Elon Musk’s companies (Zip2, Paypal, Tesla, SpaceX, Neuralink…)

Elon Musk is a South African-American industrial engineer, entrepreneur, co-founder of Paypal and founder of the aerospace transportation services company SpaceX. He was also an early investor in Tesla, an electric car company, where he is now CEO. At a cost of over $200 billion, Elon Musk is sitting comfortably 1st place in the list of top 10 billionaires in the world.

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Elon Musk: a genius in an obscure childhood

Born in 1971, Elon Musk showed an early talent for computers and video games.

After their parents divorced in 1979, 9-year-old Elon and his younger brother Kimbal decided to live with their father. It was only after the move that his notoriously troubled relationship with his father began to emerge. “It’s not a good idea”, Musk said in an interview with Rolling Stone about the transition to his father.

In 1983, at the age of 12, Elon Musk sold a simple game called “Blastar” to a computer magazine for $500. Musk described it as “a small game…but better than Flappy Bird.” However, Musk’s school days were not easy – he was once hospitalized after being beaten up by bullies. The thugs threw Musk down the stairs and beat him unconscious.

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What studies has Elon Musk done?

After graduating from high school, Elon moved to Canada with his mother, Maye, sister, Tosca, and brother, Kimbal, and spent two years studying at Queen’s University in Kingston, Ontario.

But he completed his studies at the University of Pennsylvania, where he earned degrees in physics and economics.

After graduation, Elon Musk went to Stanford University to do his doctorate – but he had barely started the program when he quit. He postponed entry after just two days in California, deciding to try his luck in the dot-com boom that had just begun. He never returned to finish his studies at Stanford.

Elon Musk’s businesses:

Elon Musk’s entrepreneurial adventure is genius even though it often sows pitfalls and unexpected events.

Zip2: Elon Musk’s first company

Together with his brother Kimbal, Elon Musk launched Zip2. A group of Silicon Valley investors helped fund the company, which provided city tour guides to newspapers such as the New York Times and the Chicago Tribune.

During the Zip2 startup, Elon Musk literally lived in his office and showered at a local YMCA. That effort paid off when Compaq bought Zip2 for $341 million in cash and stock, netting Musk $22 million: a more than successful exit for the multi-billionaire.

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Visionary Elon Musk launched Paypal and SpaceX

Musk has created several successful companies since leaving Stanford University in 1997. That year, he started his first company – Zip2. This company, which provided maps and business directories to online newspapers, was acquired by Compaq in 1999. He then created X.com, which later merged with PayPal, which went public in 2001, and in 2002 eBay bought the company for $1.5 billion.

In 2002, Elon Musk created SpaceX and since then the aerospace company has reached several milestones over the years. SpaceX became the first company to successfully relaunch and land the first stage of an orbital rocket in late 2017. In 2020, SpaceX made history on May 30, carrying astronauts into space. of NASA Doug Hurley and Bob Behnken aboard his Crew Dragon spacecraft using a Falcon 9 rocket.

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NeuraLink: Elon Musk’s craziest company

In the near futureNeuralink’s more concrete but ambitious goal is to develop a system that allows people with paralysis or brain diseases to control smartphone applications or restore their motor function.

Using hundreds of flexible fiber-like neural implants, the company aims to place electrodes in the brain using a surgical robot that resembles a sewing machine, achieving data transfer rates higher than currently possible. In addition, the flexibility of polymer yarns will facilitate the use of soft and flexible tissues compared to more rigid interfaces.

So far the system has been tested on rats and monkeys, but Elon Musk and his team say they hope to start implanting human volunteers by the end of 2022.

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Tesla: Elon Musk’s winning investment

In 2004, Elon Musk has invested heavily You are herean electric car company, because he believes that electric cars are the future of mobility. Two years after introducing its first car, Tesla launched the Model S sedan in 2008, which was praised by automotive critics for its performance and design.. The company finally made him a billionaire at the age of 40 in 2012. Elon Musk, as CEO of Tesla, has been embroiled in several controversies that have caused shares to plummet.

In 2018, Musk ran into trouble after his tweet falsely claimed he had secured funding and was considering taking Tesla private at $420 per share. This resulted in him and Tesla paying a $20 million fine and Musk agreeing to step down as chairman of Tesla’s board of directors. However, despite the controversies, Tesla’s shares continued to grow, adding to his wealth.

Elon Musk: What about twitter?

In April 2022, Elon Musk bought a 9.2% stake in Twitter, the social media platform where he has over 80 million followers. The purchase appears to make Mr. Musk Twitter, leading the 8.8% stake held by mutual fund firm Vanguard and surpassing the 2.3% stake of Jack Dorsey, the former chief executive from Twitter.

Musk’s investment in Twitter, which he has accumulated for at least the past month, is worth about $2.89 billion based on the company’s closing stock price on Friday. But by the end of the day on Monday, after news of his hiring sent Twitter’s stock price soaring more than 27%, he was worth about $3.7 billion. The shares are only part of the net worth of Mr. Musk, which is said to be worth more than $270 billion.