Alex Bruno
Musk got his start with Zip2, an online white page when he was young. The still-young billionaire’s boyhood aspirations of creating rocket ships and fast automobiles had already come true at the age of 51. Here is a look at some of the major turning points in his career so far while we wait for the construction of his Mars mansion. On June 28, Elon Musk will be 51 years old, and thanks to his accomplishments, he is now regarded as the world’s most successful tech investor and entrepreneur.
His businesses have upended a number of important sectors, and they are still working toward greater objectives. Elon Musk has built a number of successful businesses over his career, from the online business directory Zip 2 to the space exploration firm SpaceX, and he serves as an inspiration to a whole generation of aspiring businesspeople. SpaceXMania has chosen a few of the most significant achievements of the wealthiest man in the world for his 51st birthday; continue reading to learn more.
Along with his brother, Musk established the online business directory Zip2 as a digital replacement for the traditional paper yellow pages. They traded it to Compaq Computer Corporation for more than $300 million. Musk co-founded the online financial services business e-payment startup X.com with $10 million of the money he made from selling Zip2. The board of X.com fired Musk after a merger with Confinity and changed the company’s name to PayPal. Musk made $180 million from the sale of PayPal to eBay in 2002, which paid $1.5 billion for the service.
With $100 million of the proceeds from the PayPal sale, Musk established Space Exploration Technologies, or SpaceX, in the early months of 2002. His plans included colonizing Mars and ten-folding the cost of space travel. According to accounts, the space exploration corporation grew into a $125 billion juggernaut after receiving many contracts from NASA over the next few years. By 2015, SpaceX has conducted 24 launches for NASA under a variety of contracts, breaking several records in the process. A reusable orbital rocket performed its maiden successful ocean landing with the SpaceX Falcon 9 later that year.
In 2003, Marc Tarpenning and Martin Eberhard established the electric automobile manufacturer Tesla. In 2004, Musk joined the Tesla board as chairman and oversaw the series A round of fundraising for the company. Eberhard was fired from Tesla in 2007 and Musk was appointed CEO in his place.
A non-profit organization devoted to AI research, OpenAI, was co-founded by Musk in late 2015.
In 2006, Musk had the concept for solar energy business and provided his cousins Peter and Lyndon Rive the funding they needed to launch SolarCity. SolarCity was acquired by Tesla for $2.6 billion in November 2016. With the intention of developing “brain-machine interfaces,” or BMIs, that may be surgically implanted into the skull or the body, Musk co-founded another research company, Neuralink.
Musk eventually purchased enough shares in Twitter in 2022 to become the company’s largest shareholder. Then he made a $44 billion acquisition bid for Twitter. The purchase agreement was accepted by the Twitter board in April, but the process is still ongoing. He intends to turn Twitter into a platform for free expression, and make the algorithms open source to boost trust and eradicate spam if the purchase is approved.
Source: CNBCTV
