Elon Musk

Elon Reeve Musk was born on 28 June 1971 in Pretoria, then in the Transvaal province of apartheid South Africa. His father Errol was an engineer and property developer; his mother Maye Haldeman, born in Canada, worked as a model and dietitian. After his parents divorced he lived mostly with his father. He went to school in Pretoria, including Pretoria Boys High School.

Through his mother Musk held Canadian citizenship; in June 1989 he left for Canada, thereby avoiding South African military service. He studied at Queen's University in Kingston from 1990 and transferred in 1992 to the University of Pennsylvania, which awarded him degrees in economics and physics. In 1995 he was admitted to a graduate programme at Stanford but did not enrol, choosing entrepreneurship instead.

In 1995 Musk founded Zip2 with his brother Kimbal; it made online city guides for newspapers and was sold to Compaq in February 1999 for 307 million dollars. He then co-founded X.com, which merged with Confinity in 2000; Musk was replaced as chief executive later that year. The company continued as PayPal and was bought by eBay in 2002.

With the proceeds he founded SpaceX in 2002, aiming to reduce the cost of spaceflight. After three failed launches the Falcon 1 reached orbit in 2008; shortly afterwards SpaceX won a NASA contract to resupply the ISS. In 2015 a Falcon 9 first stage landed for the first time, in 2020 Crew Dragon became the first private spacecraft to carry astronauts to the ISS, and from 2019 SpaceX built the Starlink satellite internet network.

At Tesla, founded in 2003 by Martin Eberhard and Marc Tarpenning, Musk became lead investor and chairman in 2004 and chief executive in 2008. The Roadster (2008) was followed by the Model S (2012) and the cheaper Model 3 (2017), among others. He also co-founded OpenAI (2015), which he later left, and the neurotechnology company Neuralink (2016), and founded The Boring Company (2017) and the AI company xAI.

Musk began his career during the internet bubble of the late 1990s, when Silicon Valley venture capital made rapid growth of new companies possible. After the end of the Space Shuttle programme in 2011 NASA increasingly left transport to the ISS to commercial partners, and climate policy with subsidies and emission rules gave electric cars an economic basis.

In the 2010s and 2020s social media became a central political arena, with fierce debates over moderation, free speech and disinformation. American politics became strongly polarised, and at the same time a race around artificial intelligence emerged. In this environment individual entrepreneurs with millions of followers gained unprecedented influence over public debate.

Reusable rockets lowered launch costs and made SpaceX the world's leading launch provider. Starlink delivered internet access to remote areas and during the Russian invasion of Ukraine, although Musk's refusal to activate Starlink over Crimea for a Ukrainian attack on the Russian fleet drew criticism. Tesla's success forced established carmakers to accelerate their shift to electric vehicles.

After acquiring Twitter in 2022 Musk dismissed a large part of the staff, relaxed moderation and introduced paid verification; researchers and advertisers reported more hate speech on the platform. In 2024 he became the largest donor in the US presidential election, and as head of DOGE in 2025 he pushed for deep cuts, including at the development agency USAID, which provoked widespread protest. In May 2025 he left the administration, after which he became involved in a public feud with Trump.

Admirers see Musk as the entrepreneur who accelerated spaceflight and electric mobility. Critics point to his impulsive management and his use of social media. In 2018, for example, Musk settled a case brought by the US Securities and Exchange Commission over his tweets about funding a Tesla buyout, with a 20-million-dollar fine for both Musk and Tesla, and he had to step down as Tesla's chairman for three years.

His statements have repeatedly led to accusations of antisemitism, racism and spreading disinformation, among others. The Anti-Defamation League and the White House condemned his remarks about George Soros and Jewish communities in 2023; Musk calls himself 'pro-Semitic'. A gesture in his speech after Trump's second inauguration in January 2025 was read by many as a Nazi or fascist salute; the Anti-Defamation League judged differently from other Jewish organisations, and Musk dismissed the accusations as 'dirty tricks'. Because he is alive and active, any historical judgement is provisional.