Elon Musk

Career Timeline

• Co-Founds Zip2 Corp. 1995

  At 24-years-old Musk develops Zip2 with his brother Kimbal using $28,000 from their father. The company generates online city guides for newspaper publishers.
• Zip2 sells to Compaq for $307m. 1999

  The sale, in cash and stock options, bags 27-year-old Musk 7%, or $22m. What do you do with that kind of money? You buy a McLaren F1, as seen in this archive interview with CNN.
• Co-founds X.com Mar 1999

  With cash from the Zip2 sale, Musk uses $10m to start the online banking and financial services company X.com. It later merges with Confinity in 2000, before being renamed PayPal in 2001. Paypal revolutionizes payment in the online marketplace, growing with a huge viral marketing campaign.
• SpaceX lifts off Jun 2002

  Musk founds Space Exploration Technologies (SpaceX) with the intention of decreasing the cost and increasing the accessibility of space travel.
• Ebay buys Paypal for $1.5b Oct 2002

  Musk pockets $165m from the deal as Paypal's largest shareholder.
• Musk becomes chair at Tesla Motors Feb 2004

  Musk joins the electric car company, named after Serbian inventor and engineer Nikola Tesla. As chairman of the board, Musk leads the Tesla’s first round of investment funding. Four years later he becomes CEO and product architect.
• Tesla Model S is unveiled Mar 1, 2009

  Tesla’s five door luxury electric hatchback launches with a 265-mile driving range and fuel economy equivalent to 89 miles per gallon of petrol. Deliveries begin in June 2012, and by 2015 the Model S is ranked the world’s best-selling plug-in electric car.
• A first for SpaceX Dec 8, 2010

  Musk’s company becomes the first privately-owned enterprise to return a commercial spacecraft from a low-Earth orbit. The Dragon spacecraft takes off from Cape Canaveral and orbits at 17,000 mph as the first flight in NASA’s Commercial Orbital Transportation Services program. SpaceX spends almost $400m in the pursuit of the endeavour.
• SpaceX delivers to the ISS May 25, 2012

  An unmanned Dragon spacecraft becomes the first private capsule to connect with the International Space Station, delivering 1,000 pounds of supplies. The capsule lands off the coast of California six days later in a mission labelled a “grand slam” by Musk.
• Hyperloop open sourced Aug 1, 2013

  Working within SpaceX, Musk refocuses attention on an age-old idea: high-speed tube transport. Dubbed Hyperloop, Musk proposes a 350 mile route between Los Angeles and San Francisco, reaching a top speed of 760 mph. But the entrepreneur open sources the project for others to develop, releasing the Alpha plans online.
• Musk invests in OpenAI Dec 11, 2015

  Along with other tech influencers including Peter Thiel, Sam Altman, Jessica Livingston and Reid Hoffman, Musk contributes towards $1b of investment in the artificial intelligence non-profit. Musk, a noted critic of AI, has called it “our biggest existential threat,” but OpenAI intends to develop the technology safely and share its research. Investing, Musk says, is his way “to keep an eye” on the industry’s development.
• The Falcon 9 lands Apr 8, 2016

  SpaceX successfully lands its Falcon 9 on a drone ship at sea, after three failed attempts. The success marks a new era of reusable rockets, potentially reducing the cost of spaceflight. Previously rockets, worth tens of millions of dollars apiece, have been discarded after launch. The Falcon 9 is eventually used to send satellites in to space for firm Iridium.
• An engine destined for Mars Sept 25, 2016

  SpaceX successfully tests the Raptor engine at a facility in McGregor, Texas. The company hopes 42 of the engines combined will takes humans to Mars in the next 10 years, providing a safety net for the vehicle: “You could lose multiple engines and continue the mission safely,” says Musk.
• The Boring Company Jan 2017

  Musk launched The Boring Company, a company devoted to boring and building tunnels in order to reduce street traffic. He began with a test dig on the SpaceX property in Los Angeles
• Flinging a Tesla into space Feb 2018

  The company enjoyed another milestone moment with the successful test launch of the powerful Falcon Heavy rocket. Armed with additional Falcon 9 boosters, the Falcon Heavy was designed to carry immense payloads into orbit and potentially serve as a vessel for deep space missions. For the test launch, the Falcon Heavy was given a payload of Musk's cherry-red Tesla Roadster, equipped with cameras to "provide some epic views" for the vehicle's planned orbit around the sun.
• Starlink May 2019

  SpaceX launched the first batch of 60 satellites in May 2019, and followed with another payload of 60 satellites that November. While this represented significant progress for the Starlink venture, the appearance of these bright orbiters in the night sky, with the potential of thousands more to come, worried astronomers who felt that a proliferation of satellites would increase the difficulty of studying distant objects in space.
• Richest person in the world Jan 7, 2021

  Elon Musk briefly became the richest person in the world, with a net worth of more than $185 billion because of increase in Tesla’s share price. Musk’s wealth surge over the past year marks the fastest rise to the top of the rich list in history.

Future Goals

Elon wants to colonize Mars

At the 68th International Astronautical Congress in Adelaide in September 2017 he unveiled his plan to send cargo ships there in the next 5 years. By extension, he hopes that humans will be settling the planet as soon as 2024.

Musk wants to travel at 1124 kph underground

The plan is to ultimately provide a means of travel that should be able to exceed 1124 km/h and all underground. At present two routes are in development - between Los Angeles and San Francisco and between New York and Washington D.C. Once complete these trips should take no more than 30 minutes using Hyperloop.

Musk wants to make space tourism a reality

Elon has made no secret of SpaceX's plans to send people around the moon in 2019. He even has some passengers lined up, though their names are understandably kept a secret. This will be "one giant leap" forward for mass-transportation in space and could lead to it becoming commercialized for the masses very soon indeed.

Starlink could provide internet anywhere in the world

Elon Musk has previously announced his hopes to build a network of satellites into Earth-orbit to provide Wi-Fi to the poorest and most remote parts of the globe. The project, called Starlink, would see 12,000 satellites deployed into low-earth orbit. Although ambitious, some might say eccentric, this initiative is admirable.

Neuralink will merge man and machine

The idea is to literally plug ourselves into computers. This will enable us to augment our cognitive abilities with the vastly greater computing power of computers. Dubbed brain-computer interface (BCI), this technology could be used for cognitive enhancement, ranging from improving memory and decision-making abilities to staving off the symptoms of Alzheimer’s.