Who is Elon Musk? PayPal, and SpaceX, Tesla, Inc.

Elon Musk: American entrepreneur

Elon Musk (born June 28, 1971, in Pretoria, South Africa) is a South African-born American entrepreneur who co-founded the electronic payments company PayPal and founded SpaceX, a manufacturer of launch vehicles and spacecraft. He was one of the first significant investors and CEOs of electric car maker Tesla. Musk also acquired Twitter (later known as X) in 2022.

Elon Musk Early life

Musk was born to a South African father and a Canadian mother. He showed early talent for computers and entrepreneurship. At the age of 12, he created a video game and sold it to a computer magazine. After obtaining a Canadian passport in 1988, Mr. Musk left South Africa because he did not want to support apartheid through mandatory military service and because he wanted greater economic opportunities available in the United States.

PayPal and SpaceX

Musk attended Queens University in Kingston, Ontario, and transferred to the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia in 1992, earning bachelor’s degrees in physics and economics in 1997. He entered graduate school in physics at Stanford University in California, but dropped out. This is because I thought the Internet had much more potential to change society than physics research. In 1995, he founded a company called Zip2, which provides maps and business directories for online newspapers. In 1999, Zip2 was acquired by computer manufacturer Compaq for $307 million, and Musk founded X.com, an online financial services company specializing in online money transfers. X.com later became PayPal. Online auction company eBay acquired PayPal in 2002 for $1.5 billion.

Musk has long believed that humans must become a multi-planetary species if life is to survive. However, he was dissatisfied with the high cost of the rocket launcher. In 2002, it founded Space Exploration Technologies (SpaceX) to build more affordable rockets. The first two rockets were the Falcon 1 (first launched in 2006) and the larger Falcon 9 (first launched in 2010), which were designed to be much cheaper than competing rockets. The third rocket, the Falcon Heavy (first launched in 2018), weighs 117,000 pounds (53,000 kg), almost twice the weight of its largest competitor, Boeing Co.’s Delta IV Heavy, and costs one-third as much. It was designed to be carried into orbit. SpaceX has announced the Super Heavy-Starship System, the successor to the Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy. The superheavy first stage can lift 100,000 kilograms (220,000 lb) into low Earth orbit. The payload will be a starship, a spacecraft designed to provide high-speed transportation between cities on Earth and base construction on the Moon or Mars. SpaceX has also developed the Dragon spacecraft, which delivers supplies to the International Space Station (ISS). Dragon can carry up to seven astronauts, and in 2020, it conducted a manned flight that carried astronauts Doug Hurley and Robert Behnken to the ISS. The first test flight of the superheavy Starship system was launched in 2020. He is also the CEO of SpaceX. Musk was also the lead designer in the production of the Falcon rocket, Dragon, and Starship. SpaceX has a contract to build a lander for astronauts to return to the Moon by 2025 as part of NASA’s Artemis space program.

Tesla

Musk has long been interested in the potential of electric vehicles, and in 2004, he became the lead investor in Tesla Motors (later renamed Tesla), an electric car company founded by entrepreneurs Martin Eberhard and Mark Talpenning. Became one of the providers. In 2006, Tesla introduced the Roadster, the first car that could travel 245 miles (394 km) on a single charge. Unlike most previous electric cars, which Musk considered “bulky and uninteresting,” it was a sports car that could go from 0 to 60 mph (97 km/h) in less than four seconds. It raised approximately $226 million in a 2010 initial public offering. Two years later, Tesla introduced the Model S sedan, which was praised by car critics for its performance and design. The company won further praise with its 2015 Model A cheaper vehicle, the Model 3, which began production in 2017 and became the best-selling electric car ever.

Frustrated by the estimated cost of California’s high-speed rail system ($68 billion), Musk proposed a faster alternative system in 2013: Hyperloop. It is a pneumatic tube in which pods carrying 28 passengers travel 350 miles (560 km). It travels between Los Angeles and San Francisco in 35 minutes at a top speed of 760 mph (1,220 km/h), close to the speed of sound. Musk claimed that Hyperloop would cost only $6 billion, and with pods departing every two minutes on average, the system could accommodate the 6 million people who travel that route each year. However, he said that between managing SpaceX and Tesla, he was unable to devote time to Hyperloop development.

X (formerly Twitter)

Musk joined the social media service Twitter in 2009 and became one of the site’s most popular accounts as @elonmusk, with over 85 million followers as of 2022. Musk has been reluctant to take Tesla public, and in August 2018, he made several tweets about taking the company private at $420 per share and said he had “funding secured.” (The price of $420 is seen as a cheeky reference to April 20, the day cannabis enthusiasts celebrate.) The following month, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) said the tweets were “false and that Musk was accused of securities fraud.” Was accused of. Fraud, alleging that the statement was false. Misleading. Shortly afterward, Tesla’s board reportedly rejected the SEC’s settlement offer because Musk threatened to resign. However, this The news led to a decline in Tesla’s shares, and ultimately, a tougher deal was accepted. The terms included Musk stepping down as chairman for three years but allowing him to remain as CEO. His tweet was followed by Tesla It had to be pre-approved by Tesla’s lawyers, and both Tesla and Musk were fined $20 million.

Musk criticized Twitter’s commitment to free speech principles, given the company’s content moderation policies. In early April 2022, documents filed by Twitter with the SEC revealed that Musk had acquired more than 9% of the company’s stock. Shortly after, Twitter announced that Musk would be joining the company’s board of directors, but Musk opposed this and made a $44 billion bid to buy the entire company for $54.20 per share. Twitter’s board of directors accepted the deal, making it the sole owner of the company. Musk said the company’s plans include “enhancing our products with new features, open-sourcing our algorithms to improve reliability, defeating spambots, and getting everyone certified.” Ta. In July 2022, Musk said that Twitter had not provided sufficient information about bot accounts, claimed that the company was in “material violation of multiple terms” of the acquisition agreement, and announced that he would withdraw his bid. In response, Twitter’s chairman of the board, Brett Taylor, said the company is “committed to completing the transaction based on the price and terms agreed upon with Mr. Musk.” Twitter Inc. sued Musk to pressure him to buy the company. Twitter shareholders voted to accept Musk’s proposal in September 2022. Facing a legal battle, Musk ultimately moved forward with the deal, which closed in October.

One of Musk’s first actions as owner of Twitter was to shut down nearly half the company and allow users to purchase the blue checkmark certification that Twitter had previously given to high-profile celebrities for $8 a month. This included: Additionally, he disbanded Twitter’s content moderation organization and reinstated several banned accounts, most notably former President Donald Trump’s account, which was suspended following the attack on the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021. Was done. Advertising revenues have declined significantly as many companies have withdrawn advertising revenues. Advertising from the platform. Mr. Musk changed the company’s name from Twitter to X in July 2023 (according to the change, a tweet became a post).

PayPal

PayPal is an American e-commerce company founded in March 2000 that specializes in Internet money transfers. It was frequently used by the Internet auction company eBay, which owned PayPal from 2002 to 2015. PayPal was the product of the merger between X.com and Confinity and allowed users to pay for purchased items and exchange money between accounts. Secure online transactions.

Seeing PayPal become the leading choice for Internet auction buyers, online marketplace giant eBay acquired PayPal in October 2002 for $1.5 billion. The company offers users the ability to link their PayPal accounts to their bank accounts, making transfers and payments more efficient than money. Place an order or check out. Fees are collected by eBay for certain transactions and are determined based on the amount of the transaction, the nature of the transaction, and the type of currency of the transaction. In 2015, PayPal spun off as an independent company but continued to be used by eBay.

A series of sophisticated security advancements have enabled PayPal to remain a respected company from an identity theft prevention standpoint. The company has implemented improved anti-phishing and anti-hacking measures and developed a portable “key” device that requires manual activation before transfers from PayPal accounts can be processed. PayPal allows consumers to dispute and request refunds for transactions in which they were misled or defrauded. Additionally, PayPal offers a form of limited protection for sellers, including a system for deactivating accounts if suspicious or excessive activity is observed.

eBay: online auction company

eBay is a global online auction and trading company founded in 1995 by American entrepreneur Pierre Omidyar. eBay was one of the first companies to create and sell Internet websites that matched buyers and sellers of goods and services. The company serves individual sellers and small businesses and is the market leader in e-commerce worldwide. eBay is headquartered in San Jose, California.

Customers can connect to the website established in their country or use one of the company’s international sites. The eBay website serves both the US and Canadian markets, most countries in Europe, and some countries in Asia. The Latin American website operates in partnership with Mercado Libre, an e-commerce provider with similar operations. Although auctions make up the bulk of eBay sales, regular price sales also make up a significant portion of transactions.

A major factor in eBay’s growth has been the introduction of processes that facilitate secure and transparent transactions that are accessible to anyone from almost anywhere. PayPal, the online automated payment facility, is the foundation of eBay’s trading environment. eBay acquired PayPal in October 2002 but spun it off as an independent company in 2015. Other major acquisitions in the 2000s included Skype (sold in 2009), Shopping.com, Rent.com (sold in 2012), and StubHub.

eBay relies on its users to self-regulate its trading community through a feedback system that allows buyers to rate sellers on their transactions. (Previously, sellers could also leave negative feedback for buyers, but this feature was removed in 2008.) In theory, dishonest sellers would be exposed, and reputable sellers would be able to leave negative feedback. You lose your trust. In fact, some sellers received low ratings through no fault of their own, for example, due to package delivery problems, while others received low ratings for a short period of time before starting cybercrime scams to defraud their customers. . I received good reviews. In response, the company has provided educational resources for best-practice trading. Additionally, eBay lists categories of products that may be restricted. The company prohibits smugglers of illegal or potentially objectionable items.

Nevertheless, eBay has come under increasing legal pressure in Europe, with several manufacturers suing the company for charging fees from sales without imposing proper controls on transactions. Notably, some French luxury fashion brands sued eBay for damages, resulting in a first judgment of €20,000 against the company in June 2008.

Since its inception, eBay has given a portion of its profits back to local communities around the world through its philanthropic foundation, the eBay Foundation.

Business career

Zip2

In 1995, Musk, his brother Kimbal, and Greg Khoury founded the Global Link Information Network. Later, its name was changed to Zip2. The company was funded primarily through a $200,000 funding round, 10% of which was contributed by his father, Errol Musk. The company developed an Internet city guide with maps, directions, and yellow pages and sold it to newspapers. They worked out of a small rented office in Palo Alto, with Musk coding the website every night. Ultimately, Zip2 won contracts with the New York Times and the Chicago Tribune. The brothers convinced the board to abandon the merger with CitySearch. However, Musk’s attempt to become CEO was blocked. Compaq acquired Zip2 in February 1999 for $307 million in cash, and Mr. Musk received $22 million for a 7% stake.

X.com and PayPal

In March 1999, Musk co-founded X.com, an online financial services and email payments company, using $12 million from the Compaq acquisition. X.com was one of the first federally insured online banks, adding over 200,000 customers in its first few months of operation. [72]

Friends of Mr. Musk expressed skepticism about the name of the online bank, fearing it could be mistaken for a porn site. Musk dismissed their concerns, insisting that the name be descriptive, memorable, and easy to type. Additionally, he liked the email structures it evolved from, such as “e@x.com.”

Even though Musk founded the company, investors deemed him inexperienced and replaced him with Intel CEO Bill Harris by the end of the year.

In 2000, X.com merged with the online bank Confinity to avoid competition. This is because the latter money transfer service was more popular than PayPal X.com’s service. Musk later returned as CEO of the combined company. His preference for Microsoft rather than Unix-based software caused a rift among the company’s employees and ultimately led to the resignation of Confinity co-founder Peter Thiel. The company’s board of directors fired Musk in September 2000 and replaced him with Thiel, as the company continued to struggle with complex technical problems and the lack of a coherent business model. Under Thiel, the company focused on money transfer services and changed its name to PayPal in 2001.

In 2002, PayPal was acquired by eBay for $1.5 billion in stock, of which Musk, PayPal’s largest shareholder with an 11.72% stake, received $175.8 million. More than 15 years later, in 2017, Musk purchased the X.com domain from PayPal due to its “emotional value.”. In 2022, Musk talked about his goal of creating “X, an app for everything.”

SpaceX

Then-NASA Administrator Charles Bolden congratulates Musk on the SpaceX Dragon after the mission in 2012

In early 2001, Musk joined the non-profit Mars Society to discuss funding plans to establish a plant growth chamber on Mars. In October of that year, he traveled to Moscow with Jim Cantrell and Adio Raci to purchase a modified intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) capable of sending greenhouse gases into space. He met with the non-profit organizations Lavochkin and Kosmotras. But Musk was considered a novice, and the group returned to the United States empty-handed. In February 2002, the group returned to Russia with Mike Griffin (President of In-Q-Tel) to search for three ICBMs. They met again with the cosmonauts and were offered a rocket for $8 million, which Musk declined. Instead, he decided to start a company that could build affordable rockets. Musk founded SpaceX in May 2002 with $100 million of his own money and became the company’s CEO and chief engineer.

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SpaceX attempted to launch its Falcon 1 rocket for the first time in 2006. Although the rocket failed to reach Earth orbit, it won a Commercial Orbital Transportation Services Program contract from NASA Administrator (former SpaceX consultant) Mike Griffin later that year. After two more failed attempts and Musk and his company nearly going bankrupt, SpaceX successfully launched the Falcon 1 into orbit in 2008. Later that year, SpaceX received a $1.6 billion commercial resupply services contract from NASA for 12 Falcon 9 flights. The Rocket and Dragon spacecraft were sent to the International Space Station to replace the Space Shuttle, which was retired in 2011. In 2012, the Dragon spacecraft became the first commercial spacecraft to dock with the ISS.

SpaceX, which is working toward its goal of a reusable rocket, successfully landed a Falcon 9 first stage on an interplanetary platform in 2015. The landing was then accomplished with an autonomous spaceport drone ship, an ocean-based recovery platform. In 2018, SpaceX launched the Falcon Heavy. Musk’s personal Tesla Roadster was carried as a dummy payload in the first mission. Since 2019, SpaceX has been developing Starship, a fully reusable super-heavy-lift launch vehicle to replace the Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy. In 2020, SpaceX launched its first manned flight, Demo-2, which placed astronauts in orbit and became the first private company to dock a manned spacecraft with the ISS.

Starlink

In 2015, SpaceX began developing its Starlink constellation of low-orbit satellites to provide satellite Internet access, and the first two prototype satellites were launched in February 2018. The second set of test satellites and the first large-scale deployment of one. This constellation took place in May 2019, when the first 60 operational satellites were launched. The total cost of the 10-year project to design, build, and deploy the constellation is estimated by SpaceX to be approximately $10 billion. Some critics, including the International Astronomical Union, argue that Starlink hinders the visibility of the sky and creates a collision risk for spacecraft.

During Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Musk sent Starlink terminals to Ukraine to provide Internet access and communications. In October 2022, Musk said that approximately 20,000 satellite terminals with free data transfer subscriptions were donated to Ukraine, costing SpaceX $80 million. SpaceX is offering Starlink to Ukraine for free at a cost of $400 million per year after Musk asked the US Defense Department to pay for additional units and future subscriptions on Ukraine’s behalf. He has publicly stated that he will continue to provide it. At the same time, Musk refused to block Russian state media outlet Starlink and declared himself a “free speech absolutist.”

Tesla

Tesla, Inc. (originally Tesla Motors) was founded in July 2003 by Martin Eberhard and Mark Tarpenning, who funded the company through a Series A round. Both played an active role in the company’s early development before Musk joined. Musk led a Series A investment round in February 2004. He invested $6.5 million to become the company’s largest shareholder and joined Tesla’s board of directors as chairman. Musk played an active role within the company, overseeing the Roadster’s product design, but he was not deeply involved in day-to-day business operations.

Following growing controversy in 2007 and the financial crisis of 2007–2008, Eberhard was forced out of the company. Musk took over leadership of the company as CEO and product architect in 2008. In a 2009 legal settlement with Eberhard, Musk was named a co-founder of Tesla along with Tarpenning and two others. As of 2019, Musk was the longest-serving CEO of any automaker in the world. In 2021, Musk nominally changed his title to “Techno King” while retaining his title as CEO.

Tesla began deliveries of its electric sports car, the Roadster, in 2008. Approximately 2,500 vehicles were sold, and it was the first mass-produced all-electric vehicle to use lithium-ion battery cells. Tesla began deliveries of the four-door Model S sedan in 2012. The Model The Model 3, a mass-market sedan, was launched in 2017. The Model 3 is the best sedan ever. It is the world’s best-selling plug-in electric vehicle and became the first electric vehicle to sell 1 million units worldwide in June 2021. A fifth vehicle, the Model Y crossover, was launched in 2020. The Cybertruck, an all-electric pickup truck, was announced in 2019. Under Musk, Tesla also built several lithium-ion battery and electric vehicle factories called Gigafactories.

Since its initial public offering in 2010, Tesla stock has increased significantly. The company became the most valuable automaker in the summer of 2020 and joined the S&P 500 later that year. In October 2021, its market capitalization reached $1 trillion, making it the sixth-largest company in US history. In November 2021, Musk proposed on Twitter that he sell 10% of his Tesla stock because “unrealized gains are increasingly being used as a tax avoidance tool these days.” After more than 3.5 million Twitter accounts endorsed the sale, Musk sold $6.9 billion in Tesla stock within a week, bringing his total stock holdings to $16.4 billion by the end of the year and more than 10 percent of his goal. % gotta get. In February 2022, The Wall Street Journal reported that Elon and Kimbal Musk were being investigated by the SEC for possible insider trading related to the sale. In 2022, Musk unveiled Optimus, a robot developed by Tesla. On June 20, 2023, Musk met with Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi in New York City and indicated that he was interested in investing in India “as soon as possible.”.

In 2018, Musk was sued by the SEC for tweeting that funding had been secured for the possibility of taking Tesla private. The lawsuit found that the tweets were false, misleading, and harmful to investors and sought to prevent Musk from serving as CEO of a publicly traded company. Two days later, Musk settled with the SEC without admitting or denying its claims. As a result, Musk and Tesla were each fined $20 million, and Musk was forced to step down as Tesla’s chairman for three years, but he was able to remain CEO. In April 2022, several Tesla shareholders as well as those who sued Musk over the tweet said a federal judge had ruled that the tweet was false, but the ruling in question has not been sealed. In February 2023, a jury found Musk and Tesla not liable. Musk said in an interview that he did not regret posting the tweet that led to the SEC investigation.

In 2019, Musk said in a tweet that Tesla would make 500,000 cars that year. In response to Musk’s tweets, the SEC filed a motion with the court to hold Musk in contempt for violating the terms of the settlement agreement through such tweets. Musk denied the allegations. The issue was eventually resolved by a joint agreement between Musk and the SEC that clarified the terms of the previous agreement. The agreement includes a list of topics for which Musk will require prior permission before he can tweet. In 2020, a judge blocked the case from moving forward, saying Musk’s tweets about Tesla’s stock price (“too high”) violated the agreement. Records released by FOIA show that the SEC itself concluded that Musk violated the agreement twice by tweeting about “Tesla’s solar rooftop production volume and stock price.”

SolarCity and Tesla Energy

Musk provided the initial concept and financial capital for SolarCity, which was founded in 2006 by his cousins Lyndon and Peter Ribb. As of 2013, SolarCity was the second-largest solar energy system provider in the United States. In 2014, Musk promoted the idea of building an advanced production facility in Buffalo, New York, for SolarCity, three times the size of the country’s largest solar farm. Construction of the factory began in 2014 and was completed in 2017. It operated as a joint venture with Panasonic until early 2020.

Tesla acquired SolarCity in 2016 for more than $2 billion and merged it with its battery division to form Tesla Energy. After the deal was announced, Tesla’s share price fell more than 10%. At that time, SolarCity was facing liquidity problems. Several shareholder groups have filed a lawsuit against Musk and Tesla’s directors, alleging that the SolarCity deal was made solely for Musk’s benefit at the expense of Tesla and its shareholders. Tesla’s directors settled the lawsuit in January 2020, leaving Musk as the sole remaining defendant. Two years later, a court ruled in Musk’s favor.

Neuralink

In 2016, Musk co-founded the neurotechnology startup Neuralink with a $100 million investment. Neuralink aims to integrate the human brain with artificial intelligence (AI) by creating devices that are implanted in the brain to facilitate brain-machine fusion. Such technologies may increase memory or allow devices to communicate with software. The company also hopes to develop devices to treat neurological diseases such as Alzheimer’s disease, dementia, and spinal cord injuries.

In 2019, Musk announced research on a device similar to a sewing machine that could implant thread into the human brain. He is listed as the sole author of an October 2019 paper detailing some of Neuralink’s research, but researchers on the Neuralink team were concerned that Musk was listed that way. I was confused. During a live demonstration in 2020, Musk described one of his early devices as a “fitbit in the skull” that could soon treat paralysis, hearing loss, blindness, and other disabilities. Several neuroscientists and publications criticized these claims, with MIT Technology Review calling them “highly speculative” and “neuroscience theater.”. During the demonstration, Musk unveiled a pig equipped with a Neuralink implant that tracks neural activity related to smell. In 2022, Neuralink announced that it would begin clinical trials by the end of the year.

Neuralink conducted further animal testing on macaque monkeys at the Primate Research Center at the University of California, Davis. In 2021, the company released a video of a macaque monkey playing the video game Pong through a Neuralink implant. The company’s animal testing led to the death of monkeys, leading to claims of animal cruelty. The Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine claimed that Neuralink’s animal testing violated animal welfare laws. [188] Employees have complained that Mr. Musk’s pressure to accelerate development has led to experiments failing and unnecessary animal deaths. In 2022, a federal investigation into possible animal welfare violations by Neuralink was launched.

The company was given approval to start human trials in September 2023. The company plans to conduct a six-year study.

Twitter / X

Musk had expressed interest in purchasing Twitter in 2017 and questioned the platform’s commitment to freedom of expression. Additionally, his ex-wife, Talulah Riley, had encouraged him to purchase Twitter to stop “wokeism.”. Musk began buying Twitter shares in January 2022, and by April, his stake had reached 9.2%, making him the company’s largest shareholder. When it was announced, Twitter stock posted its biggest intraday price jump since the company’s 2013 IPO. On April 4, Musk appointed himself to Twitter’s board of directors and agreed to a deal that prevents him from acquiring more than 14.9% of the company’s stock. However, on April 13, Musk proposed to buy Twitter for $43 billion and launched a takeover bid for 100% of Twitter at $54.20 per share. In response, Twitter’s board adopted a “poison pill” shareholder rights plan, making it more expensive for a single investor to own more than 15% of the company without board approval. Nevertheless, by the end of the month, Musk had successfully completed his bid of approximately $44 billion. This includes a loan of approximately $12.5 billion and an equity loan of $21 billion for their Tesla stock.

As a result of the trade, Tesla’s stock market value fell by more than $100 billion the next day. Musk then posted a tweet criticizing Twitter executive Vijaya Gadde’s policies to his 86 million followers, some of whom began harassing him with sexist and racist harassment. This resulted in the following:. He reported that 5% of Twitter’s daily active users were spam accounts. Although he initially confirmed his commitment to the acquisition, he sent a notice of termination in July. Twitter’s board responded that it was committed to binding them to the deal. On July 12, 2022, Twitter formally sued Musk in Delaware Chancery Court for violating the legally binding Twitter acquisition agreement. In October 2022, Musk again reversed course and offered to buy Twitter for $54.20 per share. The acquisition was officially completed on October 27.

Soon after the acquisition, Musk fired several Twitter executives, including CEO Parag Agarwal. Musk became CEO in his place. He introduced a “Blue Check” subscription fee of $7.99 per month and laid off a significant portion of the company’s employees. Musk has reduced content moderation, including restoring accounts like Bee, and in December released an internal document regarding Twitter moderation of Hunter Biden’s laptop controversy before the 2020 presidential election.

Comments on these internal documents by journalists Matt Taibbi, Bari Weiss, Michael Shellenberger, and others were posted to Twitter as a Twitter file. The US House of Representatives Judiciary Committee held a hearing on the Twitter files on March 9, 2023, at which Mr. Taibbi and Mr. Shellenberger testified.

The Southern Poverty Law Center said that Twitter verifies a large number of extremists. Since his appointment, abusive language has also increased on the platform.

Musk promised to step down as CEO in the second half of 2022 after a Twitter poll he posted showed that a majority of users wanted him to step down. Five months later, Musk stepped down as CEO and was replaced in the position by former NBCUniversal executive Linda Yaccarino, changing her role to executive chairman and chief technology officer.

On November 20, 2023, X filed a lawsuit in federal district court in Texas, accusing Media Matters of “manipulating” the X platform. Ax said Media Matters used accounts that followed big brand accounts and “resorted to infinite scrolling and refreshing” of their feeds until they found ads next to extremist posts.

Other activities

Hyperloop

A tube part of the 2017 Hyperloop pod competition sponsored by SpaceX

In August 2013, Musk announced plans for a version of the Vactrain, or vacuum tube train, and hired more than a dozen engineers from SpaceX and Tesla to establish a conceptual foundation and create preliminary designs. Later that year, Musk unveiled a concept called the hyperloop. An alpha design for the system was published in a white paper posted on the Tesla and SpaceX blogs. The document details the technology and outlines a conceptual pathway by which such a transportation system could be built between the Los Angeles metropolitan area and the San Francisco Bay Area at an estimated cost of $6 billion. If this proposal is technically feasible at the quoted cost, long-distance travel on Hyperloop would be cheaper than any other mode of transportation.

In 2015, Musk announced the 2015–2017 Hyperloop Pod Competition for students and others to build a Hyperloop pod to operate on a one-mile track, sponsored by SpaceX. Announced that it would hold a design competition. The line was put into use in January 2017, and Musk also announced that the company had launched a tunnel project with Hawthorne Municipal Airport as its destination. In July 2017, Musk said he was scheduled to fly from New York City to Washington, D.C., with stops in both Philadelphia and Baltimore. By 2015, “verbal government approval” had been received to build the Hyperloop. Proposed D.C. references to the Baltimore section were removed from The Boring Company’s website in 2021. It is noted that plans for a tunnel to Hawthorne will be canceled in 2022 and converted into parking for SpaceX employees.

Biographer Ashley Vance says Musk hoped Hyperloop would “force the public and lawmakers to reconsider the high-speed rail proposal then underway in California and consider more ‘creative’ ideas.” “There was,” he said.

OpenAI and xAI

In December 2015, Musk co-founded OpenAI, a non-profit artificial intelligence (AI) research company that aims to develop general artificial intelligence that is safe and beneficial to humanity. The company’s specific focus is on democratizing artificial superintelligence systems against governments and corporations. Mr. Musk has pledged $1 billion in funding to OpenAI. [282] In 2023, Musk tweeted that he ultimately donated a total of $100 million to OpenAI. According to an independent public records review, TechCrunch later reported that “only $15 million” of OpenAI’s funding apparently belonged to Musk. Musk has since said he has donated approximately $50 million.

In 2018, as Tesla increased its involvement in AI through Tesla Autopilot, Musk left the OpenAI board to avoid potential conflict with his role as CEO of Tesla in the future.[284] Since then, OpenAI has made significant advances in machine learning, creating neural networks such as GPT-3 (generating human-like text) and DALL-E (generating digital images from natural language descriptions).

On July 12, 2023, Elon Musk launched an artificial intelligence company named xAI. xAI aims to develop generative AI programs that compete with existing services like ChatGPT. The company has reportedly hired engineers from Google and OpenAI. The Nevada-based company purchased 10,000 graphics processing units. Musk reportedly received funding from SpaceX and Tesla investors.

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