Aaron Bunch Journalist with Australian Associated Press | Collection of published work | + 61 484 008 119 | abunch@aap.com.au
Elon Musk – who is he?
American inventor and engineer Elon Musk looks set to solve South Australia’s energy woes, but who is he?
July 10, 2017
American billionaire entrepreneur Elon Musk wants to change the Australian power generation market. Who is he?
* Elon Musk was born on 28 June, 1971, in Pretoria, South Africa.
* He has been married and divorced three times, his current love interest is actress Amber Heard.
* He has stated his vision for the companies as aiming to change the world and humanity, by reducing global warming and the risk of human extinction.
* One of his goals includes setting up a human colony on Mars.
* In a 2014 interview, Musk described himself politically as half Republican and half Democrat. He said he had donated to both political parties.
* His first company was a web software company started with his younger brother Kimbal. Set up in 1995, Zip2 was acquired by Compaq in 1999. Musk received over $US20 million dollars from the acquisition.
*Musk co-founded X.com in 1999, an online financial services and email payment company, and merged with Confinity, which had a money transfer service called PayPal. Musk made over $US150 million from the sale of PayPal to Ebay in 2002.
* Musk founded SpaceX in 2001 and Tesla Motors in 2003 and remains CEO of both.
* Telsa’s website says the engineer and inventor is also the product architect overseeing product development, engineering and design of the company’s electric vehicles, battery products and solar roofs.