Early Life
Elon Reeve Musk was born on June 28, 1971, in Pretoria, South Africa. He displayed an early aptitude for computers and entrepreneurship. At the age of 12, he sold a video game he created. In 1988, he moved to Canada and later became a U.S. citizen. He received bachelor's degrees from the University of Pennsylvania in 1997.
Rise to Success
Musk co-founded Zip2, which was later sold to Compaq for $307 million. He co-founded X.com, which merged with Confinity to form PayPal, acquired by eBay in 2002 for $1.5 billion. In 2002, Musk founded SpaceX, a space technology company. He then invested in Tesla Motors (now Tesla, Inc.) in 2004 and became its CEO in 2008.
Key Business Strategies
Musk's business strategies involve vertical integration, innovation, and ambitious goals such as colonizing Mars. At Tesla, his strategies include developing electric vehicles, energy storage systems, and solar panels. SpaceX focuses on reusable rockets to reduce launch costs and enable space exploration.
Philanthropy
Musk is involved in philanthropy through the Musk Foundation. Information on specific philanthropy amounts is limited in the provided search results. However, he has made significant contributions to AI research with OpenAI and xAI.