Elon Musk facts for kids
Quick facts for kids
Elon Musk
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Musk at the Royal Society admissions day in London, July 2018
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Elon Reeve Musk
June 28, 1971 Pretoria, Transvaal, South Africa
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| Years active | 1995–present |
| Net worth | US$ 209 billion (January 2021) |
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| Political party | Independent |
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| Partner(s) | Grimes (2018–2021) |
| Children | 7 (1 deceased) |
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| Awards | Fellow of the Royal Society (2018) |
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Elon Reeve Musk FRS (born June 28, 1971) is a South African-Canadian-American businessman. He was born in South Africa. He moved to Canada and later became an American citizen. Musk is the current CEO & Chief Product Architect of Tesla, Inc., a company that makes electric vehicles. He is also the CEO of Solar City, a company that makes solar panels, and the CEO & CTO of SpaceX, an aerospace company. In August 2020, Bloomberg ranked Musk third among the richest people on the planet with a net worth to be $198 billion. With a net worth of around US$255 billion as of December 2021, Musk is the wealthiest person in the world. In 2021, he was Time Person of the Year.
Early life and career
Elon Musk and his brother started Zip2, a software company, in 1995. In 1999 he sold it and became 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.
He has Asperger syndrome.
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.
Education
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.
Projects
At the end of 2016, Musk founded The Boring Company which focuses on tunneling 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 that aims to merge human brains and computers, it is called Neuralink.
As of April 2016, he was worth over $10 billion, making him the 37th most wealthy American. Musk is also known for helping design and create the Falcon Heavy rocket, which successfully launched on February 6 of 2018.
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