Listen, if you do posts on a writer (Shakespeare) and a painter (Monet), you got to do one on the guy who wants to build a city on Mars, right? Anyway, here’s a brief answer to Who’s Elon Musk? presented in the form of 10 numbers (because I’m guessing the dude is decent at math). To make it happen, I snagged a little help from his biography.
1971
The year Musk was born (in Pretoria, South Africa). His mother—model and dietitian Maye Musk—was born in Canada but raised in South Africa, where she eventually met Musk’s father. The couple would have three children, with Elon being the eldest.
17
The age at which Musk moved to Canada, ultimately enrolling in Queen’s University in Kingston, Ontario (birthplace of Bryan Adams). He later transferred to the University of Pennsylvania in the US, graduating with one degree in physics and another in economics.
1995
The year Musk enrolled in a PhD program at Stanford University in California. He dropped out rather quickly, apparently lasting just two days. I’m going to go out on a limb and say that was a decent decision.
307 million
The amount in US dollars that Compaq paid in 1999 to buy Zip2, Musk’s first venture that provided online city guide software to newspapers. Of that amount, $22 million went to Musk, and he shortly thereafter founded the online bank X.com, which after merging with Confinity became PayPal. When eBay acquired PayPal in 2002 for $1.5 billion, Musk got $175.8 million.
From there, things got really interesting. Musk used $100 million to found SpaceX (a spaceflight company), $70 million to help fund Tesla (an electric vehicle company), and another $10 million to help fund SolarCity (a solar energy company that was later bought by Tesla and goes by the name Tesla Energy).
Other ventures have included The Boring Company (a tunnel construction operation), Neuralink (a neurotechnology company working on brain-machine interfaces), OpenAI (an artificial intelligence research company), the Musk Foundation (a charitable entity), and, of course, Twitter (see below).
4.9 billion
An estimate in US dollars of the amount that Musk’s companies had received in government support (both federal and state) in the form of loans, contracts, tax credits, and subsidies as of 2015. Obviously, the difficult-to-quantify number has increased significantly since then.
0
The annual salary in US dollars that Musk receives from Tesla. His compensation as CEO is based on the company reaching a series of escalating targets and comes largely in the form of severely discounted shares.
268 billion
Musk’s net worth in US dollars as of 2022. Needless to say, the value of Tesla shares has a huge impact on this number.
11 billion
A guess as to the amount Musk paid (in US dollars) in federal taxes in 2021. The sizable figure doesn’t include any state income taxes that could have been in the mix.
8
The number of children Musk has fathered. Six are from his first wife (sadly, the first of these six passed away from sudden infant death syndrome), none from his second wife (whom he has actually married and divorced twice), and two from his most recent girlfriend.
44 billion
The price in US dollars that Musk paid to buy Twitter and take the company private.
So who’s Elon Musk? Let’s just say that he’s a pretty smart, wealthy, and fertile guy.
