Elon Musk the beginning
He was just 10 years old when he started experimenting with a Commodore VIC-20 computer. For two years he began learning programming on his own and sold the code he wrote for a game he had made in BASIC language to a computer magazine for $500.
After graduating from high school, he decided to say goodbye to South Africa and move with his mother to Canada, where he studied for two years at Queens University in Ontario. He continued his studies in the USA and at the University of Pennsylvania, where he received two separate degrees: Physics, which was his great love, and Economics, as he wanted to do business.
After completing his studies in Pennsylvania, he wanted to start a PhD in Applied Physics at Stanford. His stay there, however, was extremely short-lived. As he said in interviews in just two days after arriving at the famous university, he realized that he wanted much more to deal with the internet boom, which was in progress at the time. It was 1995, and Musk and his brother borrowed $28,000 from their father to start Zip2, an online company that provided city guide applications to newspapers and magazines. Just four years later, Zip2 was sold to Compaq for $307 million, and Musk himself received $22 million.
Then he invested $10 million to start online payment company X.com, which soon merged with the money transfer service PayPal. When eBay acquired PayPal in 2002 for $1.5 billion, Musk received $165 million and launched his space adventure plans.
Space Technology by Elon Mask
During its early years, SpaceX designed and built the Falcon and Dragon spacecraft. In 2008, the global financial crisis plunged SpaceX into bankruptcy and Musk himself into dire financial straits.
In 2012, the Dragon docked to the International Space Station carrying supplies and equipment on behalf of NASA. On May 25, 2012, SpaceX became the first private company to launch and connect a spacecraft to the International Space Station.
Elon Musk’s dream is to be the first to step on the planet Mars. The progress of his space company is great. In recent years, the successes for the company have followed one another. Very recently it became the first company to send 4 amateur astronauts into orbit in space for three days.
Tesla: Electric car by Elon Mask
In June 2014, Musk confirmed his character as a visionary. Stirring the waters once again in the field of technology, announced the release of Tesla patents.
He justified the decision by saying that people are not moving fast enough in vehicles that adopt low emissions, even though environmental issues such as tackling climate change are pressing. “Our real competition is not the electric cars of other companies, but the petrol cars.”
The history of Tesla
In 2009 and beyond he began to have direct supervision of the design and development of vehicles. But he had to wait several years to turn it into a mass-produced, high-order company. When the first Gigafactory opened in Nevada in 2016, he said that “we are becoming a real car industry”. Until then, investors and consumers saw it more as a technological Start-up. By September 2020, Tesla had become the highest-grossing car company in the world, overtaking Toyota, VW, and major US companies General Motors and Ford. Today its market value is close to $1.2 trillion.
Green Energy by Elon Mask
In 2016, Tesla will acquire SolarCity for $2.6 billion, a deal that will lead to the merger of Elon Musk’s two companies into one big “green” company. The goal of the unification of the two companies is the package solutions for the final consumer with a company that will manufacture solar panels, Powerwall batteries and cars that will use the energy that produces all of the above.
ΑΙ (Artificial Intelligence)
Neuralink, Elon Musk’s company that develops implants for direct brain communication with machines, has secured additional funding of $205 million, including from Google.
Along with Neuralink, he has founded the non-profit organization OpenAI, which focuses on reducing the risks of artificial intelligence and making the best use of it.
