Entrepreneur, businessman and engineer Elon Musk is one of the richest men in the world. But how did he first accumulate his wealth?
Billionaire Elon Musk has an investment portfolio spanning across 3 main sectors: renewable energy, electric cars, and space. He has various business ventures, but his first significant profits were from selling his company X.com, now known as PayPal. Tesla Motors, his electric car company, has a significant stock market value, as does SolarCity. He is the CEO of space technology company SpaceX.
Read more about how Elon Musk gradually built his business empire below.
First Investments
Elon Musk was born in South Africa in 1971. He made his first profits at just 12 years old when he sold a game that he created called “Blastar” to a computer magazine for $500.
He attended the University of Pennsylvania, where he studied Physics and Economics.
Musk was meant to attend Stanford, but abandoned his studies for his entrepreneurial dreams almost immediately after graduating from UPenn.
He founded the company Zip2 in 1995, which connected advertisers with users, providing “city travel guides” to newspapers.
The businessman reportedly practically “lived in his office” when first working to build the company, eventually selling it to Compaq for a profit of $22 million.
He then co-founded the payment company X.com in 1999, which would become known as the famous PayPal after a merger.
The company went on to generate millions of dollars, although Musk only remained CEO for a year.
Despite being fired as the CEO, he remained the main shareholder and earned $165 million in profits after eBay bought PayPal in 2002.
SpaceX
In 2002, the entrepreneur put $100 million of his earnings from his previous companies’ profits into a new venture called Space Exploration Technologies, also known as SpaceX.
Musk is quoted saying that the ultimate goal of SpaceX is to make it affordable to travel to Mars.
SpaceX uses sustainable material to manufacture rockets, and in 2016, the reusable rocket “Falcon 9” made an ocean landing, being the first of its kind to achieve this.
They have carried out over 25 successful launches, working closely with NASA.
Tesla Motors
Musk co-founded luxury electric car company Tesla with Martin Eberhard.
However, he later staged a coup and removed Eberhard from the company entirely.
After saving Tesla from bankruptcy during the financial crisis of 2008 by investing his own money into the company, Musk was declared the CEO of Tesla Motors.
However, by 2008, Musk was living off personal loans, as his companies were not faring well.
SpaceX was having difficulties launching its rocket Falcon 1 and Tesla was on the verge of closing down. Musk said 2008 was “the worst year of [his] life”.
Nevertheless, by 2010, Musk saw a significant upwards trend.
SpaceX received a $1.6 billion offer from NASA to launch more rockets into space, and Tesla finally went public, becoming the first public automaker company to do so since Ford.
SolarCity
In 2006, Musk provided his cousins with the capital to launch the solar energy company SolarCity.
Tesla later bought the company in 2016 for $2.6 billion. His vision was to change the way people view energy distribution.
He wanted to create a centralized solar panel system that would distribute energy to the entire city.
SolarCity went public in 2012, becoming one of the largest suppliers of solar panels in the United States.
Musk has since started several other innovative businesses. One of these is “The Boring Company”, launched in 2016.
The company aims to build a series of tunnels that cars can pass through within cities to reduce traffic and congestion.
In 2017, he founded Neuralink, a company manufacturing neural implant technology designed to be placed inside the human brain.
In 2020, Musk was labeled the seventh richest man in the world, and his wealth continues to rise.