like Elizabeth Warren, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, and Bernie Sanders. He has questioned the Black Lives Matter demonstrations, partly because the slogan “Hands up, don’t shoot” was a fabrication. Musk eventually removed the post after promoting an unfounded idea about Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s husband’s attack. Additionally, he used X to disseminate conspiracy theories and misinformation regarding the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s Hurricane Helene relief efforts. Brad Raffensperger, the secretary of state for Georgia, asked X to take down a fake video that claimed to depict a Haitian immigrant who had cast several ballots. Although Musk complied, the video was already widely shared.
Conservative PAC activities
In 2022, Musk contributed more than $50 million to Citizens for Sanity, a conservative PAC founded by former Trump senior advisor Steven Miller to fund $93 million in ads about culture war issues. In October 2024, the New York Times and OpenSecrets revealed that some of Musk’s contributions went through Building America’s Future, a non-profit organization and the center of a Trump-supporting dark money network that produced “Progress 2028,” which spread false information about Democratic presidential candidate Harris’s agenda and was portrayed as the left’s response to Project 2025. Additionally, Musk has pushed the Fair Election Fund, which is heavily funded by Building America’s Future and offers rewards for proof of election fraud. That group has a significant stake in America PAC, which Musk formed and provides all of the funding for. According to a Federal Election Commission filing in October 2024, Musk gave his America PAC nearly $75 million over the preceding three months, during which time the PAC spent about $72 million on Trump’s campaign.
By offering to award $1 million every day to randomly chosen registered voters in battleground states who signed a petition endorsing the First and Second Amendments, Musk advertised a contest run by his America PAC in October 2024. The U.S. Justice Department warned America PAC in a letter within days that the contest would be unlawful. Federal law prohibits paying people to register to vote, and while signing the petition did not require registering to vote, several legal analysts stated that the sweepstakes might persuade people to do so in order to take part. Although Musk had previously stated that registering voters was one of his objectives in Pennsylvania and had started referring to award winners as “spokespeople” for America PAC, his supporters claimed that signing the petition did not directly encourage people to register. Following the warning from the Justice Department, Musk gave $1 million to two individuals. Larry Krasner, the district attorney for Philadelphia, filed a lawsuit against Musk and America PAC on October 28. Musk’s lawyer contended that recipients “earn” the money after being “selected based on their suitability to serve as spokesperson for America PAC,” despite Musk’s initial claim that the reward would be given “randomly.” On November 4, the day before the election, Musk was given permission to continue his daily giveaway by the judge after an all-day session.
In an attempt to persuade voters that Trump would not sign a national abortion ban, Musk established and gave $20.5 million as the only contributor to a “RBG PAC” on October 16, 2024, using the name and initials of former Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg. The day after it would have to reveal its funders before to the election, the PAC was established.
According to data from OpenSecrets, Musk donated $277 million to Trump and Republican allies on December 6, 2024, making him the biggest individual political donor in the 2024 election and the largest donor since at least 2010. This information does not include candidates who funded their own campaigns. According to the Post, Musk is known as “the Soros of the right” by certain Republicans.
International politics
In addition to praising China, Musk has been said to have a tight relationship with the Chinese government, which gives Tesla access to its markets. Musk praised the Chinese government and people after Gigafactory Shanghai produced its first batch of cars, but he also criticized the US and its citizens. : 207–208 Musk contributed a piece in 2022 to China Cyberspace, the official journal of the Chinese Cyberspace Administration, which is responsible for enforcing Internet restrictions in China. His support for free speech was said to be at odds with the article he wrote. Later, Musk called for Taiwan to be a “special administrative zone” of China, a move that prompted outrage from Taiwanese MPs of all parties.
Musk published a “peace plan” and a Twitter poll in October 2022 that called for Ukraine to renounce its desire to join NATO and accept a neutral status in exchange for Russia retaining the Crimea Peninsula. Musk dismissed rumors that he had a conversation with Russian President Vladimir Putin before the proposal. Musk has frequently voiced his fear that a lengthy conflict between Russia and Ukraine would start World War III and result in the use of nuclear weapons.
Musk said that Hamas “wanted to commit the worst atrocities that they could in order to provoke the most aggressive response possible from Israel” in response to Israel’s retaliatory attacks in the Gaza Strip during the Israel–Hamas war in a November 10, 2023, YouTube audio interview. He further stated that, “if you kill somebody’s child in Gaza, you have made at least a few Hamas members who will die just to kill an Israeli.”Musk declared a change to the X platform’s policy on November 17, 2023, saying that users who use phrases like “decolonization” and “from the river to the sea” or which “necessarily imply genocide” of the Jewish people in Israel will be banned. A few weeks later, Musk went to Israel to explore the kibbutz Kfar Aza, which was the scene of one of the worst massacres during the 2023 Hamas-led invasion on Israel, with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. He said it was a “jarring” sensation.
During the riots in the UK in August 2024, Musk chastised Prime Minister Keir Starmer, saying, “Shouldn’t you be concerned about attacks on *all* communities?” Musk responded, “Civil war is inevitable,” in response to a tweet that included video of the chaos and said that the riots were caused by the “effects of mass migration and open borders.” The official spokesperson for Starmer denounced his remarks. In the past, Musk had engaged with far-right UK activist Tommy Robinson on Twitter and restored his account, which had been blocked by the platform’s previous owners. Musk continued by calling Starmer a “two-tier Keir” and posing the question, “Why aren’t all communities protected in Britain?” Musk spread the rumor that the UK government intended to establish detention facilities to house rioters in the Falkland Islands. He wrote in November 2024 that Britain was “going full Stalin” when the Labour administration decided to remove the exemption from inheritance tax on agricultural assets valued at over £1 million. According to reports in December 2024, Musk intended to provide $100 million to Nigel Farage’s Reform UK party in order to assist Farage in becoming prime minister in the upcoming UK election. In order to get around donation regulations, it was proposed that Musk transfer the money via X’s UK branch.
Since late 2022, Musk has maintained regular communication with high-ranking Russian government officials, including Vladimir Putin and Sergey Kiriyenko, on personal, business, and geopolitical issues, according to a Wall Street Journal report published in October 2024. Musk and Putin had only spoken once, according to the Kremlin, which refuted the allegation. According to a former Russian intelligence officer briefed on the matter, Musk was once ordered by Putin to refrain from turning on his Starlink satellite system over Taiwan in order to please Chinese President Xi Jinping, according to the Journal. The ownership of Starlink’s company in Taiwan was the source of a communication breakdown between SpaceX and Taiwan, as reported by Bloomberg and others in July 2023. According to reports, the administration kept the talks with Putin a secret because Musk was involved in advancing Donald Trump’s campaign for president. One individual pointed up the problem of the government’s reliance on Musk’s inventions and said that no warnings were issued by the US government. Bill Nelson, a NASA administrator and Democrat legislator, said it should be looked into to determine whether the story was true. Representative Adam Smith went on to say, “We should look into what Elon Musk is doing to make sure that it is not to the detriment of the United States’ national security.” “Starlink is not available [in Taiwan] because Taiwan has not granted us a license to operate, and regulators declined to remove a requirement that a foreign entity own 51% of Starlink to operate there,” SpaceX answered formally through their X account. Such a requirement has not been recognized by SpaceX for any of its operating markets.
Musk wrote “Only the AfD can save Germany” on his X account in December 2024, endorsing the far-right German party. The endorsement followed Musk’s June 2024 remarks in which he called German Chancellor Olaf Scholz a “fool” and said he didn’t think the AfD’s objectives were far-right. Musk stated that the suspect’s atheism was a “scam to avoid extradition” after it was revealed that the suspect in the 2024 Magdeburg vehicle assault was a far-right, anti-Islamic activist who had supported Musk and the AfD. Musk wrote a pro-AfD op-ed for Die Welt later that month.
Government advisory roles
On November 12, 2024, US President-elect Donald Trump declared that Musk would serve as the first head of the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), a government advising organization whose mission is to “slash excess regulations [and] cut wasteful expenditures.” Alongside Musk, Vivek Ramaswamy would be in charge of running the division.
Though some far-right activists, including Laura Loomer, opposed it on X, Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy in December 2024 stated their support for the H-1B visa, which permits the hiring of highly educated foreign workers, particularly by technology businesses in the United States. Laura Loomer’s criticism of a Trump appointee’s prior support for lifting some restrictions on talented foreign workers’ green cards in the US sparked the debate. The internet argument that ensued was referred to as a “MAGA Civil War” by the Washington Post.
Accusations of antisemitism
Although several Israeli officials backed Musk and denied that his criticism of Soros amounted to antisemitism, the Israeli government and a number of media sites have accused Musk of spreading antisemitism because he has promoted conspiracy theories about George Soros.
A Jewish conservative Twitter user named Charles Weber condemned the phrase “Hitler was right” on November 15, 2023, by posting a video from StopJewishHate.org with the caption, “To the cowards hiding behind the anonymity of the internet and posting ‘Hitler was right’: You got something you want to say? Why don’t you tell it directly to us? A second person replied, “All OK. The dialectical hatred that Jewish groups claim they want people to stop employing against white people is the same hatred that they have been promoting. Now that the Jewish communities in the West have come to the unsettling conclusion that the hordes of minorities who support flooding their country don’t exactly like them, I’m not interested in giving a crap. The truth is right there if you want it spoken to you. Musk stated to the latter user, “You have said the actual truth.” Musk explained that he especially targeted the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) but did not think that “all Jewish communities” despise white people. He continued, “You [sic] right that this does not extend to all Jewish communities, but it is also not just limited to ADL.”
The first tweet confirmed another antisemitic conspiracy theory that Jews incite “hatred against Whites” and was largely perceived as reiterating white supremacist ideas. Musk’s post the next day was interpreted by some as endorsing white supremacist sentiment. His tweets caused advertisers to withdraw themselves.
Journalist Andrew Ross Sorkin questioned Musk on the removal of advertisers from X following remarks made by Disney CEO Bob Iger at the DealBook Summit on November 29, 2023, outlining his decision to cease advertising on X following Musk’s recent article. In response, Musk said, “I hope they stop. Don’t promote” and “Go fuck yourself if someone tries to use advertising to coerce me with money.” Fuck yourself. Does that make sense? Musk specifically mentioned Iger, stating, “Hey Bob, if you’re in the audience.” “I hope it is.” According to Musk, “I handed a loaded gun to those who hate me and to those who are antisemitic and for that I am quite sorry.” Musk admitted to Sorkin that one of his tweets, which supported an antisemitic conspiracy theory, was an error.”One of the most foolish, if not the most foolish, things I’ve done” is how Musk characterized his tweet.
Alongside Holocaust survivor Gidon Lev, conservative political analyst Ben Shapiro, and European Jewish Association Chairman Rabbi Menachem Margolin, Musk traveled to the Auschwitz concentration camp in January 2024. He also discussed the rise in antisemitism at a conference. The trip was referred to as a “rehabilitation tour” by the New York Times.
COVID-19
Musk’s public remarks and actions about the COVID-19 pandemic drew criticism. He disseminated false information regarding the virus, saying that COVID-19 fatality rates were exaggerated and endorsing a widely disputed study on the advantages of chloroquine.
Musk said in March 2020, “The coronavirus panic is dumb.”Musk described COVID-19 as a “specific form of the common cold” in an email to Tesla staff members, and he projected that the number of confirmed COVID-19 cases in the US would not be more than 0.1%. Musk stated on March 19, 2020, that by the end of April, there would be “probably close to zero” new instances in the US. This was one of “the most audacious, confident, and spectacularly incorrect prognostications [of 2020]” according to Politico. Additionally, Musk misrepresented the idea that kids “are essentially immune” to COVID-19.
Despite the municipal shelter-in-place order, Musk first refused to close the Tesla Fremont Factory in March 2020 and denounced COVID-19 lockdowns. Disobeying the municipal stay-at-home order, he reopened the Tesla factory in May 2020 and threatened to withhold wages and unemployment benefits from workers who failed to show up for work. Musk demanded that Anthony Fauci, the former director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, be prosecuted in December 2022.
Musk stated in March 2020 that in the event of a shortage, Tesla would produce ventilators for COVID-19 patients. Following responses to his offer from influential people like New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio, Musk offered to donate ventilators that Tesla will either develop or purchase from a third party. But in the end, Musk chose to buy and donate CPAP and BiPAP devices instead of ventilators.
Musk declared in September 2020 that he and his kids were “not at risk for COVID” and that he will not receive the COVID-19 vaccine. Musk got COVID-19 two months later, but he claimed that the results of his COVID-19 quick antigen test were questionable because he had been tested four times with the same nurse using the same device, and each time he obtained an equal number of positive and negative results. Subsequently, Musk was referred to as “Space Karen” in a Tweet by a postdoctoral colleague at the Princess Margaret Cancer Centre in Toronto, which went viral on Twitter and explained why this outcome does not diminish the test’s relevance. Musk stated in December 2021 that he and his eligible children had received the vaccination, stating that the science underlying the COVID vaccines was “unequivocal” but that he was against COVID vaccine regulations.
Personal life
In 2002, Musk obtained U.S. citizenship. Musk lived in California, the state where SpaceX and Tesla were established, from the early 2000s until the end of 2020. He claimed that California had grown “complacent” with its economic prosperity after moving to Boca Chica, Texas. Musk claimed to have Asperger syndrome while hosting Saturday Night Live in 2021, despite the fact that he has never had a formal diagnosis.
Musk practiced Brazilian jiu-jitsu in anticipation of a rumored altercation with Mark Zuckerberg. He enjoys playing video games like Quake, Polytopia, Diablo IV, and Elden Ring. The Wall Street Journal has regularly claimed that Musk uses ketamine and other drugs recreationally, despite Musk’s claims that he uses the medication “once every other week” as recommended by his doctor to treat periodic sadness.
Relationships and children
One of Musk’s at least twelve offspring has passed away. While enrolled at Queen’s University in Ontario, Canada, he met Justine Wilson, a Canadian author, who he married in 2000. Their first kid, who was ten weeks old in 2002, passed away from sudden infant death syndrome. The couple continued their family after the baby passed away by using in vitro fertilization (IVF); they had twins in 2004 and triplets in 2006. Since their 2008 divorce, the couple has shared custody of their kids.
Since she no longer wanted to be connected to Musk, the older twin formally changed her name to Vivian Jenna Wilson in 2022, adopting her mother’s last name and expressing her gender identification as a trans woman. Musk has claimed that his desire to “destroy the woke mind virus” was largely prompted by his daughter’s gender transition and blamed her estrangement on what the Financial Times described as “the supposed takeover of elite schools and universities by neo-Marxists.” Regarding Vivian, Musk said on a July 2024 episode of Jordan Peterson’s podcast that he had “lost [his] son, essentially” as a result of gender-affirming care. “You know, they call it deadnaming for a reason,” he said. Vivian “is dead, killed by the woke mind virus,” the statement goes, citing the “woke mind virus” as the reason it’s dubbed “deadnaming.” In her public response, Vivian accused Musk of lying about her and the circumstances around her transition, calling him “cold,” “quick to anger,” “uncaring and narcissistic,” and claiming that during his few visits, he frequently reprimanded her for being feminine. In response to a news report on his daughter’s reaction to Trump’s win, Elon Musk reiterated on November 7, 2024, that “the woke mind virus killed my son.”
Musk started dating Talulah Riley, an English actress, in 2008. Two years later, at Scotland’s Dornoch Cathedral, they were married. The couple was divorced in 2012, but they got married again the following year. Musk and Riley finalized their second divorce in 2016, following a brief separation in 2014. After allegedly “pursuing” Amber Heard since 2012, Musk went on to date her for a few months in 2017.
Musk and Canadian artist Grimes announced their relationship in 2018. In May 2020, Grimes gave birth to their son. Musk and Grimes modified the baby’s name from “X Æ A-12,” which would have been illegal in California since it included characters not found in the current English alphabet, to “X Æ A-Xii.” They have come under fire for selecting a name that is seen to be unworkable and challenging to say.
Grimes and Musk welcomed a second child, a surrogate daughter, in December 2021. Musk acknowledged that the pair was “semi-separated” in September 2021, despite the pregnancy; he claimed to be single in a December 2021 interview with Time. Regarding her relationship with Musk, Grimes stated in March 2022: “I would probably refer to him as my boyfriend, but we’re very fluid.” Grimes tweeted after that month that she and Musk had split up once more. It was announced in September 2023 that the couple welcomed a son, their third child. Grimes filed a lawsuit against Musk in October 2023 for their oldest son’s custody and parental rights.
According to court documents obtained by Insider in July 2022, Musk and Shivon Zilis, head of operations and special projects at Neuralink, conceived twins through IVF in November 2021. They were born a few weeks prior to Musk and Grimes’ December surrogate birth of their second kid. Given that Zilis reported directly to Musk, the news “raise[d] questions about workplace ethics”. Early in 2024, their third kid was delivered through surrogacy. The Wall Street Journal also revealed in July 2022 that Musk allegedly had an affair with Nicole Shanahan, the wife of Sergey Brin, a co-founder of Google, in 2021, which resulted in their divorce the following year. Musk refuted the report. Additionally, Musk was romantically involved with Natasha Bassett, an Australian actress who has been characterized as “an occasional girlfriend.” The New York Times revealed in October 2024 that Musk had purchased a Texas estate for his children and their mothers.
Legal matters after 2020
An unknown buddy of an unnamed SpaceX contract flight attendant was quoted by Business Insider in May 2022 as saying that Musk had committed sexual misconduct in 2016. According to the source, Musk, SpaceX, and the former flight attendant signed a severance agreement in November 2018 that gave the attendant a $250,000 payout in exchange for a vow not to file a lawsuit over the allegations. Musk replied, “If I were inclined to engage in sexual harassment, this is unlikely to be the first time in my entire 30-year career that it comes to light.” The Business Insider article was deemed a “politically motivated hit piece” by him. Barron’s claimed that “some investors considered key-man risk – the danger that a company could be badly hurt by the loss of one individual.” The article’s publication caused Tesla’s shares to drop more than 6%.
The U.S. Virgin Islands government attempted to subpoena Musk for records in April 2023 as part of a case that claimed JPMorgan Chase made money off of Jeffrey Epstein’s sex trafficking business. The attempts to subpoena Musk for papers do not aim to have Musk speak under oath or link him to any wrongdoing.
As part of a custody battle, Musk’s ex-girlfriend Grimes submitted a parental relationship petition in late September 2023. The petition was submitted a month after Grimes publicly accused him of denying her access to their youngest kid in a social media post. Grimes’ mother accused Musk on July 27, 2024, of denying her grandkids their passports.
In October 2023, 22-year-old college graduate Ben Brody of Los Angeles filed a slander lawsuit against Musk, seeking more than $1 million. He said that Musk had misrepresented him as having taken part “in a violent street brawl on behalf of a neo-Nazi extremist group” close to Portland, Oregon. One of Musk’s X postings, according to Brody’s complaint, spread conspiracy theories that “the incident was probably a ‘false flag’ operation to deceive the American public because of Ben Brody’s alleged involvement in the extremist brawl.” Additionally, the case claimed that Brody and his family experienced intimidation and threats as a result of Musk’s assertions. Musk was required to appear in a deposition for the lawsuit in February 2024. During the deposition, Musk acknowledged that he had no idea who was suing him and that he had not investigated the veracity of his statements. Musk made an effort to prevent the public release of the deposition.
Musk’s refusal to testify a third time in an examination into whether he broke federal law by buying Twitter stock in 2022 led to a lawsuit by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) in October 2023. Musk said he was being harassed by the SEC. Judge Laurel Beeler ordered Musk to retest in February 2024.
Judge Kathaleen McCormick of Delaware decided in a 2018 case that Musk’s $55 billion compensation deal from Tesla should be revoked in January 2024. McCormick referred to the company’s board’s remuneration as “an unfathomable sum” that was unjust to shareholders. Musk wrote on X in response to the decision, “Never incorporate your company in the state of Delaware.” Mid-June 2024 saw the passing of a re-ratification shareholders’ vote, but there will likely be a lot of follow-up legal action. One such complaint was brought by a Tesla investor who claimed Musk used “coercive tactics” to sway the vote in his favor.
According to affidavits provided by the intern’s attorneys, who also represent Musk, The Wall Street Journal reported in June 2024 that Musk had a “romantic relationship” with a former intern at SpaceX. The article also claimed that Musk had sex with a woman who worked directly under him at SpaceX. According to the paper, he reportedly constantly urged a worker who reported directly to him to “have his babies” and engaged in sexual activity with other SpaceX employees. The same month, Musk was sued for sexual harassment by eight former workers—the same eight who had been fired for writing an anti-Musk letter at SpaceX.
Musk and other fired executives were sued by a former Twitter executive in June 2024 for allegedly “cheating” them out of $200 million in severance compensation.
Musk filed a lawsuit against advertisers in August 2024 to force them to boycott X (previously Twitter). Musk was included in a lawsuit that Olympic boxer Imane Khelif filed later that month for “acts of aggravated cyber harassment” against X.
Musk and his America PAC were sued in Pennsylvania in October 2024 for allegedly running an illegal lottery ahead of the US presidential election in 2024. One prosecuting attorney referred to the initiative as a “scam” intended to sway the election after Musk’s counsel claimed the giveaway wasn’t a lottery because the recipients weren’t picked at random. Two US senators demanded an investigation on his alleged ties with Vladimir Putin in November 2024, and he was sued once more over the lottery.
Public perception
Musk only rose to prominence in the early 2010s, even though his businesses have had a significant impact on their respective industries since the 2000s. In contrast to other billionaires who prefer to keep to themselves to safeguard their enterprises, he has been characterized as an oddball who frequently makes provocative statements in addition to making impulsive and significant decisions. Musk has become a divisive character due to his words and deeds. According to biographer Ashlee Vance, Musk’s “part philosopher, part troll” character on Twitter has caused polarized attitudes about him.
The character of Tony Stark in the Marvel movie Iron Man (2008) was partially based on Musk. Additionally, Musk had a brief appearance in Iron Man 2, the 2010 follow-up to the movie. Musk has appeared in additional movies, including Men in Black: International (2019), Why Him? (2016), and Machete Kills (2013). His television appearances include Rick and Morty (“One Crew over the Crewcoo’s Morty”, 2019), South Park (“Members Only”, 2016), Young Sheldon (“A Patch, a Modem, and a Zantac®”, 2017), The Simpsons (“The Musk Who Fell to Earth”, 2015), The Big Bang Theory (“The Platonic Permutation”, 2015), and Saturday Night Live (2021). He provided interviews for the 2015 and 2016 documentaries Lo and Behold and Racing Extinction.
He received the Royal Aeronautical Society Gold Medal in 2012, the Fédération Aéronautique Internationale Gold Space Medal in 2010, and the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics George Low Transportation Award in 2008 for his work on the Falcon rockets. Yale University awarded him an Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers Honorary Membership and an honorary doctorate in engineering and technology in 2015. In 2018, Musk was chosen to become a Fellow of the Royal Society (FRS). Musk was selected to join the National Academy of Engineering in 2022.
In 2010, 2013, 2018, and 2021, Time named Musk one of the world’s most important individuals. Musk was chosen as the 2021 “Person of the Year” by Time. Then, according to Time editor-in-chief Edward Felsenthal, “Person of the Year is a marker of influence, and few individuals have had more influence than Musk on life on Earth, and potentially life off Earth too.”
74 members of the Royal Society criticized Musk’s membership in 2024 for his alleged anti-scientific behavior and dissemination of false information. This sparked discussions about the society’s membership requirements and resulted in Dorothy Bishop, a prominent neuropsychologist at the University of Oxford, resigning from the Society, citing her displeasure with its response.
Because of his vast influence on politics, business, social media, public opinion, and government policy, Musk has been referred to as an American oligarch. Some referred to him as the “actual president-elect,” “shadow president,” or “co-president” due to his influence during Donald Trump’s second term in office.
Notes and references
- Musk continued to act as an advisor and member of the board.
- The Federal Communications Commission awarded SpaceX subsidies for Starlink of around $900 million.
- Musk allegedly referred to marijuana when he said he was thinking about taking Tesla private for $420 a share. Rapper Azealia Banks and Tesla board members said Musk might have been using recreational drugs at the time of the tweet.
- He violated US securities regulations by failing to submit the required SEC documentation within ten days of his position surpassing 5%.
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