Biography

Elon Reeve Musk was born on June 28, 1971, in Pretoria, South Africa. His mother, Maye Musk, is a model and dietitian of Canadian origin, and his father, Errol Musk, is a South African engineer. Fascinated by computers from a very young age, Musk taught himself to code and, at the age of twelve, sold the code for a video game called Blastar. He holds South African citizenship by birth, as well as Canadian citizenship through his mother.

At seventeen, he left South Africa for Canada, then continued his studies in the United States. He earned dual degrees from the University of Pennsylvania, in physics and economics. Admitted to a PhD program in applied physics and materials science at Stanford University in 1995, he dropped out after just a few days to pursue Internet-related entrepreneurship. He became a U.S. citizen in 2002.

In 1995, Elon Musk founded Zip2 together with his brother Kimbal, a company offering online city guides and directories for the press. In 1999, Zip2 was acquired by a division of Compaq for about $307 million in cash, giving Musk his first significant financial gain.

That same year, in 1999, he co-founded X.com, an online banking and payments company. In 2000, X.com merged with Confinity, and the resulting entity was renamed PayPal. In 2002, eBay acquired PayPal for about $1.5 billion, providing Musk with the capital he needed to launch his next ventures.

In 2002, Musk founded Space Exploration Technologies Corp. (SpaceX), with the stated goal of reducing the cost of spaceflight and, ultimately, making the colonization of Mars possible. In 2008, the Falcon 1 rocket became the first privately developed liquid-fuel launch vehicle to reach orbit. That same year, SpaceX won a NASA contract to resupply the International Space Station.

SpaceX went on to develop the Falcon 9 launch vehicle, whose first stages are recoverable and reusable, as well as the Dragon capsule. On May 30, 2020, a Crew Dragon mission carried NASA astronauts to the International Space Station from American soil for the first time since 2011. The company also deploys the Starlink satellite constellation for Internet access and is developing the fully reusable Starship system, intended for missions to the Moon and Mars.

Tesla Motors was founded in 2003 by Martin Eberhard and Marc Tarpenning. Elon Musk invested as early as 2004, during the first funding round, becoming its largest shareholder and chairman of the board. He took over as CEO of the company in 2008, during the financial crisis, after Eberhard's departure.

Under Musk's leadership, Tesla popularized electric vehicles with models such as the Roadster, the Model S, the Model X, the Model 3 and the Model Y. The company also expanded into energy storage and solar power. Tesla has become one of the most highly valued automakers in the world, and its success has made Musk one of the wealthiest people on the planet.

In 2016, Musk co-founded Neuralink, a neurotechnology company developing implantable brain-machine interfaces. In 2017, he created The Boring Company, which specializes in digging tunnels to relieve urban traffic congestion.

In April 2022, Musk struck a deal to buy the social network Twitter; the transaction, worth about $44 billion, was completed on October 27, 2022. He later renamed the platform "X." In March 2023, he founded the artificial intelligence company xAI, whose conversational assistant Grok was integrated into X in November 2023. In March 2025, xAI absorbed X in an all-stock deal. In 2025, Musk briefly led the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) under the Trump administration before leaving it in late May 2025.

Elon Musk was married to the Canadian writer Justine Wilson from 2000 to 2008, a union from which several children were born. He then married the British actress Talulah Riley, whom he wed twice between 2010 and 2016. He subsequently had several children with the Canadian musician Grimes (Claire Boucher), as well as with other partners.

Musk is known for his work-centered lifestyle and his highly active presence on social media, in particular on the X platform that he owns. He regularly tops the rankings of the world's wealthiest people.

Elon Musk is an influential and polarizing figure in the world of technology and industry. His companies have helped transform the electric automotive and commercial space sectors. He is regularly described as one of the wealthiest people in the world.

His public activity generates numerous controversies, whether through his political stances, his statements on social media, his management of X after its acquisition, or his interventions in American public debate, notably via his role at DOGE in 2025. His management methods and some of his claims have been the subject of criticism and regulatory disputes.