We did it again

In May 2002, Musk founded his third company, SpaceX. It is a private developer of a series of launch vehicles and a commercial operator of space systems.
Musk and Barack Obama at the SpaceX launch pad, 2010
In December 2008, NASA signed a $1.6 billion contract with the company for 12 launches of the Falcon 9 launch vehicle and the Dragon spacecraft to the ISS, as a replacement for the Space Shuttle after the termination of their launch program in 2011.
According to Elon himself, he was greatly influenced by the cycle of science fiction novels "Foundation" and Isaac Asimov's views on space exploration as the development and preservation of human existence. Musk argued that the coverage of life on several planets could serve as a defense against the threat of extinction of mankind.

led to the rapid growth of the enterprise in 2001, which was finally renamed PayPal. Such impressive success allowed the company to go public in February 2002 (and at the same time become the first of the dot-com companies to go public after the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks). In October 2002, PayPal was bought by eBay for US$1.5 billion. At the time of the sale, Musk owned 11.7% of the company[31], which allowed him to raise $180 million

In March 1999, Musk co-founded X.com. In 2000, X.com merged with Confinity, one of whose products was the personal money transfer service PayPal. Musk strongly advocated the transfer of software developed by the company from UNIX to the Windows operating system, which caused disagreements with the company's technical director Max Levchin and other leaders, ending with Musk's resignation from the post of CEO (while he remained a member of the Board of Directors) [30]. However, Elon's strategic decision to merge the two companies, along with the active promotion of the electronic payment system on Internet auctions (primarily eBay)

The Musk brothers secured contracts with The New York Times and the Chicago Tribune'[24], and persuaded the board of directors to drop plans to merge with CitySearch[25]. Musk's attempts to become CEO, whose position was held by chairman of the board of directors Rich Sorkin[26], were thwarted by the board of directors[27]. Compaq acquired Zip2 for $307 million in cash in February 1999,[28] and Musk received $22 million for his 7 percent stake.

In 1995, Musk, his brother Kimbal, and Greg Kouri founded Zip2, an Internet software company, with investor funds.[20] They set up their business in a small rented office in Palo Alto. The company developed and marketed an online city guide for the newspaper industry, complete with maps, directions, and yellow pages.[22] Musk says that before the company became successful, he couldn't afford an apartment and instead rented an office, slept on the couch, showered at the YMCA and shared one computer with his brother. When he and Kimbal could not agree on business decisions, they resolved their differences through wrestling[23]. In Musk's words, "the site was running during the day, and I was developing it at night, seven days a week, all the time."

The first company founded by Musk was the startup Zip2. The businessman started the project together with his brother Kimball in 1995. Zip2 produced software that gives news outlets the ability to post content on the Internet and offer their customers additional paid services.
Mohr Dawidov Ventures became one of the company's investors. The fund's partners began planning to resell Zip2, but Musk assured them that its potential was not yet fully realized, and in the long run the startup could cost more.
Zip2's clients included publications such as the New York Times and Pulitzer Publishing. In 1998, the company's management announced a future merger with CitySearch. The deal was never closed, and a year later, in 1999, the startup was bought out by Compaq, paying Zip2 $ 304 million to Ilona Maska, whose share in the company at the time was 7%, or $ 22 million.

Musk was born and raised in Pretoria, South Africa. His mother, May Musk, was a model and nutritionist, and Errol Musk's father had his own engineering business. Elon bought his first computer at the age of ten and learned to program on it. When he was twelve, he sold his first program, a game called Blastar, for $ 500. At the age of seventeen, he moved to Canada, and in 1992 moved to the United States and entered the University of Pennsylvania, where he studied physics and business.

On January 6, 2021, he became the richest man in the world, overtaking Jeff Bezos: on that day, his fortune was $ 188.5 billion, which is $ 1.5 billion more than Bezos, who topped the rich list since 2017. [20] [ 21].
On February 19, 2021, he became the richest man in the world again, overtaking Jeff Bezos for the second time. Before that, Bezos headed the list of rich people for three days. That day, Ilona's fortune rose to $ 200 billion from $ 194 billion in Bezos.
On October 29, 2021, the Bloomberg Billionaires Index released data that Ilona Mask's fortune exceeded $ 300 billion - an absolute world record.

According to Forbes, he was ranked 12th in the list of the 100 richest IT billionaires in 2017, [15] and from January to November 2020, due to the increase in the share price of Tesla Inc. he earned $ 100.3 billion and rose rapidly from 35th to 2nd place in the Bloomberg rankings, owning $ 127.9 billion [16] [16] [17] [18].
Approximately in late 2020 - early 2021, he bought a significant amount of cryptocurrencies - mastiffs and bitcoins for $ 1.5 billion.

мElon Reeve Musk (born June 28, 1971 in Pretoria, South Africa) is an engineer, entrepreneur, inventor, investor, and billionaire. Founder of SpaceX, PayPal [13], Neuralink and The Boring Company, Chief Product Architect, CEO and Chairman of the Board of Directors of Tesla Inc., which manages the Tesla plant. He is a member of the board of directors of SolarCity, a company founded by his cousins.
In an interview with CNN in 2015, Elon Musk said that his favorite launch vehicle was the Ukrainian Zenit.