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Elon Musk is the chief executive officer of Tesla and SpaceX, and the world’s wealthiest person. He briefly became the first trillionaire in history in June 2026, when SpaceX’s stock market debut pushed the value of his combined holdings past one trillion dollars. He remains one of the most closely watched figures in business and technology, with ventures spanning electric vehicles, rockets, artificial intelligence, social media and brain implants.
Who Is Elon Musk?
Elon Musk is a South African born entrepreneur, engineer and businessman who holds citizenship in South Africa, Canada and the United States. He is the CEO and largest shareholder of Tesla, the CEO and chief engineer of SpaceX, and the founder of xAI, the artificial intelligence company behind the chatbot Grok. He also owns X, the social media platform formerly known as Twitter, and co-founded Neuralink and The Boring Company. He briefly served in the U.S. government in 2025, leading an initiative known as the Department of Government Efficiency.
Real Name, Age and Date of Birth
His full name is Elon Reeve Musk. He was born on June 28, 1971, in Pretoria, South Africa, which makes him 55 years old as of this article’s publication. He moved to Canada in 1992 before relocating to the United States, and he became a U.S. citizen in 2002.
Early Life and Background
Musk was raised in Pretoria by his mother, Maye Musk, a model and dietitian, and his father, Errol Musk, an engineer. He taught himself computer programming as a child and sold a video game he created, called Blastar, while still a teenager. He left South Africa at 17, moving first to Canada, where he attended Queen’s University, before transferring to the University of Pennsylvania, where he earned bachelor’s degrees in economics and physics. He briefly began a PhD program in applied physics at Stanford University in 1995 but left after only a couple of days to pursue a business opportunity during the early internet boom.
Family and Personal Life
Musk has been married three times: to Justine Wilson from 2000 to 2008, and twice to the actress Talulah Riley, first from 2010 to 2012 and again from 2013 to 2016. He also had a domestic partnership with the musician Grimes from 2018 to 2021. According to his Wikipedia biography, he has 14 children across these relationships. He has generally kept detailed discussion of his children’s lives out of his own public statements, though some of his children, including his eldest daughter Vivian Wilson, have spoken publicly on their own terms.
Career Beginnings
Musk’s business career began in 1995, when he and his brother Kimbal co-founded Zip2, a company that provided online business directories and maps for newspapers. Compaq acquired Zip2 in 1999 for around 307 million dollars. Musk then co-founded X.com, an online banking company that merged with a rival to become PayPal, which eBay acquired in 2002 for 1.5 billion dollars in stock. Musk’s share of that sale gave him the capital to fund his next, far riskier ventures.
Musk used part of his PayPal fortune to found SpaceX in 2002, with the stated goal of reducing the cost of space travel and eventually enabling human life on Mars. In 2004, he invested in a small electric car startup called Tesla Motors, joining its board and later becoming chairman, and eventually chief executive in 2008. Both companies struggled for years and came close to collapse around 2008, when Musk has said he put the last of his personal fortune into keeping them afloat. SpaceX’s first successful orbital launch that same year, followed by Tesla’s turnaround, marked the beginning of Musk’s transformation into one of the most prominent figures in global business.
Career and Major Achievements
SpaceX went on to develop the reusable Falcon 9 rocket, the Falcon Heavy, the Dragon spacecraft used to carry astronauts to the International Space Station, and the Starlink satellite internet network, which by 2026 accounted for the large majority of the company’s revenue. Tesla, meanwhile, grew from a niche maker of electric sports cars into one of the world’s most valuable automakers, with mass market vehicles including the Model 3 and Model Y and, more recently, its Cybertruck and Optimus humanoid robot programs.
Musk expanded into artificial intelligence with the 2023 launch of xAI, and in 2022 he acquired the social media platform Twitter for 44 billion dollars, later rebranding it as X and merging it with xAI. He also co-founded Neuralink, which develops brain computer interface implants, and The Boring Company, which builds underground transportation tunnels. In January 2025, Musk took on a government role as senior advisor to President Donald Trump, leading the newly created Department of Government Efficiency until his departure from that position on May 30, 2025. His time in the role was followed by a public falling out with Trump over the summer of 2025, an episode widely reported as the Trump-Musk feud, though the two have since reconciled.
Elon Musk’s Major Companies and Projects
- Tesla, the electric vehicle and clean energy company where he serves as CEO
- SpaceX, the rocket and satellite company behind Falcon 9, Starship and Starlink
- xAI, his artificial intelligence company and developer of the Grok chatbot
- X, the social media platform formerly known as Twitter
- Neuralink, a brain computer interface company
- The Boring Company, an underground tunnel construction company
Awards and Recognition
Musk has received a range of honors tied to his work in aerospace and technology, including the Breakthrough Prize in Fundamental Physics through his foundation’s philanthropic giving and recognition from Time magazine, which named him its Person of the Year in 2021. In July 2026, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy awarded him a state honor, a gesture reported in connection with Ukraine’s use of Musk’s Starlink satellite internet service during the war with Russia.
Business journalists and analysts frequently point to Musk’s concentrated control over Tesla, SpaceX, X and xAI as a distinct model of founder influence, one that spans hardware, software, media and public policy at once. His acquisition and reshaping of Twitter into X has been widely covered for its effect on content moderation policy and online political discourse, and his role at the head of the Department of Government Efficiency in 2025 placed him at the center of debate over the size and structure of the U.S. federal government. Commentators and lawmakers have also debated the broader implications of Musk’s trillion dollar-scale wealth for economic inequality, a discussion that intensified after SpaceX’s 2026 public listing.
Current Projects and Latest News
Musk’s most significant business event of 2026 was SpaceX’s long anticipated initial public offering. The company priced its shares at 135 dollars on June 11, 2026, and began trading on the Nasdaq the next day under the ticker SPCX, opening at 150 dollars a share and closing near 160, which valued SpaceX at roughly 2 trillion dollars. The listing pushed Musk’s combined stake in SpaceX and Tesla to about 1.05 trillion dollars, making him the first person in history confirmed to be worth more than a trillion dollars, according to CNBC and other outlets tracking the debut. Because Musk’s fortune is tied to fluctuating stock prices, his estimated net worth has moved considerably since then. Forbes’ real time billionaire tracker, as reported by Nairametrics, put his wealth at about 894.9 billion dollars on August 18, 2026, after a single day gain of more than 30 billion dollars, illustrating how sensitive his overall net worth remains to swings in SpaceX and Tesla shares.
Separately, Tesla shareholders had already approved a new pay package for Musk in November 2025 that could eventually be worth up to a trillion dollars in stock if the company hits a series of market capitalization and operational targets, including selling a million humanoid robots, over the next decade. More than 75 percent of shareholders backed the plan, though Musk does not begin vesting any shares under it unless he remains Tesla’s CEO for at least seven and a half years.
More recently, The Boring Company raised new funding at a valuation of about 23 billion dollars, according to reports published around September 10, 2026. And on September 17, 2026, the Washington Times reported that Universal Pictures was still weighing whether to release a documentary about Musk, directed by Alex Gibney, after the film received a lengthy standing ovation at the Venice Film Festival; Comcast-owned Universal has acquired distribution rights outside North America but had not set a release date or contacted the filmmaking team about its plans, according to a report from The Hollywood Reporter.
Frequently Asked Questions
Who is Elon Musk? He is a businessman and engineer who serves as CEO of Tesla and SpaceX, and is the world’s wealthiest person.
What is Elon Musk’s real name? His full name is Elon Reeve Musk.
How old is Elon Musk? He was born on June 28, 1971, which makes him 55 years old as of this article.
Where is Elon Musk from? He was born in Pretoria, South Africa, and later became a citizen of Canada and the United States.
What is Elon Musk known for? He is known for leading Tesla and SpaceX, for owning X (formerly Twitter), and for briefly becoming the world’s first trillionaire after SpaceX’s 2026 stock market debut.
How many companies does Elon Musk run? He is CEO of Tesla and SpaceX, founder of xAI, and owner of X, in addition to co-founding Neuralink and The Boring Company.
What is the latest news about Elon Musk? In 2026, SpaceX’s IPO on the Nasdaq briefly made him the world’s first trillionaire, and his overall net worth has continued to swing by tens of billions of dollars along with SpaceX and Tesla’s share prices.
