He founded Tesla Motors, a company manufacturing electric and autonomous vehicles. Another company of his is SpaceX which aims to develop space rockets that will significantly reduce the cost of space transportation. The company's long-term objective is the colonisation of Mars.
He also heads the SolarCity company, which is the largest provider of solar panels for houses in the United States. Other business activities of his include investments in projects dedicated to the development of artificial intelligence.
He ranks 80th in the current Forbes Billionaires list with total assets amounting to $13.9 billion.
These are all examples of generally well-known information. Now let's look at some not so familiar facts about his life.
Entrerpreneur.com found the following interesting details about Elon Musk.
1. As a child in South Africa, where he was born, he was brutally bullied both physically and emotionally.
2. At the age of 12, he created a video game called Blastar, the goal of which was to destroy an alien spaceship. A South African IT magazine bought the game for $500. In 2015, Google developers transformed the game's code in HTML5.
3. While studying at the University of Pennsylvania, he earned money by collecting admission fees for parties organised in the house he was renting. So he, together with only one roommate, could afford to live in a house with ten rooms designated for an entire fraternity.
4. In 1995, he started studying physics at Stanford University but left after two days when he realised the Internet had a great future, and he started doing business in the online world. He founded the PayPal company (originally X.com) which earned him billions of dollars.
5. During the period of economic crisis, when he also divorced his first wife, he almost went bust.
6. His current plans for the near future include, for example, a high-speed mode of transport over long distances in a capsule placed in a tube called hyperloop. Then there is the colonisation of Mars, or placing about 4,500 satellites into the Earth's orbit in order to cover the entire world with the Internet.
7. He currently owns five mansions in the upmarket district of Bel Air, Los Angeles, whose total value is $70 million. All properties are equipped with the latest technology while being very environmentally friendly.
8. He has five sons: twins Griffin and Xavier (2004) and triplets Damian, Saxon and Kai (2006). His first son, Nevada, died in 2002 from sudden infant death syndrome.
9. He was the role model for the character of Tony Stark played by the actor Robert Downey, Jr. in the Iron Man film series. Besides a cameo in Iron Man 2, he also played himself in the popular Big Bang Theory series.
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