Elon Musk

Elon Musk is a South African-born American CEO and entrepreneur who either founded or co-founded some of the most innovative and widely respected companies to emerge in the American business landscape during the 21st Century.

Born and raised in Pretoria, South Africa, Musk showed an early affinity for computers and electronics. By the age of 12 he had managed to master the still relatively new science of computer programming, and had also developed his very own rudimentary version of a video game. Musk's talent for understanding technology was undeniable, which is why he studied physics and science when attending the University of Pennsylvania. He soon graduated with multiple undergrad degrees from the university, but rather than follow through with his postgrad education at Stanford, Musk quit the university's PhD program after a couple of days to follow his own otherworldly interests by starting his own company. In 1995 Musk and his brother Kimbal founded the web software company Zip2. The company was a success and when Musk and his brother sold it to Compaq in 1999, both became overnight millionaires. Musk could have easily went quietly into the night with his millions in cash, but instead he decided to continue pursuing his tech interests by co-founding the web payment company PayPal. The company quickly became a global phenomenon, and was eventually sold to eBay for over a billion dollars.

Musk left PayPal in 2002, but soon founded SpaceX, whose primary goal was to commercialize space travel, while also colonizing the planet Mars. In addition to SpaceX, the ever-tireless Musk also co-founded the electric car company Tesla Motors. The company had a bit of a rough start before catching on with the gas guzzling American consumer - a problem that was only worsened by the 2008 financial crisis. But the ever-determined Musk was dead set on building the company into a success. Thanks to Musk's determined leadership, Tesla Motors posted its first profit in 2013. When the company unveiled its Model 3 vehicle in late March of 2016, over 3,000 people signed up to reserve one, thus making Tesla's Model 3 one of the most successful product launches the world had ever seen.

That same year, Musk announced that SpaceX would be beginning a project to colonize Mars by 2024. In 2017, Musk sketched plans for his proposed HyperLoop, a high-speed form of mass transit that would make it possible to travel between New York and Washington DC in less than an hour. During this period, Musk became at least as well known for his personal life as his work, with well-publicized relationships witha ctress Amber Heard and singer Grimes.

In 2017, he appeared as himself on an episode of the comedy "Young Sheldon" (CBS 2017- ), in an episode that implied that Musk had stolen the idea for the successful return of a SpaceX rocket stage to earth (which happened in 2016) from a notebook written by the pre-teen Sheldon Cooper.