Elon Musk: The Creative Mind Behind Tesla and SpaceXBy: Actorbio.com
Elon Musk: The Never-Stopping Visionary Changing the World and Space
Early Childhood in Apartheid South Africa
(1971 – 1988) Elon Reeve Musk was born in Pretoria, South Africa, on June 28th, 1971 to Canadian born model and dietitian Maye Musk, and South African electromechanical engineer and emerald trader Errol Musk.
Elon’s parents divorced in 1979 after Elon was eight years old and Elon stated this divorce was the start of an extremely troubled childhood due to an emotionally abusive relationship he had with his father who he later called a “terrible human being.” School years were also very hard for Elon, as he experienced extreme bullying; at one point the bullying was so bad that Elon was beaten severely enough that he ended up in the hospital with a broken nose and needed reconstructive surgery to fix it.
However, the trauma he went through helped Elon develop a strong passion for reading and he read science fiction novels and the entire Encyclopædia Britannica twice before he was nine years old. At the age of ten Elon began to teach himself how to program computers using a Commodore VIC-20. By the time he was twelve years old Elon wrote his first video game, Blastar, which he sold to a South African computer magazine for $500.
Musk’s departure from South Africa and relocation to North America (1989–1995)
was prompted by his desire to avoid military service as part of the apartheid system. At age 17, Musk departed for Canada in 1989 to claim his Canadian citizenship that his mother had been granted;He performed odd jobs — cleaning boiler tanks, cutting down trees, working on a farm — for approximately one year before attending Queen’s University in Kingston, Ontario.
He moved to The University of Pennsylvania in 1992 and earned two Bachelor of Science degrees: a degree in Physics from the College of Arts and Sciences and an Economics degree from the Wharton School (although he sometimes claims that he graduated with both in 1995, he actually received them in 1997); In 1995, Musk began studying towards a PhD in Materials Science at Stanford University, however, he postponed his studies and then eventually dropped out of school after only two days to pursue the growing Internet bubble.
Early Ventures: Zip2 and PayPal (1995–2002)
Musk, at the age of 24 founded Zip2 along with his brother Kimbal — an on-line city guide & business directory for newspapers. In 1999, Compaq paid $307 million dollars in cash to acquire the venture. Musk’s share was approximately $22 million. He then used most of his cash to fund X.com, a new on-line banking and payment service. In 2000 X.com merged with Confinity to create PayPal. By 2002, eBay had acquired PayPal for $1.5 billion dollars in stock. After taxes, Musk retained approximately $180 million.
Building SpaceX: a multi-planetary mission (2002 – Present)
On May 2002 Elon Musk formed Space Exploration Technologies Corp. (SpaceX). Musk had created this corporation to cut the cost of travel through space and to enable humans to colonize Mars. After failing to launch the Falcon 1 rocket successfully on each of the first three attempts in 2006 and 2008; SpaceX was at the brink of collapse when they finally succeeded on their fourth launch in September of 2008.
At the same time that Musk was facing financial disaster from being declared bankrupt by a judge; SpaceX’s success came just in time. Today, SpaceX is developing the only active operational super heavy lift vehicle (Starship), reusing its booster rockets on a regular basis using the Falcon 9, owns and operates the Starlink mega constellation with over 9,300–9,400 satellites in orbit as of early 2026, and has signed multiple large contracts with NASA for landing missions on the moon and crewed missions.
Tesla: The electric vehicle and sustainable energy revolution (2004-Present)
In 2004, Musk was chairman of Tesla motors with an investment and later became the CEO when Tesla faced a very close to fatal cash crisis in 2008. During the same year that he took on the responsibility of being the CEO, Musk had led Tesla through the 2008 financial crisis, and they were able to introduce their first mass production vehicles, which included the Model 3 (2017) and the Model Y (2020). In 2020-21 Tesla would become the worlds largest auto manufacturer as measured by market cap. Additionally, in 2023 Tesla released the polarizing Cybertruck.
Through the creation of “Gigafactories” Tesla was the first major car manufacturer to produce large quantities of batteries. Furthermore, Tesla has been at the forefront of developing full self driving capabilities for its vehicles; however, regulators and safety officials have been critical of Tesla’s pursuit of this technology.
More Ventures: Neuralink, The Boring Company, xAI
- Neuralink (founded 2016): Developing implantable brain-machine interfaces. First human brain-machine interface implant was done in January of 2024.
- The Boring Company (founded 2016): Building tunnels for urban traffic relief. Has built the Vegas Loop.
- xAI (founded 2023): AI Company building out Grok models which are designed to compete with OpenAI.
- Twitter / X Purchase (2022 – Present)
On April 25th, 2022 Elon Musk made an offer to purchase Twitter for $44 billion dollars. In October 2022 that deal was finalized. He changed the name to X at the end of July 2023; fired over 80% of the employees working at the company; revised both verification and moderation policies and said it would be a haven for free speech on the internet.
This caused major advertisers to boycott Twitter/X; the U.S. government, state governments, and other regulatory bodies repeatedly clashed with Musk and his new company over issues concerning the increase in hate speech and false information on the site.
Financial and Wealth Milestones
Elon Musk became the world’s richest man for the first time in early 2021. Musk’s wealth has fluctuated greatly since then:
- Reached a net worth over $300 billion (Nov., 2021)
- Peaked briefly at a net worth over $400 billion (Dec., 2024)
- Reached estimated net worths greater than $700 billion by the end of Dec., 2025
Forbes estimates Musk’s current net worth to be approximately $726 Billion as of Jan. 13, 2026. Bloomberg estimates Musk’s net worth to be in the $619-644 Billion dollar range. Most of Musk’s net worth comes from Tesla and Space X stock holdings.
Pronatalism and Family Life
He has had at least fourteen children. Musk has stated that low birth rates will be an existential threat to humanity; he has also indicated his own family life is as follows:
• Marriage to Justine Wilson (2000–2008) — Musk has six children with Wilson; one of their children died in infancy.
• Two marriages to Talulah Riley (2010-2012, 2013-2016).
• Relationship with singer Grimes (2018–2023); Musk and Grimes have three children together.
• Children with Shivon Zilis, a Neuralink executive (four children).
• A child with social media influencer Ashley St. Clair (born 2024).
There have been several publicized custody battles.
