lon Reeve Musk FRS ( born June 28, 1971) is a business magnate, industrial designer, and engineer. He is the founder, CEO, CTO, and chief designer of SpaceX; early investor,[b] CEO, and product architect of Tesla, Inc.; founder of The Boring Company; co-founder of Neuralink; and co-founder and initial co-chairman of OpenAI. A centibillionaire, Musk became the richest person in the world in January 2021, when his estimated net worth grew to over $185 billion, surpassing Jeff Bezos.

Musk was born to a Canadian mother and South African father and raised in Pretoria, South Africa. He briefly attended the University of Pretoria before moving to Canada aged 17 to attend Queen's University. He transferred to the University of Pennsylvania two years later, where he received dual bachelor's degrees in economics and physics. He moved to California in 1995 to attend Stanford University but decided instead to pursue a business career, co-founding web software company Zip2 with his brother Kimbal. The start-up was acquired by Compaq for $307 million in 1999. Musk co-founded online bank X.com that same year, which merged with Confinity in 2000 to form the company PayPal and was subsequently bought by eBay in 2002 for $1.5 billion.

In 2002, Musk founded SpaceX, an aerospace manufacturer and space transport services company, of which he is CEO, CTO, and lead designer. In 2004, he joined electric vehicle manufacturer Tesla Motors, Inc. (now Tesla, Inc.) as chairman and product architect, becoming its CEO in 2008. In 2006, he helped create SolarCity, a solar energy services company and current Tesla subsidiary. In 2015, he co-founded OpenAI, a nonprofit research company that promotes friendly artificial intelligence. In 2016, he co-founded Neuralink, a neurotechnology company focused on developing brain–computer interfaces, and founded The Boring Company, a tunnel construction company. Musk has also proposed the Hyperloop, a high-speed vactrain transportation system.

Musk has been the subject of criticism due to unorthodox or unscientific stances and highly publicized controversies. In 2018, he was sued for defamation by a diver who advised in the Tham Luang cave rescue; a California jury ruled in favor of Musk. Also in 2018, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) sued Musk for falsely tweeting that he had secured funding for a private takeover of Tesla. He settled with the SEC, temporarily stepping down from his chairmanship and accepting limitations on his Twitter usage. Musk has received criticism for his views on such matters as artificial intelligence and the COVID-19

SpaceX CEO Elon Musk remains “highly confident” that his company will land humans on Mars by 2026, saying on Tuesday that it’s an achievable goal “about six years from now.”

“If we get lucky, maybe four years,” Musk said, speaking on an award show webcast from Berlin, Germany. “We want to send an uncrewed vehicle there in two years.”

The ambitious 2026 goal matches with what Musk outlined at the International Astronautical Congress in September 2016, when he said that “if things go super well,” landing people on Mars “might be kind of in the 10-year timeframe.”

“I don’t want to say that’s when it will occur – there’s a huge amount of risk,” Musk said in 2016.
While Starship development in Boca Chica, Texas is moving quickly, it’s not moving as fast as Musk hoped when he unveiled the first prototype rocket in September 2019. At the time, he estimated Starship could reach orbit by March 2020, but now SpaceX expects its first orbital flight test won’t happen until 2021.

Additionally, although Musk had said Starship could potentially fly people this year, he later acknowledged the rocket still has many milestones, including “hundreds of missions,” before that happens.

Musk has SpaceX focused on Starship’s development as the top priority, ever since the company in May launched a pair of NASA astronauts in its first crewed mission. In June, Musk wrote in a company-wide email obtained by CNBC that the Starship program must accelerate progress “dramatically and immediately.”

Since then, SpaceX conducted two short, 500-foot altitude test flights of Starship prototypes. The company is now preparing for the first flight test to 50,000 feet altitude, with an attempt expected to occur in the next few days.
he key to achieving his Mars goals is SpaceX’s development of its Starship rocket: The stainless steel vehicle that the company is building with the goal of launching cargo and as many as 100 people at a time.

Unlike SpaceX’s fleet of Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy rockets, which are partially reusable, Musk’s aim is to make Starship fully reusable — envisioning a rocket that is more akin to a commercial airplane, with short turnaround times between flights where the only major cost is fuel.