Elon Musk

Elon Reeve Musk (born June 1971 in Pretoria, South Africa) is an American entrepreneur, engineer and billionaire. Founder, CEO and Chief Engineer of SpaceX; investor, CEO, and product architect at Tesla; founder of The Boring Company; co-founder of Neuralink and OpenAI; owner of Twitter (X).

On January 7, 2021, with an estimated fortune of $185 billion, he became the richest man on the planet for the first time, displacing Amazon founder Jeff Bezos in second place. On November 1, 2021, he became the first person in history whose fortune reached $300 billion.

Musk was born and raised in Pretoria, South Africa. He studied at the University of Pretoria for a while, and at the age of 17 he moved to Canada. He attended Queen's University in Kingston and transferred to the University of Pennsylvania two years later, where he received a bachelor's degree in economics and physics. In 1995, he moved to California to study at Stanford University, but instead decided to go into business and, together with his brother Kimbal, co-founded Zip2, an Internet software company. In 1999, the company was acquired by Compaq for $307 million. In the same year, Musk co-founded the online bank X.com, which in 2000 conglomerately consolidated with Confinity to form PayPal. In 2002, the company was bought by eBay for $1.5 billion.

In 2002, Musk founded SpaceX, an aerospace engineering and space transportation services company of which he is the CEO and chief engineer. In 2004, he joined electric vehicle manufacturer Tesla as chairman of the board of directors and architect of the project, and in 2008 he became its CEO. In 2006, he helped create SolarCity, a solar energy services company that was later acquired by Tesla and became Tesla Energy. In 2015, he co-founded OpenAI, a non-profit research company that promotes artificial intelligence. In 2016, he co-founded Neuralink, a neurotechnology company developing brain-computer interfaces, and founded The Boring Company, a tunnel construction company. Musk proposed the idea of Hyperloop - a high-speed transportation system on a vacuum train. In 2022, he became the owner of Twitter for $44 billion.

For outstanding services to science, on May 9, 2018, he was awarded membership of the Royal Society of London. In December 2021, Time magazine recognized Elon Musk as "Person of the Year".

Early years

He was born on 28 June 1971 and grew up in Pretoria, South Africa, the son of engineer Errol Musk and his wife, model Maye Musk (née Haldeman). His father was a partial owner of the Zambian emerald mines near Lake Tanganyika. His parents gave him the name of his great-grandfather John Elon Haldeman, who was born in 1872. The Haldemanns, his maternal ancestors, were Swiss Germans. They immigrated from Europe to New York during the American Revolutionary War, from where they subsequently dispersed to the Midwest. In 1948, Musk's grandfather Joshua Norman Haldeman married a Canadian dance teacher, Winnifred Josephine Fletcher (Win). In the same year, the couple had twin daughters Kay and May, Musk's mother. Musk's grandfather was an avid aviator, traveling with his entire family in his own single-engine plane across North America. In 1950, the thirst for adventure forced the family to leave Canada and move to South Africa, where at the age of 15 May entered a modeling school and began to walk the catwalk, take pictures for magazines and even become a finalist of the Miss South Africa contest.

May and her future husband Errol Musk, Elon's father, grew up together in the same neighborhood. Errol worked as a civil engineer, and May was a practicing nutritionist.

Elon has a younger brother, Kimbal, and a younger sister, Tosca.

The boy grew up introverted, loved reading and, having a photographic memory and having read two sets of encyclopedias, became a know-it-all, which did not add to his popularity. At school, Elon was abused by his peers; After one of the beatings, he had to repair his broken nose. His parents divorced, his mother went with the children to Durban, but after a couple of years, Elon decided to live with his father, to whom Kimbal later moved. Errol is a difficult, demanding man, and it was not easy to live with him, but the boys learned a lot from their father. They came to my father's work to lay brickwork, install plumbing, adjust window frames and lay electrical wiring.

At the age of ten, Elon received his first computer, a Commodore VIC-20, as a gift, and learned to program on it. At the age of twelve, he sold his first program, a Space Invaders-style video game called Blastar, for $500, in which the player fired a laser cannon at the ranks of aliens.

Musk invested in shares of a pharmaceutical company, which he followed through newspapers. With the proceeds from the sale of shares, he, despite the protests of his parents, left for Canada. Before entering the university, he lived with relatives in the city of Kingston, Ontario. He attended Queen's University in Kingston, where he studied from 1989 to 1991. He then transferred to the University of Pennsylvania to study business and physics. He received a bachelor's degree in economics and a bachelor's degree in physics. In 1995, he entered Stanford University to receive a PhD in applied physics and materials science. However, his admission coincided with the Internet boom, and to take part in it, Musk left Stanford just two days after enrollment. After leaving university, Musk founded his first company, Zip2 Corporation.

Career

Zip2 (1995—1999)

In 1995, Musk, his brother Kimbal, and Greg Kouri founded Zip2, an Internet software company, with investor funding. They housed their business in a small rented office in Palo Alto. The company developed and sold an online city guide for the newspaper industry, with maps, directions, and yellow pages. Musk says that before the company became successful, he couldn't afford an apartment and instead rented an office, slept on the couch, showered at the YMCA, and shared one computer with his brother. When he and Kimbal couldn't agree on business decisions, they resolved their differences through struggle. According to Musk, "the site worked during the day, and I developed it at night, seven days a week, all the time." The Musk brothers won contracts with The New York Times and the Chicago Tribune, and persuaded the board of directors to abandon plans to merge with CitySearch. Musk's attempts to become CEO, whose position was held by Chairman of the Board of Directors Rich Sorkin, were thwarted by the board of directors. Compaq acquired Zip2 for $307 million in cash in February 1999, and Musk received $22 million for his 7 percent stake.

X.com (1999—2000) PayPal

In March 1999, Musk became one of the founders of X.com. In 2000, X.com merged with Confinity, one of the products of which was a service for personal money transfers PayPal. Musk strongly advocated the transfer of the company's UNIX software to the Windows operating system, which caused disagreements with the company's CTO Max Levchin and other executives, which ended with Musk's resignation from the post of CEO (while he remained a member of the Board of Directors). However, Elon's strategic decision to merge the two companies, along with the active promotion of an electronic payment system at online auctions (first of all, eBay), led to the rapid growth of the enterprise in 2001, which was finally renamed PayPal. Such impressive success allowed the company to go public in February 2002 (and at the same time become the first dot-com company to go public after the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001). In October 2002, PayPal was bought by eBay for $1.5 billion. At the time of the sale, Musk owned 11.7% of the company's shares, which allowed him to raise $180 million.

SpaceX (2002)

In May 2002, Musk founded his third company, SpaceX. It is a private developer of a series of launch vehicles and a commercial operator of space systems.

In December 2008, NASA signed a $1.6 billion contract with the company for 12 launches of the Falcon 9 launch vehicle and the Dragon spacecraft to the ISS, as a replacement for the Space Shuttle after the termination of their launch program in 2011. SpaceX is developing super-heavy launch vehicles Falcon Heavy (in operation since 2019) and Starship (undergoing the final stages of testing). These carriers, thanks to the use of partially or fully reusable modules, will significantly reduce the cost of delivering cargo weighing 100-120 tons into orbit, which in turn opens up broad prospects for lunar and Martian space programs.

According to Elon himself, he was greatly influenced by the series of science fiction novels "Foundation" and Isaac Asimov's views on the exploration of outer space as the development and preservation of human existence. Musk argued that embracing the life of several planets can serve as a defense against the threat of extinction of humanity.

An asteroid or a supervolcano could destroy us, and we are exposed to risks never dreamed of by dinosaurs: an artificially created virus, the accidental appearance of a microscopic black hole as a result of a physics experiment, catastrophic global warming, or some as yet unknown destructive technology could end our existence. It took millions of years for humanity to develop, but over the past sixty years, atomic weapons have created the potential for self-destruction. Sooner or later, our lives will have to move beyond this blue-green ball — or we will die out.

Elon Musk has set himself the goal of reducing the cost of spaceflight by 10 times. To do this, he founded SpaceX, investing $100 million in it from the sale of his previous companies.

In January 2016, at an investment forum in Hong Kong, Musk announced that his company hopes to fly to Mars in 2020-2025. On September 27, 2016, at the 67th International Astronautical Congress in Guadalajara, Mexico, Musk presented a project for an interplanetary transportation system that involves the creation of a reusable space transport to deliver people to Mars, with the goal of creating a self-sustaining colony there in the future.

In September 2017, Elon Musk posted a video on his Instagram talking about the new idea of using SpaceX rockets. It consists in using rockets and spaceships to fly anywhere on Earth instead of airplanes.

On May 30, 2020, a manned flight of Elon Musk's spacecraft called Crew Dragon took place. The first stage of the Falcon 9 successfully returned to Earth and landed on a floating platform in the Atlantic Ocean 10 minutes after liftoff. The spacecraft successfully entered orbit and docked with the ISS.

In January 2021, Musk announced his intention to sell off the property to demonstrate the seriousness of his intentions to build an autonomous city on Mars.

 

An American company, manufacturer of electric vehicles and (through its SolarCity subsidiary) electric energy storage solutions. In March 2018, the company's shareholders voted to increase Elon Musk's salary to $3 billion per year. He will not have a fixed salary, instead he will receive compensation in the form of company shares. The payment of compensation will depend on whether the company achieves the necessary financial indicators.

In October 2019, Elon Musk announced that Tesla had made a profit, and the company's stock price had risen by 20%.

SolarCity (2006)

An American solar panel energy company based in San Mateo, California, a subsidiary of Tesla.

OpenAI (2015—2018)

A non-profit San Francisco-based research company focused on artificial intelligence. The company's goal is to develop open, friendly AI. One of the founders is Elon Musk.

On February 20, 2018, Elon Musk resigned from OpenAI's board of directors due to a possible conflict of interest.

In 2016, Musk co-founded Neuralink, a neurotechnology startup designed to integrate the human brain with artificial intelligence (AI) by creating devices embedded in the human brain to facilitate its fusion with machines. The devices will also align with the latest improvements in AI to stay relevant. Such enhancements can improve memory or allow devices to interact more efficiently with software.

In a live demonstration in August 2020, Musk described one of his early devices as a "Fitbit in your skull" that could soon treat paralysis, deafness, blindness, and other ailments. Many neurologists and publications have criticized these claims; MIT Technology Review called them "highly speculative" and "neurological theater."

The Boring Company (2016)

A construction company engaged in infrastructure and tunneling, founded by Elon Musk in 2016.

Subway for cars: which in the future will be possible to move at speeds of up to 240 km/h. Musk believes that it will be much cheaper, faster and more comfortable than the traditional subway and should help in the fight against city traffic jams. A 1.83 km test tunnel in Los Angeles County opened on December 19, 2018.

Twitter (2022)

As of March 14, 2022, Elon Musk owned 9.2% of Twitter shares (73.48 million shares). The value of the stake, according to the exchange value as of April 1, was more than $2.8 billion, against the background of the news of Musk's purchase of 9.2% of shares, Twitter shares rose by more than 25% in the premarket. On April 25, 2022, Twitter's board of directors accepted Musk's offer to buy the company for $44 billion. In June, Musk backed out of the deal because Twitter was "unable or refused to respond to numerous requests" for data on fake accounts. In August 2022, the Delaware Court of Chancery ordered Twitter to hand over additional documentation to Elon Musk regarding the calculation of the proportion of bots and spam accounts on the social network.

On October 11, 2022, Elon Musk demanded that Twitter be punished for destroying evidence. According to the entrepreneur, the management of the social network forced the dismissed director of security, Peter Zatko, to destroy records that contained information about violations committed by the company's management. On October 28, 2022, Musk closed the deal and headed the company. In November 2022, the company underwent massive layoffs, according to Bloomberg, Musk planned to lay off 50% of the company's employees. According to The Verge, Elon Musk reduced the company's staff from 7.5 thousand employees to 2.7 thousand.

On December 15, 2022, it became known that Elon Musk filed a lawsuit against the owner of the account in which the data of the businessman's flights was published. The multi-billionaire also said that accounts that will reveal the location of people will be blocked, as it threatens people.

On December 19, 2022, Max launched a Twitter poll about whether he should step down as head of the company. 57.5% of the participants voted for the resignation. 42.5% were against. In total, more than 17.5 million people took part in the survey. What decision Musk will make is unknown, but he promised that he "will stick to the results of the poll." On December 20, CNBC reported on Musk's plans to find a successor.

2023

On June 5, 2023, he resigned as CEO of Twitter, having previously stated that he would remain as executive chairman and chief technology officer.

In the spring of 2023, Musk announced plans to create a competitive alternative to the ChatGPT chatbot, for this purpose the company xAI was created, the launch of which was announced in July 2023.

Anti-Semitic scandal

On November 15, 2023, Musk wrote "You told the truth" in response to a message from Network User X who believed that Jews allegedly had a "dialectical hatred" for "white people." On November 17, 2023, the largest investors in Apple, Disney, Warner Bros. Discovery, Paramount, Sony Pictures and Lionsgate, as well as IBM, refused to advertise on Twitter after Elon Musk supported an anti-Semitic post. The European Commission also asked to stop buying ads on Twitter. The White House criticized Musk for promoting anti-Semitism.

Condition

On January 7, 2021, Elon Musk became the richest man on the planet, displacing Amazon founder Jeff Bezos to second place. Musk's fortune at that time was estimated at $185 billion On February 19, 2021, his fortune increased to $199.9 billion, and he again became the richest man in the world, again overtaking founder Jeff Bezos ($194.2 billion), who returned to first place on February 17.

In the real-time billionaire wealth assessment ratings as of October 3, 2021, Musk was in first place with a fortune of $209 billion according to Bloomberg and with a total of $199 billion according to Forbes.

On November 1, 2021, against the backdrop of rising Tesla stock prices, Musk's fortune at the moment exceeded $300 billion, making him the first person in history whose fortune reached this mark. After that, he held a vote among Twitter users, asking whether he should sell 10% of Tesla shares to pay taxes. This was due to the fact that Democratic Senator Ron Wyden proposed to oblige the wealthiest people to pay 23.8% on the so-called unrealized profits, that is, the increase in the value of securities, regardless of whether they sold part of their assets or not. Even before the bill was proposed, Musk said he intended to sell $6 billion worth of shares and give all the money to the U.N. World Food Program (provided that its management shows more transparency about how the funds are spent). Most of the survey participants were in favor of the sale, and Musk sold his shares worth about $5 billion.

On December 14, Elon Musk lost his leadership in the ranking of the richest people on the planet according to Forbes, losing to the president of Louis Vuitton Moet Hennessy Bernard Arnault and his family. According to the magazine, Musk's fortune is estimated at $176.8 billion, and Mr. Arnault's at $188.6 billion.

In 2022, Musk lost $122.6 billion, which is more than the amount he earned in 2021.

As of June 1, 2023, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index, the businessman's fortune is $192 billion.

Politics

In December 2016, he became a member of the President's Forum on Strategy and Policy under US President Donald Trump, a group of 16 American entrepreneurs, whose task is to advise the 45th President of the United States on issues related to economic growth, job creation and productivity improvement. but in 2017, he refused to continue participating in the forum in protest against Trump's decision to withdraw the United States from the Paris Agreement.

Position on U.S. Interference in the Affairs of Other Countries

On July 24, 2020, Elon Musk left a tweet: "The next government stimulus packages are not in the interests of the people." In response, Musk received a message from an Armani representative that it would not be in the interests of the people for the United States to organize a coup in Bolivia in order to gain control of lithium deposits, so necessary for the production of Tesla batteries. In turn, Musk objected: "We will stage coups wherever we want! Come to terms with it."

Position on Russia's invasion of Ukraine

Shortly after the attack, Musk gave Ukraine access to the Starlink satellite internet system and sent two batches of Starlink terminals, batteries, power adapters for car lighters, solar panels and generators to the country.

  1. Hold new referendums in the Russian-occupied parts of the Zaporizhzhia, Kherson, Donetsk and Luhansk regions under UN supervision
  2. Recognition of the annexation of Crimea by Russia
  3. Neutral status of Ukraine
  4. Water supply of Crimea is guaranteed

On October 21, 2022, Bloomberg reported that the White House was discussing the possibility of checking Musk's businesses and activities for threats to the country's national security. Among the reasons for this is called, among other things, "an increasingly friendly position towards Russia after a series of tweets."

On October 1, 2023, he published an X meme on his own social network mocking Volodymyr Zelensky's requests for help from Western countries. Ukrainian users of social networks and the media responded with counter-accusations against the entrepreneur.

Secretly instructed employees to turn off Starlink satellites near Crimea in 2022 to thwart attacks by the Ukrainian military on the Russian Navy (Navy). This was written by CNN with reference to the biography book "Elon Musk" by Walter Isaacson. It is indicated that Musk feared a retaliatory nuclear strike by Russia. "Starlink was created so that people could watch Netflix, relax, connect to the Internet at school, do peaceful things, and not launch drone strikes," Musk told the author of the book.

Position on Taiwan

In October 2022, he proposed to make Taiwan a special economic zone of China, without recognizing Taiwan's independence from China.

Position on Hamas's invasion of Israel (2023)

In response to accusations by European Commissioner for the Internal Market Thierry Breton, in which he said that the social network X, owned by the billionaire, allegedly spreads disinformation about the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, Musk wrote: "Our policy is that everything is open source and transparent, an approach that, as far as I know, the EU supports. Please list the violations you refer to in X so that the public can see them." Earlier, commenting on the statements of Iranian leader Ali Khamenei, Musk wrote: "Khamenei's official position is clear: the actual goal is the destruction of Israel, and not just support for the Palestinians. This will not happen. All that is really happening decade after decade is a never-ending cycle of violence and revenge." This message of his was marked by the social network's automatic moderation system as violating the rules of X, but remained available for reading.

A position on a diversity-based hiring policy

Elon Musk compares hiring policies based on diversity, equality, and inclusion to George Orwell's dystopia "1984"; In the opinion of the entrepreneur, this is discrimination on the grounds of race, gender and sexual orientation, and it contradicts the principle of merit-based evaluation of an employee.

Philanthropy

In 2012, Musk signed the Giving Pledge. Musk became chairman of the board of the Musk Foundation. In January 2015, the foundation donated $10 million to the Future of Humanity Institute for research on the control of artificial intelligence.

In October 2019, he donated $1 million to plant trees in states affected by wildfires.

Rescue operation in Thamluangnangnon Cave

Elon Musk's attempt to take part in the rescue operation carried out in the Thamluangnangnon cave (Thailand) in July 2018, and the events that followed, caused a great public outcry. The American entrepreneur said that together with speleologists he was discussing options for rescuing people. On July 10, 2018, after 8 children were rescued, he brought to the rescue site a mini-submarine he had created using elements of the Falcon 9 launch vehicle, which was supposed to help children who were not prepared for diving. However, rescuers considered that it was inappropriate to use it.

Speleologist Vern Unsworth, who played one of the key roles in the rescue operation, criticized the proposal, calling it a publicity stunt. According to him, this plan had no chance of success: a submarine with a rigid frame would not have passed even the first 50 meters, along the way he spoke rudely about Musk.

In response, Elon posted a tweet in which he called the British diver a pedophile and said that he was living in Thailand for the sake of marrying a minor. Musk quickly deleted this tweet, but it has already caused a wave of negative reaction and numerous articles in various media, the situation caused a short-term drop in the value of Tesla shares. A few days later, Elon apologized to Unsworth.

However, Unsworth sued him, with the intention of receiving $75,000 in damages.

In late 2019, Musk appeared in a Los Angeles court over a defamation case; the jury, having considered the case, took Musk's side.

Personal life

He lives in Texas, where he moved at the end of 2020 from California.

Next of kin

Maye Musk, Elon's mother, is also a fairly well-known public figure, a successful model, lecturer and nutritionist. Kimbal, Elon's younger brother, is a successful restaurateur, an adept in the use of farm products, and his sister Tosca is engaged in film production.

First marriage

His first wife, Justin Wilson, studied with him at the same university in Canada. They married in 2000.

Children from the first marriage:

  • son, Nevada – born in 2002. At the age of 10 weeks, he died suddenly in his sleep from sudden infant death syndrome
  • twins, twin boys Griffin and Xavier – born as a result of in vitro fertilization in 2004
  • triplets, twin boys Damian, Saxon and Kai – born in 2006

In September 2008, Elon and Justin announced their breakup, as Musk began dating British actress Talulah Riley.

Digamy

Musk and Talulah Riley married in 2010. In 2012, the couple divorced, but married again in 2013. In March 2016, they filed for divorce, which took place in October of the same year.

Third marriage

Musk began dating his third wife in 2018. It was Canadian singer and musician Claire Boucher, better known as Grimes. In January 2020, Grimes confirmed that she and Musk were expecting their first child. Grimes explained that the child will be able to choose his own gender and the couple plans to use the neutral pronoun "they" in relation to the child. In September 2021, it became known that Elon Musk and Grimes broke up after three years of marriage.

Children from the third marriage:

  • son, Ex Ash A-Twelve, the couple's first child, born on May 4, 2020; according to his father, his name is "X Æ A-12", although in California this name may be illegal because it has a symbol that is not the English letter (Æ). The approximate transcription is "Ex Ash A-Twelve".
  • daughter, Exa Dark Sideræl - although Elon Musk and Grimes broke up in September 2021 after three years of marriage, in December 2021, Elon Musk and Grimes, with the help of a surrogate mother, had a daughter, who was called "Y" by analogy with their son.
  • their son, Techno "Tau" Mechanicus, is the couple's third child, revealed in writer Walter Isaacson's upcoming biography of businessman in September 2023. He was also conceived with the help of a surrogate mother, who was given the nickname "Τ" by analogy with his brother and sister.

Children born out of wedlock

In November 2021, Neuralink top manager Siobhan Zilis gave birth to twins, for whom Musk became a sperm donor. In April 2022, Musk and Zilis applied to change the names of their children: they will bear their father's surname.

Relationship with Amber Heard

In 2017, he dated actress Amber Heard for several months. Musk explained in an Instagram comment that the reason for their separation was busy work schedules and long-distance relationships, but he and Heard remain friends. In February 2020, Amber Heard's ex-husband, Johnny Depp, said that Heard began cheating on him with Musk a month after the wedding. Both Musk and Amber denied a love affair at this time.

Health

Elon Musk admitted that he has trouble sleeping and uses sleeping pills. During his appearance on Saturday Night Live in May 2021, Musk stated that he had Asperger's syndrome.

Political views

In 2022, Musk said that although he had previously voted for the Democrats, he would now vote for the Republican candidates. Musk has declared support for universal basic income, gun rights, free speech, a carbon tax, while at the same time he opposes federal subsidies. and is a critic of short selling.

Hobbies

  • Musk owned a Czechoslovakian-made Aero L-39 Albatros.
  • He later bought a Dassault Falcon 900 jet from the movie Smoking Here.
  • After selling the Zip2 in 1999, Musk bought a McLaren F1 supercar, but crashed it the following year when Peter Thiel was traveling with him.
  • Musk is a fan of computer games. In the 90s, he played Quake under the nickname Zip2 on the same servers with the pioneer of esports Dennis Fong, and also took part in cybresports tournaments, where he won.
  • In October 2013, Musk bought the Wet Nellie submarine car from the 1977 James Bond film The Spy Who Loved Me at auction for $997,000.
  • He participated in the flights of the Zero Gravity project (achieving a state of zero gravity on board an aircraft).

Criticism

In the fall of 2018, a number of traders and Tesla shareholders sued Musk and accused the head of the company of violating securities law. The US Federal Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) investigated this administrative case. The lawsuit alleged that Musk intentionally gave out false information on his Twitter account in order to influence Tesla's share price. In his personal account, the head of the company announced his decision to make Tesla a private firm and that he had already found the finances to buy back the shares. In the messages, he also indicated that he plans to buy back the securities at the rate of 420 USD per share, that is, above their market value.

Due to criticism from social network users and shareholders, Musk decided to keep Tesla a public company. In September 2018, the US Department of Justice, in parallel with the administrative case, opened a criminal case against Tesla. According to the SEC's lawsuit, Musk was threatened with a ban on holding senior positions in public companies.

In response to the accusations, Elon Musk stated the following:

I am deeply disappointed by the SEC's unfounded accusations. I have always acted in the best interests of investors, and integrity is the most important value in my life. The facts will prove that I have never endangered anyone.

On September 29, 2018, Musk and the SEC settled these charges out of court. According to the agreement, Musk will remain the head of Tesla, but will not be able to hold the post of chairman of the board of directors for three years. In addition, he must pay a fine of $ 20 million. The same fine was imposed on Tesla.

On June 2, 2021, it became known that some of Musk's tweets were recognized by the SEC as a violation of the terms of the judicial settlement.

A number of Elon Musk's claims on social media have drawn criticism and accusations of supporting conspiracy theories, in particular in the case when he doubted that the man who shot in a Texas mall adhered to neo-Nazi ideology and admitted that the shooter's online profile could be a "psychological operation." A number of Musk's claims about the riots in the Capitol, the war in Ukraine and extremist groups in the United States were assessed by the BBC as misleading.

Awards

  • In 2008, Esquire magazine included Musk in the list of the 75 most influential people of the 21st century.
  • In June 2011, he was awarded the Heinlein Prize for Achievement in Space Commercialization at $500,000.
  • In February of the same year, Forbes magazine included Musk in the list of the 20 most influential American CEOs under the age of forty.
  • In November 2013, Fortune magazine named him Entrepreneur of the Year, and The Wall Street Journal named Musk CEO of the Year.
  • In December 2021, Time magazine recognized Elon Musk as the "Person of the Year".

Cinema

Elon Musk is the executive producer of Smoking Here (2005).

According to Jon Favreau, the director of Iron Man (2008), Elon Musk served as the prototype for the film embodiment of Tony Stark, played by Robert Downey Jr.

In 2010, Musk appeared in the film Iron Man 2 as himself (according to the plot, Elon is a friend of Tony Stark). In 2013, he also played himself in an episode of the film Machete Kills. Musk is seen among the audience who came to the presentation of artificial intelligence in the science fiction film Supremacy (2014, at 00:07:39-41), and his name is in the credits.

Elon Musk made a cameo appearance in Season 26, Episode 12 of The Simpsons, which aired on January 25, 2015.

In the 9th episode of the 9th season of the series The Big Bang Theory, she makes a cameo.

In 2017, he starred in the comedy "Why Him?" as himself.

Also at the end of Episode 6 of Season 1 of Sheldon's Childhood, Musk is sitting at a table reading a synopsis of young Sheldon.

In 2016, Musk appeared in the series Mars (2016) as himself.

Elon Musk made a cameo appearance in Season 4, Episode 3 of the animated series Rick and Morty, which aired on November 24, 2019.