ELON MUSK

About Elon Musk

• Elon Musk cofounded six companies, including electric car maker Tesla, rocket producer SpaceX and tunneling startup Boring Company.
• He owns about 21% of Tesla between stock and options, but has pledged more than half his shares as collateral for personal loans of up to $3.5 billion.
• SpaceX, founded in 2002, is worth nearly $150 billion after a $750 million tender offer in June 2023; it nearly quintupled its value in four years.
• Boring Company, which aims to defeat traffic, raised $675 million in April 2022 at a $5.7 billion valuation.
• Twitter's board agreed to sell the company to Musk for $44 billion in April 2022, after he disclosed a 9.1% stake and threatened a hostile takeover.
• The deal closed in October 2022 after Musk tried to back out and Twitter sued. Musk owns an estimated 74% of the company, which is now called X

Education

Musk attended Waterkloof House Preparatory School, Bryanston High School, and Pretoria Boys High School, from where he graduated.[41] Musk was a good but not exceptional student, earning a 61 in Afrikaans and a B on his senior math certification.[42] Musk applied for a Canadian passport through his Canadian-born mother,[43][44] knowing that it would be easier to immigrate to the United States this way.[45] While waiting for his application to be processed, he attended the University of Pretoria for five months.[46]

Musk arrived in Canada in June 1989 and lived with a second cousin in Saskatchewan for a year,[47] working odd jobs at a farm and lumber mill.[48] In 1990, he entered Queen's University in Kingston, Ontario.[49][50] Two years later, he transferred to the University of Pennsylvania (UPenn), where he completed studies for a Bachelor of Arts degree in physics and a Bachelor of Science degree in economics from the Wharton School.[51][52][53][54] Although Musk said he earned the degrees in 1995, UPenn maintains it awarded them in 1997.[55] He reportedly hosted large, ticketed house parties to help pay for tuition, and wrote a business plan for an electronic book-scanning service similar to Google Books.[56]

In 1994, Musk held two internships in Silicon Valley: one at energy storage startup Pinnacle Research Institute, which investigated electrolytic ultracapacitors for energy storage, and another at Palo Alto–based startup Rocket Science Games.[57][58] In 1995, he was accepted to a PhD program in materials science at Stanford University.[59][60] However, Musk decided to join the Internet boom, dropping out two days after being accepted and applied for a job at Netscape, to which he reportedly never received a response

Net worth

Musk made $175.8?million when PayPal was sold to eBay in October 2002.[322] He was first listed on the Forbes Billionaires List in 2012, with a net worth of $2?billion.[323]

At the start of 2020, Musk had a net worth of $27?billion.[324] By the end of the year his net worth had increased by $150?billion, mostly driven by his ownership of around 20% of Tesla stock.[325] During this period, Musk's net worth was often volatile. For example, it dropped $16.3?billion on September 8, the largest single-day plunge in Bloomberg Billionaires Index's history at the time.[326] In November of that year, Musk passed Facebook co-founder Mark Zuckerberg to become the third-richest person in the world; a week later he passed Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates to become the second-richest.[327]

In January 2021, Musk, with a net worth of $185?billion, surpassed Amazon founder Jeff Bezos to become the richest person in the world.[328] Bezos reclaimed the top spot the following month.[329] On September 27, 2021, after Tesla stock surged, Forbes announced that Musk had a net worth of over $200?billion, and was the richest person in the world.[330] In November 2021, Musk became the first person to have a net worth of more than $300?billion.[331]

On December 30, 2022, it was reported that Musk had lost $200 billion from his net worth due to declining stock values in Tesla, becoming the first person in history to lose such a large sum of money.[332][333] In January 2023, Musk was recognized by Guinness World Records for experiencing the "largest loss of personal fortune in history" with regards to his financial losses since November 2021, which Guinness quoted a Forbes estimate of $182 billion.[334]

Musk's personal wealth is managed by his family office called Excession LLC, formed in 2016 and run by Jared Birchall.[335][259]

Sources of wealth

Around 75% of Musk's wealth was derived from Tesla stock in November 2020,[327] a proportion that fell to about 37% as of December 2022,[f] after selling nearly $40 billion in company shares since late 2021.[336] Musk does not receive a salary from Tesla; he agreed with the board in 2018 to a compensation plan that ties his personal earnings to Tesla's valuation and revenue.[325] The deal stipulated that Musk only received the compensation if Tesla reached certain market values.[337] It was the largest such deal ever done between a CEO and a company board.[338] In the first award, given in May 2020, he was eligible to purchase 1.69?million Tesla shares (about 1% of the company) at below-market prices, which was worth about $800?million.[338][337]

Musk paid $455?million in taxes on $1.52?billion of income between 2014 and 2018.[339] According to ProPublica, Musk paid no federal income taxes in 2018.[340] He stated his 2021 tax bill was estimated at $12?billion based on his sale of $14?billion worth of Tesla stock.[339]

Musk has repeatedly described himself as "cash poor",[341][342] and has "professed to have little interest in the material trappings of wealth".[341] In May 2020, he pledged to sell almost all physical possessions.[342] Musk has defended his wealth by saying he is accumulating resources for humanity's outward expansion to space.[343]

Finance

Musk said that the U.S. government should not provide subsidies to companies, but impose a carbon tax to discourage poor behavior.[461][462] The free market, in his view, would achieve the best solution, and producing environmentally unfriendly vehicles should have consequences.[463] Tesla has received billions of dollars in subsidies.[464] In addition, Tesla made large sums from government-initiated systems of zero-emissions credits offered in California and at the United States federal level, which facilitated initial consumer adoption of Tesla vehicles, as the tax credits given by governments enabled Tesla's battery electric vehicles to be price-competitive, in comparison with existing lower-priced internal combustion engine vehicles.[465] Notably, Tesla generates some of its revenue from its sales of carbon credits granted to the company, by both the European Union Emissions Trading System and the Chinese national carbon trading scheme.[466][467][468][469]

Musk, a longtime opponent of short-selling, has repeatedly criticized the practice and argued it should be illegal.[470][471] Wired magazine speculated that Musk's opposition to short-selling stems from how short sellers have an incentive to find and promote unfavorable information about his companies.[472] In early 2021, he encouraged the GameStop short squeeze.[473][474]

In December 2022, Musk sold $3.6 billion of his stock in Tesla, equal to 22 million shares in the company,[475] despite pledging earlier in the year that he would not sell any additional shares.[476]

Technology

Musk has promoted cryptocurrencies and supports them over traditional government-issued fiat currencies.[477] Given the influence of Musk's tweets in moving cryptocurrency markets,[478] his statements about cryptocurrencies have been viewed as market manipulation by some, such as economist Nouriel Roubini.[479] Musk's social media praising of Bitcoin and Dogecoin was credited for increasing their prices. Consequently, Tesla's 2021 announcement, against the backdrop of Musk's social media behavior, that it bought $1.5?billion worth of Bitcoin, raised questions.[480] Tesla's announcement that it would accept Bitcoin for payment was criticized by environmentalists and investors, due to the environmental impact of cryptocurrency mining. A few months later, in response to the criticism, Musk announced on Twitter that Tesla would no longer accept payments in Bitcoin and would not engage in any Bitcoin transactions until the environmental issues are solved.[481][482]

Despite the Boring Company's involvement in building mass transit infrastructure, Musk has criticized public transport and promoted individualized transport (private vehicles).[483][484][485] His comments have been called "elitist" and have sparked widespread criticism from both transportation and urban planning experts, who have pointed out that public transportation in dense urban areas is more economical, more energy efficient, and requires much less space than private cars