Forbes estimates Elon Musk’s current net worth at $222 billion. (File)
San Francisco:
Elon Musk is skillful, impulsive and angry. He’s also a corporate hitter, unafraid to tackle a multitude of industries with his own rules.
After revolutionizing the auto industry, sending his own rocket into space – with his car – and building the world’s largest fortune, the eccentric billionaire becomes the new king of the internet. society after he took the helm of Twitter on Thursday and fired on the chief executive.
That would give him control of the web on which the world debates, lobbies, squabbles, and casts shade, Elon Musk often being the first of them.
The deal will also ignite the flames of his political views, business methods, disparate personality and unique personal life – fires that he has nothing to do with.
He is a libertarian, anti-sober, and presents himself as a fighter for free speech. He has been accused of being autocratic and bullying.
“The reason I bought Twitter is because it’s important for the future of civilization to have a common digital city square” for healthy debates, says Elon Musk. know early Thursday, stressing that it cannot become a “free hell for all”.
His takeover of the social media advertising agency involved a months-long roller coaster of announcements, protest notices, and legal maneuvers – which he particularly highlighted by firing the shot at the company on its own platform.
This is Musk’s latest corporate takeover, after publishing and paying online, space travel and electric cars.
The 51-year-old is the world’s richest person, a title he won last year from Amazon’s Jeff Bezos following the meteoric rise of Tesla, the electric car maker he founded in 2003. .
Newsmaker, for better and for worse
Musk’s businesses are remarkable for the right reasons: his space transport company SpaceX is a partner in a three-way venture that sent the first entirely private mission to the International Space Station. .
But his empire also offers less flattering news: Tesla has faced a series of lawsuits alleging discrimination against Black workers as well as sexual harassment.
Along with the stream of attractive business news, the unique private life of Elon Musk also makes the whole world look up.
Elon Musk had two children with his partner, musician Grimes: a son, X AE A-XII, called X, and a girl they named Exa Dark Siderael Musk – despite the father’s Mom will mostly call her Y.
He is also the father of twins with a top executive at Neuralink, a company he co-founded.
One way or another, Mr. Musk has become one of the most famous figures of his time. So how did he get to where he is today?
To Mars…and beyond?
Born in Pretoria, on June 28, 1971, the son of an engineer father and a Canadian model mother, Musk left South Africa in his late teens to attend Queen’s University in Ontario.
He transferred to the University of Pennsylvania after two years and earned bachelor’s degrees in physics and business.
After graduating from an Ivy League school, Elon Musk abandoned plans to attend Stanford University in California.
Instead, he dropped out of school and founded Zip2, a company that makes online publishing software for the media industry.
He made his first million before the age of 30 when he sold Zip2 to American computer maker Compaq for more than $300 million in 1999.
Musk’s next company, X.com, eventually merged with PayPal, the online payments company acquired by internet auction giant eBay for $1.5 billion in 2002.
After leaving PayPal, Musk embarked on a series of projects more ambitious than ever.
He founded SpaceX in 2002 – currently its chief operating officer and chief technology officer – and became president of electric car maker Tesla in 2004.
After some initial crashes and near misses, SpaceX perfected the art of landing turbofans on solid ground and ocean platforms, making them reusable, and late last year it did sent four tourists into space, on the first orbital mission without any professional astronauts on the Board.
Elon Musk’s company jokingly called The Boring Company is advertising a super-fast rail transit system “Hyperloop” that can transport people at near-supersonic speeds.
And he has said he wants to make humans an “interplanetary species” by establishing a colony of people living on Mars.
To achieve this goal, SpaceX is developing a prototype rocket, Starship, that is expected to carry crew and cargo to the Moon, Mars and beyond – Musk says he feels confident about an orbital test this year, possibly in November.
Elon Musk, who holds US, Canadian and South African citizenship, has been married and divorced three times – once to Canadian author Justine Wilson and twice to actress Talulah Riley. He has nine children. A tenth child died in infancy.
Forbes estimates his current net worth at $222 billion.
(This story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is automatically generated from the syndication feed.)
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