LeoGlossary: Elon Musk
Elon Musk is one the wealthiest person in the world. The billionaire has a net worth of well over $100 billion.
He is most recognized as the CEO of Tesla. This is a company that he has led for more than 15 years. It went from a start up to the largest producer of electric vehicles globally.
Musk is also known for starting SpaceX, the Boring Company, and Neuralink. Each endeavor is meant to take on a major challenge that Musk believes humanity is facing.
Musk was born and grew up in Pretoria, South Africa. He attended the University of Pretoria before moving to Canada at age 17, acquiring citizenship through his Canadian-born mother. Two years later, he matriculated at Queen's University and transferred to the University of Pennsylvania, where he received bachelor's degrees in economics and physics.
His business career started with the founding of the web software company Zip2 with his brother. This was eventually sold to Compaq for $307 million. After that, he co-founded X.com, which was an online bank. This eventually evolved into PayPal which was sold to Ebay for $1.5 billion.
In October 2022, he led an investment group in the purchase of Twitter. The price was $44 billion.
Controversies
Musk is known for his controversial style. Prior to buying Twitter, he was known for tweeting off the cuff things that drew the ire of different individuals and entities. One of them was the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) which ultimately fined him $20 million for tweeting that he secured funding to purchase Tesla and take it private.
Over the years as CEO of Tesla, Musk presented timelines that were repeatedly missed. This caused many to coin the phrase "Elon Time" which means add a couple years to any target date.
Another highly controversial move, one that ended up as a lawsuit was Tesla's purchase of Solar City. The deal was completed in 2016. This was to be integrated into Tesla Energy. Musk originally providing financing to the company in 2006, at the start. One of the co-founders was Elon's cousin. The acquisition pushed Tesla's stock down 10% since Solar City was having liquidity issues.
In 2020, Musk was sued over the deal, with the court eventually ruling in his favor.
His personality attracts a lot of attention, both positive and negative. Musk has his share of both fans along with detractors. Many invested with him, a move that resulted in a lot of money being made. He even got on the radar of the past two United States Presidents with both Donald Trump and Joe Biden taking positions on Musk.
Near Bankruptcy
Elon is known for the hundred of billions he has. He was able to walk away from the sale of Paypal with hundreds of millions of dollars. It is safe to say he got a nice return on his money.
The problem is he almost found bankruptcy.
In the early days of the Falcon 1 program at SpaceX, the first three launches failed. This put the company in dire financial jeopardy. At the same time, Tesla was having issues finding outside funding, also facing the possibility of going under.
Musk was running out of money. He put his last $30 million into both companies, reportedly dividing it evenly. He did this in September 2008.
Fortunately the 4th attempt of Falcon 1 was a success and U.S. Department of Defense awarded SpaceX a contract in December 2008, saving the company. This led to more outside financing which gave Musk the breathing room he needed.
Multi-Planetary Species
One of Musk's views is that humans must become a multi-planet species. Due to threats to our existence, whether it is an asteroid or climate change, Musk feels that we should settle Mars. His goal is to have 1 million people living on the planet by 2050.
For this reason, he is pushing SpaceX to develop rockets that can bring supplies along with people to populate the planet. This is a wild endeavor, one matched by Jeff Bezos' intention to get us to inhabit the Moon.
Both are putting billions into these endeavors. One advantage that Musk might have is that SpaceX already launched a satellite Internet service called Starlink.
The Everything Application
Closer to home, Musk also has big plans for Twitter.
One of the reasons for the acquisition dates back to his early days at Paypal. In 2000, he wrote a paper outlining a plan to make that business the largest financial institution in the world. At the time, his partners shot Elon's ideas down, instead opting to focus solely on payments.
Upon purchasing Twitter, the basis for the everything application was renewed. The company already filed for licensing to become a payment processor. This is likely only the first of many steps.
Elon sees the future where social media and finance are merged. Essentially the goal is simply to build a digital platform offering a wide range of financial products and services. While there are going to be licensing issues, we could potentially see stocks, bonds, cryptocurrencies, and other derivatives available on the network.
Those who are advocates of digital assets are curious to see if Twitter will incorporate that into the payment system. In the past, Musk has dabbled in both Bitcoin and DOGE. The former was purchased by Tesla, although most of it was sold. At the same time, Musk is a big fan of DOGE, offering his support through his Tweets.
Master Plans
Musk is known for his master plans.
So far he wrote two for Tesla, focusing upon humanity's shift to sustainable energy. He is presently working on a third which will concentrate upon scaling.
As mentioned, he has a vision for helping humans become multi-planetary.
There is a vision for the Boring Company to solve congestion and traffic problems by drilling tunnels in a cost effective manner.
And finally, Neuralink is Elon's answer to artificial intelligence getting away from us.
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