Known for his disruptions and advancements in a wide variety of industries and sciences, the tech
revolutionary, Elon Musk, has traversed many paths. Chasing a vision he has had since youth, Musk was
finally able to capture his own American Dream.
Elon Musk was born on June 28, 1971 in South Africa to Errol and Maye Musk.
His father was a very wealthy South African engineer.
Musk has two siblings, his brother Kimbal and sister Tosca.
When Musk was 10 years old, his parents separated. At a young age, he was very
enthralled by sci-fi, books, and he even taught himself to program.
1989
Canada
In 1989, when Musk was only 17 years old, he moved to Ontario, Canada to attend Queen's
University. According to Musk, the decision to move to Canada was to avoid mandatory service
in the South African military. As a Canadian citizen, Musk hoped to more easily gain American
citizenship in the future.
1992
TheU.S.A.
Musk left Canada in 1992 to study business and physics at the University of Pennsylvania in
the United States. After earning economics and physics degrees at UPenn, he went on to attempt
earning a PhD in physics at Stanford University. After only two days at Stanford, Musk dropped out
to launch his own tech company, Zip2. In 2002, Musk became an American Citizen.
1995
Zip2
Elon and his brother, Kimbal Musk, launched their first company, Zip2, in 1995. Zip2 was designed
to be a searchable business directory, allowing users to find where different establishments were
located. Zip2 eventually began marketing to newspaper chains, allowing different newspaper's
websites to provide online business directories for their users. Elon and Kimbal sold Zip2 to
Compaq Computer Corp. in 1999 for $307 million dollars.
1999
X.com& PayPal
After selling Zip2, in the year 1999, Elon and Kimbal Musk went on to found X.com, a financial and
payment services company. After an acquisition, X.com became the well known fintech
giant PayPal. In 2002, PayPal was purchased by ebay for $1.5 billion in stock options.
2002
SpaceX
2002 brought in a new era for Musk as he founded his space exploration company, SpaceX. Since
its founding, SpaceX has delivered numerous cargo loads to the International Space Station,
deployed satellites, and recently shuttled manned crews to the ISS. One of SpaceX's latest commercial
ambitious is Starlink, an effort to deploy numerous low orbit broadband internet providing
satellites. Musk has intentions to someday use his SpaceX equipment to pave the way for a colony
on mars.
2003
Tesla
Motors
In 2003, Musk executed his dream to produce mass-market electric cars at an attainable price
by founding the company Tesla. Since Tesla's inception, several different car and truck models have been
produced and entry into the solar and battery markets have been made. Tesla continues to push
the bounderies of electrically powered transportation.
2017
Neuralink
Musk's human-software interfacing venture, Neuralink, was founded in 2017. Musk has hopes that
the technology developed by Neuralink will help re-enable people with disabilities (such as
paralysis) and expand humanity's abilities through technology with direct neurological control.
TheAmericanDream
According to Musk in a CNBC Interview
he was enamored with the "cool technology and other things happening" in the United States when he was younger.
With his own ambitions he wanted to pursue, Musk made it a goal to achieve the American Dream
for himself, in which he succeeded. Musk has stated that “America is still the land of opportunity
more than any other place.”
