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FROM SMALL BEGINNINGS… A graduate in physics and economics, the academically gifted Musk subsequently abandoned plans to pursue a PhD at Stanford in favour of founding the first of many business enterprises. From a bullied teenager who taught himself how to programme computers he has gone on to found a technology-based business empire. It all started with Zip2, a pioneering online city guide that he co-founded with his brother Kimbal in 1995 and sold four years later, netting $22 million with which to launch his next venture, X.com. The latter would lead to PayPal, the secure online payment system that has taken over the world. The company was sold after three years and Elon Musk’s share amounted to $165 million.It was at this point that he differentiated himself from the typical tech magnate and founded a series of visionary companies conceived not just to earn money but to make a contribution to the world as well.
SPACEX Born out of the desire to reboot space travel and partly founded with $100 million of his own money, SpaceX is a developer of launch rockets that
are not only cheaper but also highly innovative. It is the first commercial company to have launched a satellite into space, and its Dragon was the first commercial spacecraft to dock with the International Space Station in 2012. Another first was the successfull launching and landing of a reused rocket! Though so much has been achieved in a short period of time, Musk believes this is just the beginning of a new golden era of space exploration, and his ultimate objective is to establish a colony on Mars.
TESLA The best-known of all his endeavours, Tesla has done more to promote electric cars and rejuvenate the automobile industry than anyone else. What’s more, in less than 15 years it has caught the German carmakers napping and placed the hitherto floundering US car industry back at the forefront of innovation. The sleek, modern Roadster, Model S and Model X have become the darlings of Hollywood celebrities and are gaining broad popular recognition, but Tesla is also a leading supplier of electric powertrains and batteries, most notably to Mercedes. As the chief designer and CEO of
the company, Musk is lauded for his open attitude in wanting to share the technology with other carmarkers in a drive to promote electrically powered cars.
SOLAR CITY Just as Tesla serves as a vehicle to transform the way we drive, so SolarCity was founded to speed up the development of solar energy and the movement away from fossil fuels. In fact, the two ‘sister’ companies are working together to help achieve this.
HYPERLOOP This revolutionary high-speed transportation system is not new in concept, but it was Elon Musk who created design teams tasked with producing a workable, practical foundation for what are effectively pods channelled through long-distance tubes. Though still at the prototype stage, the rapid development of this technology initiated by Hyperloop could see it economically and technically viable within less than a decade.
OTHERS More recent initiatives include OpenAI, Neuralink and The Boring Company, all of which reveal the same
SpaceX’s commercial spacecraft, the Dragon
humanistic foundations that are far removed from most corporations, no matter how convincing their Social Responsibility communiques. Neuralink is a neurotechnology firm looking to develop artifical intelligence that could remedy or enhance our human capabilities, while OpenAI is a non-profit organisation that studies ways of creating artificial intelligence applications that are safe and of benefit to society. Musk is one of several leading thinkers, including Stephen Hawkins and Bill Gates, who have been voicing concerns about the potentially disastrous impact of AI on employment and our social and economic systems. The Boring Company, meanwhile, is looking at developing a tunnelling infrastructure that could provide a car-based traffic solution for large urban areas the way undeground metros have done for trains. Apart from philanthropic efforts and plans to design an electric jet aircraft, Elon Musk also manages to raise emotions across the planet, and while not everyone may share his vision it is clear that, having achieved so much by the age of 46, we can look forward to a lot more innovation from one of the most far-sighted people of our time. e
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