The richest billionaire on the planet and little-known facts

According to Bloomberg, Tesla shares fell nearly 12% in trading on January 27, “blowing away” $ 109 billion in market capitalization. Thus, this billionaire now owns a fortune of 216 billion USD, down 54 billion USD compared to the beginning of the year. Before that, he was the first person in the world with a net worth of $300 billion.

Being bullied by a classmate

Elon Musk was born in the South African capital of Pretoria in 1971 into the family of model and nutritionist Maye Musk and engineer Errol Musk. Elon, the eldest of their three children, is an introvert and spends most of his free time reading. On his 10th birthday, Elon was given a computer and he quickly learned how to program.

Billionaire Elon Musk is a person smarter than the average person, with great ambition and direction. (Photo: AP)

Elon briefly attended the University of Pretoria before moving to Canada to attend Queen’s University at the age of 17. After 2 years, he transferred to the University of Pennsylvania. He also received a bachelor’s degree in economics from Wharton and a bachelor’s degree in physics from the College of Arts and Sciences. Despite his special abilities, but Elon is very weak and small. At school, he was regularly bullied by his classmates, this only stopped in his late teens, when he grew significantly in height and was able to fight back against his bullies.

24 year old millionaire

In the summer of 1995, 24-year-old Elon moved to Silicon Valley and entered graduate school at Stanford University to continue studying applied physics. However, he studied there for only two days, when the Internet boom began in the US and his younger brother Kimbal reached out to Elon.

The brothers decided to start a startup called Zip2, which develops software for the media. The business has proven to be successful with clients including the New York Times and the Chicago Tribune. In 1999, the brothers sold Zip2 to computer maker Compaq for $307 million.

That same year, Elon Musk co-founded X.com, an e-mail payment system. However, just a few months later, the startup encountered a serious competitor – Confinity, whose offices are located in the same building. In March 2000, the two companies merged under the name PayPal, and in October 2002, shares of the new service were purchased by eBay online auction for $1.5 billion. Elon Musk has a stake in PayPal of 11.7%, thus raising an additional $165 million.

Controversial personality

Despite the huge success of Elon’s projects, employees at his companies are not always satisfied with his leadership style. Elon usually works 80 hours a week and expects the same from his subordinates. Furthermore, he is extremely impulsive. It happened that in anger, Elon immediately fired his employees without really understanding the situation, often because of trifles.

The richest man on the planet has a very tight schedule, he often has to work at different locations with uncertain dates. (Photo: AP)

Elon’s eccentric ways have been criticized more than once. For example, Tesla, despite quarantine restrictions due to the Covid-19 pandemic, challenged the resumption of work of the only electric car factory in the US in mid-May 2020.

However, despite all his mistakes and contradictions, this billionaire remains a unique phenomenon in the world business world. With Tesla and SpaceX holding a strong position in the global market, it is almost “unrivalled”. And SpaceX’s long-term goal is to help humanity survive on many planets and especially build a colony on Mars.

Do not rest on victory

After each new milestone is reached, Elon continues to raise it to another level. After making money selling Zip2 to Compaq, he founded the company that would later become PayPal. When he sold PayPal, he made $ 165 million, founded SpaceX.

As soon as SpaceX stabilized, he founded and ran Tesla. At the moment, Elon is focusing on the work of sending humans to Mars despite his achievement of a fortune that few people can keep up with.

“Humanity needs a backup planet”

Since then, Elon has co-founded or owned a number of businesses, including car company Tesla Motors, solar cell maker SolarCity, and tunnel builder The Boring Company. All these companies are doing their best in the fight against climate change, which is one of Elon’s main goals.

The South African-born billionaire has repeatedly emphasized that he fears for the future of humanity, as civilization is now tied to only one planet. “Sooner or later, any disaster, be it asteroids, volcanic eruptions, nuclear wars or pandemics will lead to the death of the world’s population, so humans need a backup planet. room,” said the richest billionaire on the planet.

In 2002, Elon founded the space technology company SpaceX. Currently, SpaceX and the US private company Boeing are participating in NASA’s Commercial Crew Program, whose purpose is to send astronauts into space.

In addition, SpaceX seeks to place large groups of satellites in orbit for a global network that will provide Earth’s inhabitants with broadband Internet anywhere in the world. To achieve this goal, the company sent 300 satellites into low earth orbit.