Elon Musk is the founder, CEO and CTO of SpaceX, co-founder of Tesla Motors, and chairman of SolarCity. He is also the founder of The Boring Company, a tunnel construction company.
In addition to his primary business pursuits, he has also proposed the Hyperloop, a high-speed vactrain transportation system.
Musk was born to a Canadian mother and South African father and raised in Pretoria, South Africa. He briefly attended the University of Pretoria before moving to Canada aged 17 to attend Queen’s University. He transferred to the University of Pennsylvania two years later, where he received dual bachelor’s degrees in economics and physics. He moved to California in 1995 to attend Stanford University but decided instead to pursue a business career, co-founding web software company Zip2 with his brother Kimbal.
The start-up was acquired by Compaq for $307 million in 1999. Musk co-founded online bank X.com that same year, which merged with Confinity in 2000 to form the company PayPal and was subsequently bought by eBay in 2002 for $1.5 billion.
In 2002, Musk founded SpaceX, an aerospace manufacturer and space transport services company, of which he is CEO, CTO, and lead designer. In 2004, he joined electric vehicle manufacturer Tesla Motors, Inc. (now Tesla, Inc.) as chairman and product architect, becoming its CEO in 2008.
In 2006, he helped create SolarCity, a solar energy services company and current Tesla subsidiary. In 2015, he co-founded OpenAI, a nonprofit research company that promotes friendly artificial intelligence. In 2016, he co-founded Neuralink Corporation, a neurotechnology company focused on developing brain–computer interfaces, and founded The Boring Company, a tunnel construction company. Musk has also proposed the Hyperloop transportation system.
In 2018, Musk co-founded Neuralink Corporation with the goal of developing brain–computer interfaces (BCI), devices that could be implanted into human brains to help treat neurological diseases or augment human cognition or senses; as well as creating artificial intelligence (AI) software designed to be “safe for humans”. On July 17th 2019 Neuralink announced that it had successfully inserted an electrode into a monkey’s brain allowing it to control a computer with its thoughts
In March 2018 he also announced plans for The Boring Company—a tunnel construction business “to solve traffic”—selling “The Not-a-Flamethrower” (a modified version of what was actually a blowtorch) for $500 each as an initial fundraising effort.
So does Elon Musk believe in Bitcoin? It’s complicated. In February 2021 during a Clubhouse chat room conversation Elon stated “I do not own any cryptocurrency” When asked if he believed in Bitcoin he responded “I think Bitcoin is on the verge of getting broad acceptance by conventional finance people.
” It seems while Elon himself doesn’t own any cryptocurrency himself he does see it as having potential for more widespread adoption in the future.