Elon Musk is one of the most talked-about entrepreneurs of the modern era, known for pushing the boundaries of electric vehicles, space travel, and artificial intelligence. Before he was a household name, though, he was a self-taught programmer selling his first video game as a kid.
Here are 10 fun, verified facts about Elon Musk's life and career, from his childhood in South Africa to the companies that made him a global figure.
Elon Musk was born on June 28, 1971, in Pretoria, South Africa, to Maye Musk, a model and dietitian, and Errol Musk, an engineer and entrepreneur.
Musk holds citizenship in three countries: South Africa, Canada, and the United States. He moved to Canada in 1992, later to the U.S., and became a naturalized American citizen in 2002.
He attended Queen's University in Kingston, Ontario, and the University of Pennsylvania, where he earned two bachelor's degrees, one in physics and one in economics.
Musk taught himself computer programming as a child and, at age 12, sold the code for a space-themed video game called Blastar to a computer magazine for about $500.
In 1995, Elon and his brother Kimbal co-founded Zip2, an online city-guide and business-directory company. Compaq acquired it in 1999 for roughly $307 million.
In 1999, Musk founded the online payment company X.com, which merged with a firm called Confinity that owned the PayPal product. eBay acquired PayPal for $1.5 billion in 2002.
Musk founded SpaceX in 2002 as its CEO and chief engineer, with the long-term goal of making human life multiplanetary.
Musk joined Tesla Motors as an early investor and chairman in 2004, and became CEO and product architect in 2008.
In 2006, Musk co-founded the solar energy company SolarCity with his cousins Lyndon and Peter Rive. Tesla acquired SolarCity in 2016.
In 2013, Musk published a whitepaper proposing Hyperloop, a concept for moving passenger and cargo pods through low-pressure tubes at very high speed.
Musk co-founded the neurotechnology company Neuralink in 2016, which develops implantable brain-computer interfaces.
In October 2022, Musk completed a roughly $44 billion acquisition of Twitter, which he later rebranded as X.
In 2023, Musk founded the artificial intelligence company xAI.
We write every article to be genuinely fun — and genuinely true. Each fact is checked against reputable sources before it goes live. Spotted something off? Tell us and read our fact-check policy.
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