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Elon Musk (born June 28, 1971, Pretoria, South Africa) South African-born |
American entrepreneur who cofounded the electronic-payment firm PayPal and |
formed SpaceX, maker of launch vehicles and spacecraft. He was also one of the first |
significant investors in, as well as chief executive officer of, the electric |
car manufacturer Tesla. In addition, Musk acquired Twitter (later X) in 2022. |
Early life |
Musk was born to a South African father and a Canadian mother. He displayed an early |
talent for computers and entrepreneurship. At age 12 he created a video game and sold |
it to a computer magazine. In 1988, after obtaining a Canadian passport, Musk left |
South Africa because he was unwilling to support apartheid through compulsory |
military service and because he sought the greater economic opportunities available in |
the United States. |
PayPal and SpaceX |
Musk attended Queen鈥檚 University in Kingston, Ontario, and in 1992 he transferred to |
the University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, where he received bachelor鈥檚 degrees |
in physics and economics in 1997. He enrolled in graduate school in physics at Stanford |
University in California, but he left after only two days because he felt that |
the Internet had much more potential to change society than work in physics. In 1995 he |
founded Zip2, a company that provided maps and business directories to online |
newspapers. In 1999 Zip2 was bought by the computer manufacturer Compaq for $307 |
million, and Musk then founded an online financial services company, X.com, which |
later became PayPal, which specialized in transferring money online. The online |
auction eBay bought PayPal in 2002 for $1.5 billion. |