Elon Musk facts for kids

Elon Musk
Quick facts for kids Elon Musk ; FRS
	Musk at the Royal Society admissions day in London, July 2018
Born	Elon Reeve Musk ; June 28, 1971 (age 49); Pretoria, South Africa
Citizenship	South Africa (1971–present); Canada (1971–present); United States (2002–present)
Education	Queen's University; (no degree); University of Pennsylvania; (BS and BA, 1997)
Occupation	Entrepreneur; Industrial designer; Engineer;
Years active	1995–present
Net worth	US$ 209 billion (January 2021)
Title	Founder, CEO, lead designer of SpaceX; CEO, product architect of Tesla, Inc.; Founder of The Boring Company and X.com (now PayPal); Co-founder of Neuralink, OpenAI, and Zip2; Chairman of SolarCity;
Spouse(s)	Justine Wilson; (m. 2000; div. 2008) ; Talulah Riley; (m. 2010; div. 2012) ; (m. 2013; div. 2016)
Partner(s)	Grimes (2018–present)
Children	7
Parents	Errol Musk (father); Maye Musk (mother);
Relatives	Kimbal Musk (brother); Tosca Musk (sister); Lyndon Rive (cousin)
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Elon Reeve Musk FRS (born June 28, 1971) is a businessman and philanthropist. He was born in South Africa, moved to Canada, then became an American. Musk is the current CEO & Chief Product Architect of Tesla Motors, a company that makes electric vehicles, the CEO of Solar City, a company that makes solar panels, and the CEO & CTO of SpaceX, an aerospace company.

Elon Musk and his brother started Zip2, a software company, in 1995. In 1999 he sold it and become a millionaire. He then started X.com, which merged with the company Confinity to make PayPal. X.com was then renamed to PayPal, and he focused on growing that part of the company. He then started SpaceX and became the CEO of Tesla.

Musk was born to a Canadian mother and a South African-born British father in Pretoria, South Africa. His parents divorced in 1980 and he mainly lived with his father in many different places in South Africa. He went to Waterkloof House Preparatory School and graduated from Pretoria Boys High School. He then moved to Canada in 1988 when he was 17, after he obtained Canadian citizenship through his mother. He got it before his South African military service was to begin. He felt that it would be easier to immigrate to the United States from Canada than from South Africa.

He spent two years at the Queen's School of Business in Kingston, Ontario. He then transferred to the University of Pennsylvania where he earned a bachelor's degree in economics from the Wharton School. He stayed a year to finish his second bachelor's degree in physics. Then he moved to California to attempt to get a PhD in applied physics at Stanford but he left the program after only two days because he wanted to pursue his entrepreneurial aspirations (start businesses) in the Internet, renewable energy and outer space. He became an American citizen in 2002.

At the end of 2016, Musk founded The Boring Company which focuses on tunnelling and infrastructure. He mentioned Los Angeles traffic as the reason for starting this company. In March 2017 Elon Musk announced he has started another company which aims to merge human brains and computers, it is called Neuralink.

In August 2020, Bloomberg ranked Musk third among the richest people on the planet with net worth to be $195 billion.

In January 2021, Musk became the richest person in the world with a net worth of US$209 billion, passing Jeff Bezos.

Personal life

Philanthropy

Musk is chairman of the Musk Foundation, which focuses its philanthropic efforts on providing solar-power energy systems in disaster areas as well as other goals.^{[non-primary source needed]} In 2010, the Musk Foundation collaborated with SolarCity to donate a 25 kW solar power system to the South Bay Community Alliance's hurricane response center in Coden, Alabama. In July 2011, the Musk Foundation donated US$250,000 towards a solar power project in Sōma, Japan, a city that had been recently devastated by a tsunami.

In July 2014, Musk was asked by cartoonist Matthew Inman and William Terbo, the grandnephew of Nikola Tesla, to donate US$8 million toward the construction of the Tesla Science Center at Wardenclyffe. Ultimately, Musk agreed to donate US$1 million toward the project and additionally pledged to build a Tesla Supercharger in the museum car park.

In January 2015, Musk donated US$10 million to the Future of Life Institute to run a global research program aimed at keeping artificial intelligence beneficial to humanity.

As of 2015^[update], Musk is a trustee of the X Prize Foundation^{[non-primary source needed]} and a signatory of The Giving Pledge.

In October 2018, in an effort to help solve the Flint water crisis, Musk and the Musk Foundation donated over $480,000 to install new water fountains with filtration systems for access to clean water at all Flint, Michigan schools. As of 2019, approximately 30,000 children in all 12 area schools have free, safe drinking water from the water filtration systems.

Musk has been a top donor for the ACLU.

In October 2019, Musk donated US$1 million to '#TeamTrees' tree planting initiative led by the YouTube community and in collaboration with Arbor Day Foundation.

Family

Tosca Musk, Elon's sister, is a filmmaker. She is the founder of Musk Entertainment and has produced various movies.

Musk met his first wife, Canadian author Justine Wilson, while both were students at Ontario's Queen's University. They married in 2000 and separated in 2008. Their first son, Nevada Alexander Musk, died of sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS) at the age of 10 weeks. They later had five sons through in vitro fertilization – twins in 2004, followed by triplets in 2006. They share custody of all five sons.

In 2008, Musk began dating English actress Talulah Riley, and in 2010, the couple married. In January 2012, Musk announced that he had ended his four-year relationship with Riley. In July 2013, Musk and Riley remarried. In December 2014, Musk filed for a second divorce from Riley; however, the action was withdrawn. The media announced in March 2016 that divorce proceedings were again under way, this time with Riley filing for divorce from Musk. The divorce was finalized in late 2016.

Musk began dating American actress Amber Heard in 2016 but the two split up after one year due to their conflicting schedules.

On May 7, 2018, Musk and Canadian musician Grimes revealed that they had begun dating. On January 8, 2020, Grimes announced that she was pregnant with their first child. Grimes gave birth to a son on May 4, 2020. According to Musk, his name is "X Æ A-12", although this may not be a legal name in California due to it containing characters that are not English letters (The hyphen and numerals in "-12").

Related pages

Images for kids

Musk and President Barack Obama at the Falcon 9 launch site in 2010
NASA Administrator Charles Bolden congratulates Musk in front of the Dragon capsule in 2012, following the first successful mission by a private company to carry supplies to the International Space Station
Musk's Tesla Roadster in orbit
Musk explains the capabilities of Starship to NORAD and Air Force Space Command in April 2019
Musk with Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi in San Jose, California, on September 26, 2015
Musk discussing The Boring Company at TED 2017
Musk speaking alongside former Irish Taoiseach (Prime Minister) Enda Kenny in 2013
Musk observing an assembly demo at the reopening of the NUMMI plant, now known as the Tesla Factory (Fremont, California) in 2010
Musk and Senator Dianne Feinstein next to a Tesla Model S (2010)
Musk standing in front of a Tesla Model S in 2011

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