Named this year by Forbes as the richest man in the world with an accumulated fortune of 300 billion dollars and by Time magazine in 2021 as "Person of the Year", Elon Musk is one of the industry figures who currently represents the future of the global economy.
The companies he leads as owner, founder and investor are committed to life beyond Earth or implementing revolutionary visions around energy, social networks, electric transport and artificial intelligence.
Such is the case of two of the most representative companies of the businessman, investor, magnate and philanthropist: Tesla and SpaceX.
The South African, born on June 28, 1971, got his start when, at the age of twelve, he sold a code for the video game "Blastar" for $500 to a computer magazine. This action seems to have marked his career as a visionary and entrepreneur.
Several years later, in 2003, Musk invested $6.5 million in Tesla, consolidating his position as CEO. In addition to manufacturing electric cars, the company also produces solar roofs, solar installations and home batteries.
Tesla is the company's name in honor of the Serbian inventor and engineer Nikola Tesla, who was recognized in the 19th and early 20th centuries for his contributions to the design of the electricity supply of the time. It was founded in 2003 as an electric car factory based in Austin, Texas.
SpaceX
Space Exploration Technologies Corp. better known as SpaceX, is, like Tesla, one of the billion-dollar pillar companies of the naturalized South African-American.
SpaceX is an aerospace and space transportation services company founded in 2002 and based in Hawthorne, California, dedicated to making space travel more economically accessible to land and colonize Mars.
Among the projects carried out at SpaceX is the launch of the Starlink constellation, dedicated to providing a low-cost broadband satellite internet service.
Also the construction of the Dragon ship, a kind of reusable spacecraft developed cargo ship and the Dragon 2 ship capable of carrying crew.
Beyond his business ventures and the many zeros in his checkbook, Musk has taken continuous actions worldwide to help people, including proposing to build a miniature submarine to search for the 12 children and their soccer coach in a flooded cave in Thailand in July 2018.
As well as having challenged Russian President Vladimir Putin last March to a fight to end the war against Ukraine and provide free internet through Starlink, a satellite internet service, to the population of Ukraine during the internet cut-off due to the Russian blockade.
There are also rumours that the tycoon could acquire 32 teams from the National Football League (NFL) for a total of 112 billion dollars.
The most staunch twitterer
With more than 91 million followers, Elon Musk has been the author of some of the most controversial tweets and just last April 13 he made an offer to acquire the social network Twitter. By April 25, he had finalized the negotiations for a total sum of 46.5 billion dollars.
The purchase has been the subject of controversy and has been the subject of much discussion not only among Internet users, due to its impact on the notions surrounding freedom of expression.
Twitter, originally a microblogging space born in 2006 in San Francisco by Jack Dorsey, Noah Glass, Biz Stone and Evan Williams, whose original name was "twttr" and which allowed a total of 140 characters, has been characterized by being a public and freely accessible space of expression that refers to the trill of a bird: "tweet."
However, the free use of this network is under scrutiny in light of recent statements made by Elon Musk in his latest tweet, referring to the fact that not all users will be able to use the social network for free, as some may have to pay for its use.
It is worth mentioning that as of 2021, Twitter had about 340 million active users. The discussion surrounding Twitter is just one of the most recent ones revolving around Elon Musk, not to mention his mention in the controversial defamation trial currently being held by actors and ex-husbands Johnny Depp and Amber Heard, in which Elon Musk has been called to testify in favor of the actress.
With information from CNN and the New York Times
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