Elon Reeve Musk ( / ˈ iː l ɒ n / EE -lon ; born June 28, 1971) is a business magnate and investor. He is the founder, CEO and chief engineer of SpaceX ; angel investor , CEO and product architect of Tesla, Inc. ; owner and CEO of Twitter, Inc. ; founder of the Boring Company ; co-founder of Neuralink and OpenAI ; and president of the philanthropic Musk Foundation . Musk is the first-wealthiest person in the world according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index , and second-wealthiest according to the Forbes '
Musk was born in Pretoria , South Africa, and briefly attended the University of Pretoria before moving to Canada at age 18, acquiring citizenship through his Canadian-born mother. Two years later, he matriculated at Queen's University and transferred to the University of Pennsylvania , where he received bachelor's degrees in economics and physics. He moved to California in 1995 to attend Stanford University . After two days, he dropped out and, with his brother Kimbal , co-founded the online city guide sof
With $175.8 million, Musk founded SpaceX in 2002, a spaceflight services company. In 2004, he was an early investor in the electric vehicle manufacturer Tesla Motors, Inc. (now Tesla, Inc.). He became its chairman and product architect, assuming the position of CEO in 2008. In 2006, he helped create SolarCity , a solar energy company that was later acquired by Tesla and became Tesla Energy . In 2015, he co-founded OpenAI, a nonprofit artificial intelligence research company. The following year, he co-founde