Talk about Elon Musk is, without a doubt, to speak of a genius. A genius who came into the world to leave a mark. Some know him as the real life ironmanand it is that Elon Musk is an engineer and entrepreneur who lacks hours in the day to continue developing all the projects that keep him up at night: like traveling to Mars with his company SpaceX (dedicated to aerospace transport) or climate warming and the risk of extinction of the human species.
Elon Musk is that person who never gives up an idea only written on paper.
History of Elon Musk, from his beginnings in South Africa to the present day
The story of Elon Musk began on June 28, 1971 in South Africa, as the eldest son of a South African engineering father and a Canadian nutritionist mother. At the young age of 9, Elon got his first personal computer, which made him immediately interested in programming and computing, becoming a self-taught boy who quickly began to learn on his own.
At just 18 years old, he decided to leave his home (driven by his strong refusal to serve in the military) and, without the support of his fathertraveled to Canada with his mother to begin studying physics, and later business, at the University of Pennsylvania.
Elon Musk’s first company… and his first millionaire sale
However, Musk had a very marked entrepreneurial gene, so after graduating in economics he did not want to continue studying and began to meditate on theories that could change the course of humanity generating great impacts in the future. He was a pioneer in realizing that Internet would change the worldso -in the summer of 1995- Elon founded his first company with his brother Kimbal: Zip2.
At that time the internet was growing fast, and although until then no one had managed to make a fortune from the phenomenon, the change was something imminent that Musk knew very well. With all the effort that this required and as time went by, Elon managed to make a fortune thanks to the advances achieved by Zip2: he created a platform in which newspapers, magazines and media (including the great New York Times) could offer additional business services to its customers. In 1999 he sold the company for more than $200 million.
That same year he began working on electronic payment systems, creating X.com (which soon went on to be renamed PayPal) becoming CEO and president of it. Over time, eBay acquired the company for $1.5 billion.
2002: The space dream begins
In 2002, already a billionaire businessman, he decided to found the company SpaceXwith the aim of reducing the costs of space transportation: since Elon was little he dreamed of the idea of knowing Mars.
A year later, in 2003, he founded Tesla Motors, his electric car manufacturing company, where he had more than one problem with its co-founders, who even went to court. In 2008 he assumed the position of CEO of Tesla, as well as CTO.
In 2006 he founded a renewable energy company, SolarCitywith the aim of lowering the costs of solar energy and four years later, in 2010, it was introduced in a biotechnology company, Halcyon Molecular, seeking to sequence the human genome in one minute and extend the life expectancy of the human race. However, much to his regret, the company closed in 2012.
2013: a new stage for Musk
Only a year later, tired of the traffic jams in Los Angeles and San Francisco, he devised Hyperloop One, with the sole objective of generating a technology that would connect both cities with solar energy tunnels, although it is now working in beta in the vast fields of Texas. In 2016, and observing the high cost required to produce tunnels, he created The Boring Company which, despite its name, is a company dedicated to lowering the cost of producing works.
In 2016 he founded neurolinkof nanobiotechnology, which seeks to connect the human brain with artificial intelligence, and which we will talk about later.
Definitely, Elon Musk is a born entrepreneura brilliant man, with many ideas and enough money to undertake them all, despite all the scandals in which he is involved.
Cars, rockets and mind control: the companies of Elon Musk
This great businessman does not stop for a single second in trying to innovate in as many areas as possible, and for better or for worse, his great impetus has made him found companies that carry out projects that often leave us speechless. And to recount beyond Tesla and SpaceX, his two best-known projects, we share with you a compilation with all the companies founded by the millionaire tycoon:
- Tesla (2003) Musk’s main project owes its name to the famous Serbian scientist Nikola Tesla and is recognized for its electric cars, however it is also dedicated to selling batteries for the home. Musk is currently CEO and president although he does not own 100% of his shares.
- Space X (2002) This company intends to resume space exploration, and since it could not buy rockets, it began to manufacture its own. This company has already achieved several milestones in the aerospace industry, such as the reuse of the same rocket, in addition to launching Starlink, a constellation of satellites that aim to provide the world with internet. It plans to make its first orbital flight in early 2022.
- Sun City (2006) Musk also says he wants to change the world’s energy model towards something much more sustainable, and with this company that sells and distributes solar panels he is beginning to achieve it, at least in the United States, his largest market.
- Hyperloop (2012) A new conception of passenger transport through a system that sends capsules inside a tube to travel. This system is still very expensive, so for now it is just experimental.
- OpenAI (2015) It seeks to research and develop an artificial intelligence that is safe for humans and that serves the common good, without being used to harm others.
- Neurolink (2016) It seeks to make the human brain capable of handling devices just by thinking about it, an integration between the brain and AI through software and implants.
- The Boring Company (2016) This company seeks to dig tunnels, a very strange and extravagant idea since the tycoon seeks faster and cheaper transportation… through these tunnels
The real life Iron Man
Elon Musk is in the top 15 of the personalities who became billionaires at a younger age and is one of the richest people in the world, with assets valued at more than 130,000 million euros, and is not exempt from the controversial, since Elon Musk, in addition to being an engineering genius, also tends to get into any puddle that poses an intellectual challenge.
We can refer to a clear example with the children trapped in the cave in Thailand in 2018, when Elon Musk tried to help by offering technology to insert a nylon tube into the cave and fill it with air to create an underwater tunnel
Maybe worth trying: insert a 1m diameter nylon tube (or shorter set of tubes for most difficult sections) through cave network & inflate with air like a bouncy castle. Should create an air tunnel underwater against cave roof & auto-conform to odd shapes like the 70cm hole.
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk)
The tycoon ended up sending several of his engineers to help and, as he finally failed, he ended up insulting the rescuers via Twitter.
Besides having problems with Tesla Motors, one of his main concerns and in which he invests more than 120 hours of work a week, according to what he himself says. With Tesla, Elon generated very high expectations, setting deadlines and production minimums that he is not meeting, without taking into account the announcement of his possible delisting, which caused a tsunami of unforeseen reactions in the sector.
Faced with this situation, the SEC, the US stock market regulator, launched a record fine for Musk after announcing the possibility of withdrawing Tesla from the open market, understanding that with his statements he had altered the price of his shares. This fine included a penalty of 20 million dollars, as well as his resignation from the position of President of Tesla for three years, although he retains his position on the company’s board of directors.
Neuralink clinical trials: the wearable for your mind
One of Musk’s most ambitious plans is Neuralink, which, as we told you, plans to connect the human brain to a computer. In his own words, the “wearables for the brain” is made up of an implant, dozens of microwires that connect to flexible electrodes, and a system that manages to process this information.
Of course this proposal is not only innovative and revolutionary, but even partly terrifying, however Musk claims that his technology can help treat depression, insomnia and many more diseases since people with muscular conditions or disabilities can control their movements or use machines just by thinking about it.
Neuralink to start testing in humans, and Musk presented his innovative project to the world in mid-2020 accompanied by Gertrudea sow equipped with her cranial Fitbit: while a device recorded Gertrude’s neural activity, we could hear faint sounds each time she begged for food.
Person of the year 2021
One of the last great feats of Elon Musk was being chosen by Time magazine as person of the year in 2021, a mention that only great personalities from around the world receive annually.
Elon Musk () is TIME’s 2021 Person of the Year
— TIME (@TIME)
From majority shareholder to owner of Twitter, a plan that was frustrated along the way
At the beginning of April 2022, Elon Musk returned to the headlines of the world press as his favorite social network. Thus, he acquired 73,486,938 shares of Twitter, a participation that represented 9.2% of the total.
The news had such an impact that Twitter shares up 25% in premarket trading. Although Musk did not reveal what he paid for the shares, his stake would be worth US$2.9 billion (just over 2.6 billion euros), which would represent some US$3.6 billion (about 3.28 billion euros). euros) after the rise in shares on Monday, April 4.
It only took two weeks after these events for Elon Musk to once again be the center of presses around the world, when On Monday, April 25, 2022, it announced the purchase of Twitter for a sum of US $ 44,000 million. (just over 41,000 million euros). The agreement was closed after negotiations that lasted from Sunday to Monday itself. Musk’s own statements exposing where do you want to orient the course of the platform They have not been long in coming, and six key points stand out:
- Twitter will become a private companywith its consequent exit from the stock market.
- The main objective is “increase” freedom of expressioncreate a…
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