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Forbes estimates Elon Musk’s present internet value at $222 billion. (File)
San Francisco:
Elon Musk is at turns ingenious, impulsive and infuriating. He’s additionally a company maverick, unafraid to sort out myriad industries by his personal guidelines.
After revolutionizing the auto trade, sending his personal rocket to house — along with his automobile on board — and constructing the world’s greatest fortune, the eccentric billionaire is the brand new king of social media after he took cost of Twitter on Thursday and fired its high executives.
That may give him management of the community on which the world debates, mobilizes, bickers and throws shade, Elon Musk typically first amongst them.
The deal may also gasoline the hearth over his political opinions, enterprise strategies, outsized character and unconventional private life — flames he does nothing to douse.
He’s libertarian, anti-woke and promotes himself as a champion of free speech. He has been accused of being autocratic and bullying.
“The rationale I acquired Twitter is as a result of you will need to the way forward for civilization to have a typical digital city sq.” for wholesome debate, Elon Musk mentioned earlier Thursday, whereas insisting it couldn’t turn into a “free-for-all hellscape.”
His takeover of the social media juggernaut caps a months-long curler coaster of bulletins, counter-announcements and authorized maneuvering — which he characteristically punctuated by firing jabs on the firm by itself platform.
It’s the newest company conquest for Mr Musk, after on-line publishing and funds, house journey and electrical automobiles.
The 51-year-old is the richest particular person on this planet, a title he took final yr from Amazon’s Jeff Bezos following the meteoric rise of Tesla, his electrical automaker based in 2003.
Newsmaker, for higher and worse
Mr Musk’s companies make headlines for the correct causes: his house transport agency SpaceX is a associate in a three-way enterprise that despatched the primary absolutely non-public mission to the Worldwide House Station.
However his empire additionally makes information of a much less flattering type: Tesla has confronted a sequence of lawsuits alleging discrimination towards Black staff in addition to sexual harassment.
In parallel with the whiplash-inducing stream of enterprise information, Elon Musk’s unconventional non-public life additionally retains the world’s eyebrows raised.
Elon Musk has had two youngsters along with his on-again off-again associate, the musician Grimes: a son, X AE A-XII, referred to as X, and a lady they named Exa Darkish Siderael Musk — though the dad and mom will principally name her Y.
He additionally fathered twins with a high government in Neuralink, an organization he co-founded.
A method or one other, Mr Musk has turn into one of the vital ubiquitous figures of the period. So how did he get the place he’s immediately?
To Mars… and past?
Born in Pretoria, on June 28, 1971, the son of an engineer father and a Canadian-born mannequin mom, Musk left South Africa in his late teenagers to attend Queen’s College in Ontario.
He transferred to the College of Pennsylvania after two years and earned bachelor’s levels in physics and enterprise.
After graduating from the Ivy League faculty, Elon Musk deserted plans to check at Stanford College in California.
As an alternative, he dropped out and began Zip2, an organization that made on-line publishing software program for the media trade.
He banked his first tens of millions earlier than the age of 30 when he offered Zip2 to US laptop maker Compaq for greater than $300 million in 1999.
Mr Musk’s subsequent firm, X.com, finally merged with PayPal, the web funds agency purchased by web public sale big eBay for $1.5 billion in 2002.
After leaving PayPal, Musk launched into a sequence of ever extra formidable ventures.
He based SpaceX in 2002 — now serving as its chief government officer and chief expertise officer — and have become the chairman of electrical carmaker Tesla in 2004.
After some early crashes and near-misses, SpaceX perfected the artwork of touchdown booster engines on stable floor and ocean platforms, rendering them reusable, and late final yr it despatched 4 vacationers into house, on the primary ever orbital mission with no skilled astronauts on board.
Elon Musk’s jokingly-named The Boring Firm is touting an ultra-fast “Hyperloop” rail transport system that might transport folks at close to supersonic speeds.
And he has mentioned he needs to make people an “interplanetary species” by establishing a colony of individuals dwelling on Mars.
To this finish, SpaceX is creating a prototype rocket, Starship, which it envisages carrying crew and cargo to the Moon, Mars and past — with Musk saying he feels assured of an orbital take a look at this yr, presumably in November.
Elon Musk, who holds US, Canadian and South African citizenship, has been married and divorced 3 times — as soon as to the Canadian creator Justine Wilson and twice to actress Talulah Riley. He has 9 youngsters. A tenth youngster died in infancy.
Forbes estimates his present internet value at $222 billion.
(This story has not been edited by NDTV employees and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
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