Yahoo Finance Tesla to Twitter: All the companies owned by Elon Musk
Elon Musk has added another big name to his portfolio of businesses with the $62-billion acquisition of Twitter.
Musk has always expressed great love for the microblogging site which was co-founded in 2006 by Jack Dorsey, who’s a personal friend of Musk.
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Even before this latest investment, the world's richest man had his hands full with running some of the most-sought-after companies.
While Musk comes from a wealthy family, he built an empire independently, despite some serious setbacks during the course of his illustrious career.
He dropped out of Stanford University in 1995, a few days after having enrolled to study physics.
But he didn't drop out without a plan.
His sights were set on becoming a successful businessman, which led him to co-found the web software company Zip2 with his brother Kimbal. In 1999, this startup was acquired by Compaq for $433 million.
Musk then co-founded the online bank X.com, which merged with Confinity in 2000 to form PayPal.
PayPal was bought by eBay in 2002 for $2.1 billion, earning Musk a personal fortune of $247 million, with which he would go on to build his $1.41 trillion empire as it stands today.
Here’s a look at all the businesses Musk owns or is invested in as of April, 2022.
Space X
A little before eBay purchased PayPal, Musk became involved with the not-for-profit organisation Mars Society.
Intrigued by the idea of placing a growth chamber for plants on Mars, he considered personally funding the project.
After facing rejection by Russian companies to buy refurbished intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs) that could send the greenhouse payloads into space, Musk decided to start his own company that could build affordable rockets.
He invested the money he earned from the sale of PayPal to establish Space Exploration Technologies Corp., traded as SpaceX, in May 2002.
His mission was to make access to space faster and cheaper and to eventually create a colony on Mars.
To date, SpaceX has launched 144 rockets and spacecraft, of which 106 have successfully landed.
On February 3, the Starlink Mission, saw Falcon 9 launch 49 Starlink satellites into low-Earth orbit.
SpaceX is the only private company to return a spacecraft from low-Earth orbit and take humans to and from the International Space Station.
Valued at over $100 billion, SpaceX is the second-most-valuable private company in the world.
Tesla
Tesla is synonymous with Elon Musk though he is not the original founder of the American electric-vehicle and clean-energy company.
Tesla, Inc. was incorporated in July 2003 by Martin Eberhard and Marc Tarpenning, who played active roles in the company's early development before Musk's involvement.
With an investment of $9.15 million in the Series A round of funding in February 2004, Musk became the majority shareholder and joined Tesla's board of directors as chairman.
He took over as the company’s CEO in 2008. Tesla's first commercially available car, the Roadster, was launched in 2009 under Musk's watch.
Since its founding in 2003, Tesla has stayed in the news owing to its advancements in the automotive industry and its clean-energy efforts.
Though it is smaller in comparison to automakers like Toyota and Ford, in terms of production volume, Tesla is the world's number one automotive company by market capitalisation (nearly $1.28 trillion as of April, 2022).
SolarCity
Musk's cousins, Lyndon and Peter Rive, co-founded SolarCity in 2006.
The initial concept and financial capital for SolarCity was provided by Musk.
It was the second-largest provider of solar power systems in the United States by 2013.
Tesla acquired SolarCity in 2016 for $3.66 billion and merged it with its battery energy storage products division to create Tesla Energy.
The Boring Company
Musk founded this American construction company in 2016 to construct tunnels.
The Boring Company's projects are mainly designed for intra-city transit systems to solve traffic challenges and facilitate point-to-point transportation.
According to its website, the company believes major cities need either flying cars or tunnels in order to solve traffic issues
Since tunnels are not affected by weather changes, Musk decided this was the best solution for traffic woes.
The Boring Company completed a tunnel beneath the Las Vegas Convention Center in early 2021. Further expansions of the tunnel system have been approved by local officials.
The company raised $951 million in April 2022, and is now valued at nearly $5.7 billion.
Neuralink Corporation
Musk is also the co-founder and owner of Neuralink Corporation, a neurotechnology company developing implantable brain-machine interfaces.
Its primary objective is to create brain implants that will make humans hyper-intelligent, heal traumatic brain injuries and let paralysed people walk again.
Total investment in the company has surpassed $511 million as of 2022.
OpenAI
In 2015, Musk founded OpenAI, a not-for-profit artificial intelligence (AI) research company, aiming to develop artificial general intelligence intended to be safe and beneficial to humanity.
While he resigned from the board in 2018, Musk continues to be a major donor.
In 2019, OpenAI LP received a US$1.4 billion investment from Microsoft.
The ultimate goal of this organisation is to design a machine with the learning and reasoning powers of a human mind.
DeepMind Technologies
Musk is deeply concerned about AI overtaking humans and is reported to have invested heavily in the now-Google-owned DeepMind Technologies to stay informed about how rapidly the technology is developing.
The company claims to want to 'solve intelligence' by melding computer technology and neuroscience to create 'artificial general intelligence'.
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