Elon Musk polarizes. He is the CEO of Twitter, Tesla and SpaceX, considered by many to be an industry pioneer. He is also the father of nine children.
Austin, USA – Hardly any other person is as polarizing as the entrepreneur Elon Musk is currently. He is celebrated by some as a pioneer and genius, a visionary who will change the world with his companies. Others see Musk as an overbearing narcissist who, regardless of the cost, pursues his own success. In 2022, Elon Musk bought the social media platform Twitter, where he went through a wave of layoffs within a few weeks. It remains to be expected whether he will really improve Twitter in the long term.
| Elon Reeve Musk |
| 06/28/1971 |
| Pretoria, South Africa |
| South African, Canadian, American |
| Justine Musk (divorced), Talulah Riley (divorced), Grimes (separated) |
| nine still alive |
| ~$219 billion |
Elon Musk: Tesla, PayPal, SpaceX, Twitter – an overview of his CV
Elon Musk’s résumé begins in 1995: he founded Zip2 with one of his brothers. The company no longer exists, having been purchased in 1999 for $307 million. That same year he founded X.com, later renamed PayPal, where he served as CEO. In 2001, eBay acquired PayPal for $1.5 billion, giving Musk $220 million. In 2002, Elon Musk founded SpaceX with the aim of opening up the way for humans to travel to other planets. His dream is that one day people will travel to Mars.
In 2003, Elon Musk began work on his next project: Tesla Motors. Tesla is now a global leader in electric mobility and is based in California. Thanks to the success of Tesla, Elon Musk’s name rose to prominence and he was hailed as one of the most innovative entrepreneurs of our time. In 2016, Musk founded Neuralink, which focuses on developing brain implants to allow humans to communicate directly with machines.
Elon Musk is one of the richest people on the planet. (Archive image) © Patrick Pleul/dpa
Elon Musk is buying Twitter for $44 billion
Musk’s most recent acquisitions were The Boring Company – an infrastructure company that designs and implements high-speed underground networks – and OpenAI – a non-profit research organization dedicated to advancing artificial intelligence (AI). OpenAI became famous for the chatbot ChatGPT in late 2022. However, Elon Musk has not been involved with OpenAI since 2019.
In 2022, Elon Musk acquired Twitter for $44 billion. His decision to acquire the platform was controversial, as Musk often complained before the purchase that Twitter moderated too much and accused the platform of censorship. Some of Musk’s tweets have also been flagged in the past for being based on disinformation or misinformation. After the purchase, Musk emphasized that he wants to make Twitter a “free speech” platform.
Family and personal life: Elon Musk has ten children by three women
In addition to his innovation, Elon Musk is known for his personal life – especially his children, who often have unusual names. Musk has been married twice: His first marriage, to writer Justine Musk (née Wilson), was from 2000 to 2008.
He then married actress Talulah Riley in 2010. The couple divorced in 2012 – only to remarry in 2013 and then finally divorced in 2014. Elon Musk dated singer and producer Grimes from 2018 to 2021. The couple no longer lives together, but say they are in an on-off relationship.
The singer Grimes has two children with Elon Musk © Etienne Laurent/dpa
Elon Musk has ten children in total. However, his firstborn child, who he had with Justine Musk, died of cot death shortly after birth. After that they had five more children. Elon Musk has two children with his former partner Grimes: a son and a daughter. In 2022, it was announced that Musk had two more children through an affair with manager Shivon Zilis. He has ten children in total, nine of whom are still alive. Here is the list with the years of birth and names of the children:
- First Child (*2002, † 2002, name unknown)
- Griffin (*2004)
- Vivian (*2004)
- Damien (*2006)
- Saxophone (*2006)
- Kai (*2006)
- X Æ A-Xii (*2020)
- Exa Dark Sideræl (*2021)
- Twins by Shivon Zilis (*2021, names unknown)
Elon Musk’s house in Texas and California: where does the entrepreneur live?
According to his own statements, Elon Musk no longer wants to have big houses. In 2020, he even claimed that he didn’t want to own anything anymore in order to focus on his journey to Mars. He then sold his seven houses and villas. Elon Musk currently lives in a rental house in Boca Chica, Texas. He says the three-bedroom house is worth just $45,000 — though it’s not clear if that’s true. Musk lives there because it’s in close proximity to SpaceX’s headquarters.
Net worth of Elon Musk: In 2022 he was the richest person on earth
Elon Musk made it to the top of the Forbes list of the richest people on the planet for the first time in 2022. The magazine put his fortune at $219 billion. He beat Amazon founder Jeff Bezos from the top of the list, who was only second with $177 billion.
In late 2022, Elon Musk lost an estimated $200 billion in wealth as Tesla’s stock went into free fall. He is the first person to ever lose so much private wealth at once. For this achievement he was included in the Guinness Book of Records. In early 2023, Tesla stock recovered somewhat.
