San Francisco:
Sometimes it feels like it’s Elon Musk’s world and we just live in it.
The endlessly innovative, endlessly eccentric billionaire has struck a deal to buy Twitter, giving him control of the social media network on which the world debates, mobilizes and bickers.
It’s just the latest conquest for Musk, who has revolutionized the auto industry, sent his own rocket to space, built the world’s greatest fortune — and along the way created fountains of moral outrage and celebrity gossip. created.
Musk, 50, last year became the world’s richest person — taking the title of Amazon’s Jeff Bezos — following the meteoric rise of Tesla, its electric automaker founded in 2003.
His takeover of Twitter is the culmination of a rollercoaster of announcements and counter-announcements — which he typically punctuated by gleefully shooting the company on his own platform.
And Musk’s new guise as social media ruler will stir controversy over his political views, business methods and outrageous personality.
He is libertarian, anti-wakeful, impulsive and promotes himself as a champion of free speech. Some would call him right-wing, while his critics accuse him of being autocratic and bullying.
All of this came in a month when Musk also made headlines with Tesla opening a “giga factory” in Texas, after the company left California following a dispute over its attempts to defy a state shutdown of its factory to contain the spread of Covid. -19 to stop .
And there’s more: His space transport company SpaceX is currently breaking yet another barrier as a partner in a three-pronged venture that sent the first all-private mission to the International Space Station.
But Musk also makes less flattering news: Tesla has faced a series of lawsuits over discrimination and harassment of black workers and sexual harassment.
Parallel to the stream of business news that triggers whiplash, Musk’s penchant for living in the private sphere according to his own rules also keeps the world wide-eyed.
It was recently revealed that Musk has had a second child with his on-again, off-again, off-again,-on-the-spot musician Grimes: a girl they named Exa Dark Sideræl Musk — though the parents will usually call her Y.
He is even expected to appear – in person or not – in the pending celebrity defamation lawsuit that pits Johnny Depp against his ex-wife Amber Heard, who was formerly in a relationship with Musk.
Somehow, Musk has become one of the most ubiquitous figures of the era. So how did he get to where he is now?
– To Mars… and beyond? †
Born in Pretoria, on June 28, 1971, to an engineer father and a Canadian-born model mother, Musk left South Africa in his late teens to attend Queen’s University in Ontario.
He transferred to the University of Pennsylvania after two years and earned a bachelor’s degree in physics and business administration.
After graduating from the prestigious Ivy League school, Musk abandoned his plans to attend Stanford University.
Instead, he quit and started Zip2, a company that made online publishing software for the media industry.
He made his first millions before he was 30 when he sold Zip2 to American computer maker Compaq in 1999 for more than $300 million.
Musk’s next company, X.com, eventually merged with PayPal, the online payment company bought by internet auction giant eBay in 2002 for $1.5 billion.
After leaving PayPal, Musk embarked on a series of increasingly ambitious ventures.
He founded SpaceX in 2002 — now serving as chief executive officer and chief technology officer — and became the chairman of electric car maker Tesla in 2004.
After some early crashes and near misses, SpaceX perfected the art of landing booster engines on solid ground and ocean platforms, making them reusable, and sent four tourists into space late last year on its first-ever orbital mission without professional astronauts on board. .
Musk’s jokingly dubbed The Boring Company touts an ultra-fast “Hyperloop” rail transportation system that would carry people at near supersonic speeds.
And he has said that he wants to make humans an “interplanetary species” by establishing a colony of humans on Mars.
To this end, SpaceX is developing a prototype rocket, Starship, with which it plans to transport crew and cargo to the Moon, Mars and beyond. Musk says he is “certain” of an orbital test this year.
Musk, who holds American, Canadian and South African nationality, has been married and divorced three times: once to Canadian author Justine Wilson and twice to actress Talulah Riley. He has seven children. An eighth child died in infancy.
Forbes estimates his current net worth at $266 billion.
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by DailyExpertNews staff and has been published from a syndicated feed.)