Elon Musk

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Elon Musk

Elon Reeve Musk (born June 28, 1971) is a


South

African-born

Canadian-American

business magnate, engineer, inventor and


investor. He is the CEO and CTO of SpaceX,
CEO and product architect of Tesla Motors,
and chairman of SolarCity as well as cochairman of OpenAI.
He is the founder of SpaceX and a co-founder
of Zip2, PayPal, and Tesla Motors. He has also
envisioned

conceptual

high-speed

transportation system known as the Hyperloop and has proposed a VTOL


supersonic jet aircraft with electric fan propulsion. He is the wealthiest
person in Los Angeles.
Musk was born June 28, 1971, in Pretoria, Transvaal, South Africa, the son of Maye (ne
Haldeman), a model from Regina, Saskatchewan, Canada; and Errol Musk, a South African-born
electromechanical engineer. He has a younger brother, Kimbal (born 1972), and a younger sister,
Tosca (born 1974). His paternal grandmother was British, and he also has Pennsylvania Dutch
ancestry. After his parents divorced in 1980, Musk lived mostly with his father in locations in
South Africa. At age 10, he discovered computing with the Commodore VIC-20. He taught
himself computer programming and at age 12 sold the code for a BASIC-based video game he
created called Blastar to a magazine called PC and Office Technology for approximately
US$500. A web version of the game is available online. Musk was severely bullied throughout
his childhood, and was once hospitalized when a group of boys threw him down a flight of stairs,
and then beat him until he blacked out.
Musk was initially educated in private education, attending the English-speaking Waterkloof
House Preparatory School. Musk later graduated from Pretoria Boys High School and moved to
Canada in June 1989, just before his 18th birthday, after obtaining Canadian citizenship through
his Canadian-born mother.

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