New Delhi: Elon Musk is an entrepreneur and a co-founder of PayPal, Tesla Motors and Space Exploration Technologies. He is the CEO of Tesla Motors and SpaceX, and chairman of SolarCity, the leading residential solar provider in the U.S.
Termed as new “Steve Jobs” in the US, Musk was born and grew up in South Africa.
His father is a South African engineer and his mother a dietitian and model.
His love for technology started at age 10 when his father bought his first computer.
And at the age of 12 he sold his first commercial software, a space game called Blaster.
Musk emigrated to Canada in June 1989 at age 17.
He left Canada in 1992 after getting a scholarship to study business and physics at the University of Pennsylvania.
He earned an undergraduate degree in economics and stayed on another year to finish a second bachelor's degree in physics.
In 1995, he moved to California to enroll in a graduate program in high energy physics at Stanford, in which he stayed just two days before dropping out to start Zip2, which provided online content publishing software for news organizations.
In 1999, Compaq's AltaVista division acquired Zip2 for $307 million in cash and $34 million in stock options.
Then in March 2002, he co-founded X.com, a financial services and email payments company.
One year later, X.com acquired Confinity. In February 2001, X.com changed its legal name to PayPal. In October 2002, PayPal was acquired by eBay for $1.5 billion in stock.
In June 2002, Musk founded his third company, Space Exploration Technologies (SpaceX), of which he is currently the CEO and CTO.
SpaceX develops rockets and spacecrafts for missions to Earth orbit and beyond.
Musk served as chief engineer for Falcon 1, the first privately developed liquid-fueled rocket to reach orbit, as well as falcon 9 and the Dragon spacecraft. In 2008 SpaceX won a NASA contract to replace the cargo transport function of the space shuttle with Falcon 9 and Dragon.
In addition he is also the owner and Chairman of the Board of Tesla Motors, which builds a high-end luxury electric vehicle.
He is also the primary investor and Chairman of the Board of SolarCity, a photovoltaics products and services startup company.
Here are some of best quotes by Elon Musk:
