Elon Musk is a prominent businessman and entrepreneur, recognized globally for his leadership roles in companies like Tesla, SpaceX, X, and the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE). He has held the position of the world's wealthiest individual since 2021, with Forbes estimating his net worth at US$424.7 billion as of May 2025.
In 1950, Elon Musk's maternal grandfather, Joshua N. Haldeman, moved to South Africa.
On June 28, 1971, Elon Reeve Musk was born. He is known as an international businessman and entrepreneur.
In 1979, Elon Musk's parents divorced, after which he chose to live with his father.
In 1989, Elon Musk emigrated from South Africa to Canada, having obtained Canadian citizenship at birth.
In 1990, Elon Musk entered Queen's University in Kingston, Ontario.
In 1994, Elon Musk held two internships in Silicon Valley: one at Pinnacle Research Institute and another at Rocket Science Games.
In 1995, Elon Musk co-founded the software company Zip2.
In 1995, Elon Musk studied at the University of Pennsylvania.
In 1995, Elon Musk was accepted to a graduate program at Stanford University but decided to join the Internet boom instead.
In 1997, Elon Musk received bachelor's degrees from the University of Pennsylvania.
In 1997, Elon Musk was awarded a Bachelor of Arts in physics and a Bachelor of Science in economics from the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania.
In February 1999, Compaq acquired Zip2 for $307 million in cash, and Elon Musk received $22 million for his share.
In 1999, Elon Musk co-founded X.com, an online financial services and e-mail payment company.
In 1999, Zip2 was sold and Elon Musk co-founded X.com, an online payment company.
In 2000, Elon Musk contracted a severe case of malaria while on vacation in South Africa.
In 2000, Elon Musk married Canadian author Justine Wilson, whom he met while attending Queen's University in Ontario, Canada.
In 2000, Elon Musk was ousted as CEO of X.com and replaced by Peter Thiel.
In 2001, Elon Musk became involved with the nonprofit Mars Society and discussed funding plans to place a growth-chamber for plants on Mars.
In 2001, Elon Musk founded the Musk Foundation, which aims to provide solar-power energy systems in disaster areas and supports human space exploration, pediatrics, renewable energy, and safe artificial intelligence.
In 2001, X.com was renamed PayPal.
In May 2002, Elon Musk founded SpaceX, becoming the company's CEO and Chief Engineer.
In 2002, Elon Musk and Justine Wilson's first child, Nevada Musk, died of sudden infant death syndrome at the age of 10 weeks.
In 2002, Elon Musk became a U.S. citizen.
In 2002, Elon Musk became an American citizen. PayPal, which X.com had merged into, was acquired by eBay.
In 2002, Elon Musk founded SpaceX, a space technology company, becoming its CEO and chief engineer.
In 2002, PayPal was acquired by eBay for $1.5 billion in stock, with Elon Musk receiving $175.8 million as the largest shareholder.
In 2002, the Musk Foundation began donating to OpenAI, with nearly half of its $25 million in donations going to the organization between 2002 and 2018.
In July 2003, Tesla Motors (now Tesla, Inc.) was incorporated by Martin Eberhard and Marc Tarpenning.
In February 2004, Elon Musk led the Series A round of investment in Tesla, investing $6.35 million, becoming the majority shareholder and chairman.
In 2004, Elon Musk and Justine Wilson had twins through in vitro fertilization (IVF).
In 2004, Elon Musk joined the automaker Tesla as an early investor.
In 2006, Elon Musk and Justine Wilson had triplets through in vitro fertilization (IVF).
In 2006, Elon Musk provided the initial concept and financial capital for SolarCity, which was founded by his cousins Lyndon and Peter Rive.
In 2007, a series of escalating conflicts began within Tesla.
In 2008, Elon Musk and Justine Wilson divorced and agreed to share custody of their children.
In 2008, Elon Musk became the CEO and product architect of Tesla.
In 2008, Elon Musk began dating English actress Talulah Riley.
In 2008, Elon Musk received the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics George Low Transportation Award for his contributions to the development of the Falcon rockets.
In 2008, Tesla began delivery of the Roadster, its first mass production all-electric car.
In 2008, following the financial crisis and conflicts within the company, Elon Musk assumed leadership of Tesla as CEO and product architect.
In 2009, a lawsuit settlement designated Elon Musk as a Tesla co-founder.
In 2010, Elon Musk was awarded the Fédération Aéronautique Internationale Gold Space Medal.
In 2010, Tesla had its Initial Public Offering, after which the company's stock rose significantly.
In 2010, Time listed Elon Musk as one of the most influential people in the world.
In 2012, Elon Musk and Talulah Riley divorced.
In 2012, Elon Musk received the Royal Aeronautical Society Gold Medal.
In 2012, Tesla launched the Model S, a four-door sedan.
In 2012, the Dragon vehicle docked with the ISS, marking a first for a commercial spacecraft.
In August 2013, Elon Musk announced plans for a version of a vactrain and assigned engineers from SpaceX and Tesla to design a transport system between Greater Los Angeles and the San Francisco Bay Area.
By 2013, SolarCity had grown to become the second-largest provider of solar power systems in the United States.
In 2013, Time listed Elon Musk as one of the most influential people in the world.
In 2014, Elon Musk briefly filed for divorce from Talulah Riley for the second time.
In 2014, Elon Musk promoted the idea of SolarCity building an advanced production facility in Buffalo, New York, which would be triple the size of the largest solar plant in the United States.
In December 2015, Elon Musk co-founded OpenAI, a not-for-profit artificial intelligence (AI) research company, with the goal of developing artificial general intelligence that is safe and beneficial to humanity. Musk pledged $1 billion of funding to the company.
In 2015, Elon Musk co-founded OpenAI to advance artificial intelligence research.
In 2015, Elon Musk received an honorary doctorate in engineering and technology from Yale University and an Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers Honorary Membership.
In 2015, Tesla launched the Model X, a crossover vehicle.
In 2016, Elon Musk and Talulah Riley finalized their second divorce.
In 2016, Elon Musk co-founded Neuralink, a neurotechnology startup, with an investment of $100 million. The company aims to integrate the human brain with artificial intelligence.
In 2016, Tesla acquired SolarCity for $2 billion and merged it with its battery unit to create Tesla Energy. The deal announcement resulted in a drop in Tesla's stock price.
In 2017, Elon Musk dated American actress Amber Heard for several months, after reportedly pursuing her since 2012.
In 2017, Elon Musk founded the Boring Company to construct tunnels and revealed plans for specialized, underground, high-occupancy vehicles. Early in 2017, the company began discussions with regulatory bodies and initiated construction of a "test trench" on SpaceX premises.
In 2017, Elon Musk purchased the domain X.com from PayPal.
In 2017, Tesla launched the Model 3, a mass-market sedan.
In 2017, the construction of SolarCity's advanced production facility in Buffalo, New York, was completed after starting in 2014.
In early 2017, Elon Musk expressed interest in buying Twitter and questioned the platform's commitment to freedom of speech.
From 2002 to 2018, the Musk foundation donated nearly half of its $25 million directly to Musk's OpenAI.
In 2018, Elon Musk and Canadian musician Grimes confirmed that they were dating.
In 2018, Elon Musk was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society (FRS).
In 2018, Time listed Elon Musk as one of the most influential people in the world.
In 2018, prototype satellites were launched for the Starlink constellation.
In 2018, the Los Angeles tunnel, less than two miles in length, debuted to journalists. It used Tesla Model Xs and was reported to be a rough ride at suboptimal speeds.
In 2018, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) sued Elon Musk for a tweet about taking Tesla private, alleging securities fraud and seeking to bar him from serving as CEO of publicly traded companies.
In March 2019, Elon Musk, through his label Emo G Records, released a rap track titled "RIP Harambe" on SoundCloud.
In May 2019, the first large constellation of Starlink satellites was deployed.
In 2019, Elon Musk tweeted that Tesla would build half a million cars that year, prompting the SEC to seek a contempt order for violating the 2018 settlement agreement.
Since 2019, SpaceX has been developing Starship, a reusable, super heavy-lift launch vehicle.
In January 2020, Tesla directors settled a lawsuit related to the SolarCity acquisition, leaving Elon Musk as the sole remaining defendant.
In May 2020, Elon Musk resigned as chairman of the board of Tesla as part of a settlement with the SEC, which stemmed from a lawsuit regarding his tweets about securing funding to take Tesla private.
In 2020, Elon Musk and Grimes had their first child, originally named "X Æ A-12."
In 2020, Elon Musk relocated from California to Cameron County, Texas, citing concerns that California had become "complacent" about its economic success.
In 2020, Elon Musk supported Joe Biden. In the 2020 Democratic Party presidential primaries, Musk endorsed candidate Andrew Yang and expressed support for Yang's proposed universal basic income, and endorsed Kanye West's 2020 presidential campaign.
In 2020, SpaceX launched its first crewed flight, the Demo-2, becoming the first private company to place astronauts into orbit and dock a crewed spacecraft with the ISS.
In 2020, Tesla launched the Model Y, a crossover vehicle.
In 2020, a judge blocked a lawsuit claiming that Elon Musk's tweet regarding Tesla's stock price ("too high imo") violated the agreement with the SEC.
In early 2020, SolarCity's advanced production facility in Buffalo, New York, ceased operating as a joint venture with Panasonic.
In late 2022, Elon Musk released internal documents relating to Twitter's moderation of the Hunter Biden laptop controversy in the lead-up to the 2020 presidential election.
In the summer of 2020, Tesla became the most valuable carmaker, and it entered the S&P 500 later that year.
In September 2021, Elon Musk confirmed reports that he and Grimes were "semi-separated".
In October 2021, Tesla reached a market capitalization of $1 trillion, becoming the sixth company in U.S. history to achieve this milestone.
In December 2021, Elon Musk stated in an interview with Time that he was single.
By the end of 2021, the Musk Foundation's assets had grown to $9.4 billion, although it only dispensed $160 million to charities that year.
In 2021, Elon Musk allegedly had an affair with Nicole Shanahan, the wife of Google co-founder Sergey Brin, which led to their divorce the following year. This was reported in July 2022.
In 2021, Elon Musk became the wealthiest person in the world.
In 2021, Elon Musk had twins via IVF with Shivon Zilis, director of operations and special projects at Neuralink.
In 2021, Elon Musk publicly expressed opposition to the Build Back Better Act, a $3.5 trillion legislative package endorsed by Joe Biden.
In 2021, Elon Musk was selected as Time's "Person of the Year" and was listed as one of the most influential people in the world by Time.
In 2021, Neuralink released a video showing a macaque playing the video game Pong via a Neuralink implant.
In 2021, following a challenge from the World Food Programme director David Beasley, Elon Musk donated $6 billion to his own foundation instead of contributing to ending world hunger, despite Beasley's plan showing that the money could feed 42 million people for a year. This led to criticism over the foundation's donation practices.
In 2021, while hosting Saturday Night Live, Elon Musk stated that he has Asperger syndrome (now merged with autism spectrum disorder).
In early 2021, the Boring Company completed a tunnel beneath the Las Vegas Convention Center. Local officials approved further expansions of the tunnel system.
In July 2022, The Wall Street Journal reported that Elon Musk allegedly had an affair with Nicole Shanahan, the wife of Google co-founder Sergey Brin, in 2021, leading to their divorce the following year.
On October 27, 2022, Elon Musk bought Twitter for approximately $44 billion, after backtracking on his initial decision.
In December 2022, Elon Musk banned the ElonJet account on Twitter, which tracked his flight usage. Temporary bans were also placed on the accounts of journalists who posted stories regarding the incident.
In 2022, Elon Musk acquired the social network Twitter.
In 2022, Elon Musk said he would start supporting Republican Party candidates and gave over $50 million to Citizens for Sanity, a conservative political action committee.
In 2022, Elon Musk voted for a Republican for the first time, marking a shift in his political affiliations after previously supporting Democratic candidates.
In 2022, Elon Musk was elected to the National Academy of Engineering.
In 2022, Elon Musk's elder twin with Justine Wilson came out as a trans woman and officially changed her name to Vivian Jenna Wilson, adopting her mother's surname.
In 2022, Neuralink announced that clinical trials would begin by the end of the year.
In 2022, a federal probe was launched into possible animal welfare violations by Neuralink.
In 2022, immediately after acquiring Twitter, Elon Musk fired several top executives including CEO Parag Agrawal and became the CEO himself. He instituted monthly subscriptions for a "blue check", laid off a significant portion of the staff, and lessened content moderation, leading to an increase in hate speech on the platform.
Since 2022, Elon Musk's political contributions have mostly supported Republicans, with his first vote for a Republican going to Mayra Flores in the 2022 Texas's 34th congressional district special election.
In February 2023, a jury found Elon Musk and Tesla not liable in a shareholder lawsuit over a 2018 tweet about taking Tesla private.
In June 2023, Elon Musk supported Republican Ron DeSantis for the 2024 U.S. presidential election, giving $10 million to his campaign, and hosted DeSantis's campaign announcement on a Twitter Spaces event.
In July 2023, Elon Musk launched the artificial intelligence company xAI, aiming to develop a generative AI program to compete with existing offerings like OpenAI's ChatGPT.
In September 2023, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved Neuralink to initiate six-year human trials.
In October 2023, Grimes sued Elon Musk over parental rights and custody of their child X Æ A-Xii.
In October 2023, the SEC sued Elon Musk for refusing to testify a third time in an investigation related to his purchase of Twitter stock in 2022.
In 2023, Errol Musk recounted that the deal he made was to receive a portion of emeralds produced at three small mines, differing from previous statements.
In 2023, Tesla launched the Cybertruck, a pickup truck.
In 2023, the social network Twitter was rebranded as X after being acquired by Elon Musk.
Since 2023, Elon Musk's international political actions and comments have come under increasing scrutiny and criticism, especially from the governments and leaders of France, Germany, Norway, Spain and the United Kingdom, particularly due to his position in the U.S. government as well as ownership of X.
From June 2023 to January 2024, Elon Musk hosted a bipartisan set of X Spaces with Republican and Democratic candidates, including Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Vivek Ramaswamy, and Dean Phillips.
In January 2024, a Delaware judge ruled in a 2018 lawsuit that Elon Musk's $55 billion pay package from Tesla be rescinded, calling it an "unfathomable sum" unfair to shareholders.
Since January 2024, media outlets have reported that Elon Musk allegedly uses ketamine, marijuana, LSD, ecstasy, mushrooms, cocaine, and other drugs.
In February 2024, Judge Laurel Beeler ruled that Elon Musk must testify again in the SEC's investigation into his purchase of Twitter stock in 2022.
In July 2024, minutes after the attempted assassination of Donald Trump, Elon Musk endorsed him for president saying; "I fully endorse President Trump and hope for his rapid recovery."
In August 2024, following a discussion between Elon Musk and Donald Trump about DOGE, Trump committed to giving Musk an advisory role, with Musk accepting the offer.
In October 2024, The New York Times reported that Elon Musk bought a Texas compound for his children and their mothers, though Musk denied doing so.
In December 2024, Elon Musk suggested that the organization could help to cut the U.S. federal budget, consolidate the number of federal agencies, and eliminate the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, and that its final stage would be "deleting itself".
In 2024, Elon Musk criticized the video game Assassin's Creed Shadows and its creator Ubisoft for including "woke" content.
In 2024, Elon Musk had a child with Shivon Zilis via surrogacy and allegedly a child with author Ashley St. Clair.
In 2024, Elon Musk started supporting international far-right political parties, activists, and causes, and has shared far-right misinformation and numerous conspiracy theories. Since 2024, his views have been generally described as right-wing.
In 2024, Elon Musk voiced support for the far-right Alternative for Germany party in Germany.
In 2024, Elon Musk was the largest donor in the U.S. presidential election.
In January 2025, the SEC filed a lawsuit against Elon Musk for securities violations connected to his purchase of Twitter stock in 2022.
In January 2025, the organization was created by executive order, and Elon Musk was designated a "special government employee". Musk is leading the organization and is a senior advisor to the president.
On February 14, 2025, Ashley St. Clair, an influencer and author, posted on X claiming to have given birth to Elon Musk's son Romulus five months earlier.
On February 22, 2025, it was reported that Ashley St Clair had filed for sole custody of her five-month-old son and for Elon Musk to be recognized as the child's father.
On March 31, 2025, Elon Musk wrote that, while unsure if he was the father of Ashley St. Clair's child, he had paid St. Clair $2.5 million and would continue paying her $500,000 per year.
In May 2025, Bill Gates accused Elon Musk of "killing the world's poorest children" through his cuts to USAID, which modeling by Boston University estimated had resulted in 300,000 deaths by this time, most of them of children.
As of May 2025, Forbes estimates Elon Musk's net worth to be US$424.7 billion, making him the wealthiest person in the world.
On May 28, 2025, Elon Musk announced his planned departure from the Trump administration upon the expiration of his 130-day term as a special government employee. A White House official confirmed that Musk's offboarding was already in progress.
On May 30, 2025, Elon Musk's departure from the Trump administration was officially confirmed during a joint press conference with Trump in the Oval Office.
On June 5, 2025, a feud escalated between Elon Musk and Donald Trump when Musk alleged on X (formerly Twitter) that Trump had ties to sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.
As of September 2025, Elon Musk is the wealthiest person in the world, with an estimated net worth of US$384 billion according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index, and $415.6 billion according to Forbes.
In 2025, Elon Musk contributed $19 million to the Wisconsin Supreme Court race, hoping to influence the state's future redistricting efforts and its regulations governing car manufacturers and dealers.
In 2025, Elon Musk criticized the video game Assassin's Creed Shadows and its creator Ubisoft for including "woke" content.
In 2025, Elon Musk had a child with Shivon Zilis.
In 2025, The Wall Street Journal reported that sources close to Elon Musk suggested that the actual number of Musk's children is much higher than publicly known.
In 2025, it was reported by Axios that Elon Musk had previously participated in Dialog, an invite-only forum co-founded by Peter Thiel and Auren Hoffman.
In early 2025, Elon Musk served as senior advisor to United States president Donald Trump and as the de facto head of DOGE.
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