Elon Musk: The Complete Story of His Life, Family, Companies & Fortune

Few living entrepreneurs generate as much attention — or argument — as Elon Musk. Owner or co-founder of Tesla, SpaceX, X, The Boring Company, xAI, and Neuralink, he has spent three decades turning bold, often ridiculed ideas into billion-dollar industries. This guide covers his family, upbringing, education, business record, wealth, controversies, and the numbers behind a fortune that crossed $1 trillion in 2026.

Quick Facts

Elon Musk’s Family

Parents

Musk is the son of Errol Musk, a South African engineer, and Maye Musk, a Canadian-born model and dietitian. His parents divorced in 1980, just before his ninth birthday. He is the eldest of three siblings: his brother Kimbal Musk, who has built three separate food and restaurant companies, and his sister Tosca Musk, a director and producer who also founded Passionflix, a streaming service focused on romance films and series.

Partners & Children

Musk has fathered eleven children across four partners.

His first wife, Justine Wilson, whom he married in 2000 and divorced in 2008, is the mother of six of his children. Their firstborn son, Nevada Alexander, died at ten weeks old from sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS). The couple went on to have twins, Griffin and Vivian Jenna Wilson, through IVF, followed by triplets — Kai, Saxon, and Damian — also conceived via IVF. Musk’s daughter Vivian has spoken publicly about cutting off contact with her father in 2022, citing his repeated anti-trans public statements.

Musk married British actress Talulah Riley in 2010. The couple divorced in 2012, remarried in 2013, and separated for good in 2016.

He began dating Canadian musician Grimes in 2018. Their first child, a son named X AE A-XII, was born in 2020, and they welcomed a daughter, Exa Dark Siderael Musk, via surrogate in December 2021 — despite having split up a few months earlier, in September 2021. Musk and Grimes have described themselves as remaining close friends, and later confirmed a third child together, a son named Techno Mechanicus, born via surrogate.

Separately, Musk is also the father of twins — Azure and Strider — born in 2021 via surrogate with Shivon Zilis, a director of operations and special projects at Neuralink.

Early Life & Education

Musk was born in Pretoria, South Africa, in 1971. After his parents’ 1980 divorce, he initially chose to live with his father — a decision he later said he regretted, as the relationship grew distant over time.

As a child he was an avid reader of both fiction and non-fiction, a habit that continued through private preparatory school and Pretoria Boys High School. His school years were not easy: he was reportedly badly beaten by classmates after criticizing another student’s father, and has said his own father showed little sympathy afterward despite his injuries.

Around age ten, Musk discovered computers and video games and taught himself to code from manuals. By twelve, he had already sold a simple game he’d written to a PC magazine for roughly $500.

Did Elon Musk’s Family Own an Emerald Mine?

Yes — Musk’s father has confirmed being a part-owner of an emerald mine near Lake Tanganyika, even though Elon himself has downplayed the connection. In a 2018 interview with Business Insider Africa, Errol Musk explained that he used roughly half the proceeds from selling an airplane to buy into the mine, and that the family received emeralds from it for about six years.

College Years

Musk briefly attended the University of Pretoria before moving to Canada in 1990 to study at Queen’s University in Kingston, Ontario — where he met his future first wife, Justine Wilson. Two years later, in 1992, he transferred to the University of Pennsylvania, where he earned a Bachelor of Arts in physics and a Bachelor of Science from the Wharton School. To help cover tuition, he reportedly hosted paid house parties, and during this time he also sketched out a business plan for an electronic book-scanning service, an early precursor to something like Google Books.

In 1994 he took on two Silicon Valley internships: one at the energy-storage startup Pinnacle Research Institute, and another at the game studio Rocket Science Games. In 1995 he was accepted into a PhD program in materials science at Stanford, but left almost immediately, choosing instead to pursue opportunities in the fast-growing internet industry.

Notable Businesses

Musk’s fortune and reputation rest on a string of companies spanning payments, cars, rockets, tunnels, brain implants, and artificial intelligence.

X.com (PayPal)

Musk had long envisioned an online banking platform, and in 1999 he put around $12 million into co-founding X.com alongside other investors. The site attracted more than 200,000 sign-ups within its first two months. X.com later merged with the money-transfer company Confinity to become PayPal, with Musk — as the largest shareholder — serving as CEO. When eBay bought PayPal for $1.5 billion in 2002, Musk’s 11.7% stake earned him roughly $180 million after taxes.

Tesla

Tesla was founded in 2003 by Martin Eberhard and Marc Tarpenning. Musk joined in 2004 as one of its main early funders, became chairman of the board, and took over as CEO in 2008. He championed the Roadster, an all-electric sports car launched that same year that could travel 245 miles on a single charge. Tesla went on to release the Model S in 2012 — named Consumer Reports’ best overall car that year — followed by the Model X SUV in 2015 and the Model 3 in 2017, which became the best-selling electric car ever built, with a range of 263 miles per charge. Tesla’s market capitalization has since exceeded $755 billion, and the company continues to expand its EV production every year.

SpaceX

Musk founded SpaceX in 2002 using proceeds from the PayPal sale, aiming to sharply cut the cost of spaceflight through reusable rockets. The Falcon 1 first launched in 2006, followed by the Falcon 9 in 2010 — both dramatically cheaper than rival launch vehicles. In 2018, SpaceX debuted the Falcon Heavy, capable of carrying 53,000 kg into orbit at roughly a third of the cost of Boeing’s Delta IV Heavy, its closest competitor. SpaceX also built the Dragon spacecraft, which ferries astronauts and cargo to the International Space Station. These achievements have made SpaceX one of the most valuable private companies on the planet — and, following its June 2026 Nasdaq listing, a publicly traded one as well.

The Boring Company

Launched in 2016, The Boring Company focuses on underground tunnel construction aimed at easing urban traffic congestion, along with a proposed high-speed underground travel system it calls the “hyperloop,” where passengers move between stops in electric pods with no stops in between. The company raised $675 million in a Series C funding round, pushing its valuation to $5.75 billion as of April 2022.

Neuralink

Musk co-founded Neuralink in 2016 with a team of scientists and engineers to build brain implants capable of communicating directly with computers and phones. The near-term goal is treating serious brain and neurological conditions, with a longer-term ambition of enhancing human cognition. In May 2023, the FDA approved human testing of Neuralink’s chips after rejecting an earlier application in 2022 over safety concerns, and the company opened recruitment for its first human trials that September. Neuralink was valued at around $5 billion in June 2023.

Twitter (Now X)

Musk revealed a 9% stake in Twitter in April 2022 after being a long-time active user, and quickly moved to offer $44 billion for the entire company. He later attempted to back out of the deal, prompting Twitter to sue him to force the acquisition through; the deal ultimately closed in October 2022, with Musk taking over as owner and CEO and the company going private, with each shareholder paid $0.52 per share. In the months that followed, X lost close to half its advertising revenue and saw a substantial drop in users worldwide. By March 2023, Musk himself pegged Twitter’s value at around $20 billion — a 55% decline from what he originally paid. He renamed the platform X in July 2023.

xAI & SolarCity

In 2023, Musk launched xAI to build an alternative to chatbots like ChatGPT. He also brought SolarCity, a solar-energy systems company, under Tesla’s umbrella in 2016 in a $2.6 billion deal.

What Does Elon Musk Own?

Beyond Tesla, The Boring Company, Neuralink, and X, Musk’s holdings include SpaceX and xAI, along with his earlier stake in SolarCity, which Tesla absorbed in 2016. Together these companies span electric vehicles, space transport, tunneling infrastructure, brain-computer interfaces, social media, and artificial intelligence.

Net Worth: From Millions to a Trillion

Here’s how Musk’s estimated wealth grew between 2014 and 2024, according to Forbes:

Source: Forbes.

The 2026 Update: Musk Becomes a Trillionaire

Musk’s fortune kept climbing well past that 2024 figure. By mid-2026, Bloomberg and Forbes both estimated his net worth at roughly $1 trillion to $1.1 trillion, driven mainly by his roughly 42% stake in SpaceX and 20% stake in Tesla. The single biggest jump came on June 12, 2026, when SpaceX went public on the Nasdaq — the IPO added an estimated $188 billion to his fortune in a day and made him the first person in history with a net worth above $1 trillion. His wealth has swung sharply since: a SpaceX share slide briefly erased around $50 billion from his fortune in late June, before a rebound in SpaceX and Tesla shares restored his trillionaire status within days.

How Elon Musk Makes Money

Musk built his fortune mainly through the companies he founded, funded, and led. His first company, Zip2, an online city-guide service built in partnership with newspapers, sold in 1999 for $340 million — four years after he started it. He then co-founded X.com, later PayPal, which sold to eBay for $1.5 billion in 2002, giving Musk tens of millions in proceeds. Around that time he founded SpaceX, now estimated by Forbes to be worth close to $150 billion, of which Musk owns roughly 42%.

He also earns from his roughly 21% stake in Tesla stock and options — a company that pays him no fixed salary but rewards him with major stock packages when it hits specific performance targets. The Boring Company and Neuralink add further stock-based wealth, while investments in X, SolarCity, xAI, and cryptocurrency round out his broader portfolio.

Can You Buy Tesla Stock?

Yes. Tesla (TSLA) is publicly traded on the Nasdaq, and buying shares is a straightforward process:

1. Open a brokerage account with a reputable, regulated broker and deposit funds.
2. Find the ticker — log in and search for Tesla’s stock symbol, TSLA.
3. Choose your quantity — decide how many shares (or fractional shares) you want to buy.
4. Pick an order type — a market order executes at the current price, while a limit order only fills once the stock hits a price you set.
5. Submit and monitor — place the order and keep an eye on the position, since Tesla’s price can move sharply on news about the company or the broader market.

This is general information, not investment advice — Claude isn’t a licensed financial advisor.

Key Facts & Statistics

• His first company, Zip2, launched in 1995 as an online city guide for newspapers and sold to Compaq for $340 million in 1999.
• He co-founded PayPal and sold it to eBay for $1.5 billion in 2002.
• Musk holds citizenship in South Africa, Canada, and the United States.
• He joined the Gates–Buffett Giving Pledge in 2012, committing to give away the majority of his wealth.
• He has received several honors, including the Explorers Club’s President’s Award for Exploration and Technology, the Royal Aeronautical Society Award, and the Edison Achievement Award.
• In 2008, SpaceX’s Falcon 1 became the first privately funded, liquid-fueled rocket to reach orbit.
• Tesla’s Model S, launched in 2012, was the first electric car with a range over 300 miles per charge.
• He owns roughly 74% of X (formerly Twitter).
• Musk has repeatedly said he wants to die on Mars — “but not on impact.”
• He has both championed AI development and publicly warned about its long-term risks.
• He’s a vocal advocate for renewable energy and sustainable transport.
• He has clashed frequently with regulators and traditional automakers over safety rules and direct-to-consumer sales.
• His statements on trans rights, immigration, and race have repeatedly drawn controversy.
• He has long promoted the idea of a Hyperloop — a high-speed underground transport system.
• He purchased the domain name X.com in 2017 — the same name once used by his early online banking venture.
• He has cited science-fiction authors like Isaac Asimov and Douglas Adams as major influences.
• He has said he works up to 100 hours a week across his companies.

Famous & Controversial Moments

Musk seems to attract controversy as reliably as he attracts headlines. In 2018, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission sued him for misleading investors after he tweeted about taking Tesla private at $420 a share without having secured the funding to do so. He also faced major backlash after calling a British diver — who had helped rescue a group of boys trapped in a flooded Thai cave — a “pedo” on Twitter.

His October 2022 acquisition of Twitter brought further scrutiny: mass layoffs, new charges for account verification, sudden suspensions of parody accounts, and a rollback of hate-speech guidelines all drew criticism. In 2018, he appeared on the Joe Rogan podcast and smoked marijuana on camera, instantly becoming an internet meme. During the COVID-19 pandemic, he called stay-at-home orders “fascist,” dismissed pandemic panic as “dumb,” and cast doubt on the reliability of COVID tests. More recently, in November 2023, he told advertisers who’d pulled spending from X — after he amplified antisemitic conspiracy content on the platform — to essentially go away, in blunt and widely reported terms.

Famous Musk Quotes

Social Impact & Philanthropy

Musk established the Musk Foundation, a private charitable entity, in 2002. It funds pediatric research, science and engineering education, renewable-energy research, and human space-exploration research, with past recipients including World Spine Care, the Mirman School for Gifted Children, and Doctors Without Borders.

His giving has occasionally missed the mark: during the COVID-19 pandemic, he donated more than 1,000 ventilators to New York hospitals, only for many to be found unsuitable for safely intubating COVID patients. He also funded new water fountains with filtration systems for a dozen schools in Flint, Michigan, where lead had contaminated the water supply — though this fell short of an earlier promise to fix the water in every home in Flint. He has also contributed millions to the X Prize Foundation, working with it in 2021 to launch a prize for carbon-removal technology. Even so, Musk has faced repeated criticism for donating well under 1% of his total wealth to charity and for not always following through on philanthropic pledges made on social media.

Wrapping Up

Whatever one makes of him personally, Musk’s business record is hard to ignore. He has built or led companies that reshaped online payments, electric vehicles, private spaceflight, tunneling, brain-computer interfaces, and — more recently — artificial intelligence, while becoming, in 2026, the first person ever to reach a net worth above $1 trillion. He continues to be held up, for better or worse, as proof that relentless risk-taking can pay off at a scale few others ever reach.

FAQs

How many kids does Elon Musk have?

Eleven: Nevada Alexander (deceased); Griffin and Vivian Jenna Wilson (April 2004); Kai, Saxon, and Damian (January 2006); X AE A-XII (May 2020); Azure and Strider (November 2021); Exa Dark Siderael (December 2021); and Techno Mechanicus.

Where was Elon Musk born?

Pretoria, South Africa, in 1971. He lived with his father there through his early life before moving to Canada at 17, and later to the United States.

What nationality is Elon Musk?

He holds three nationalities: South African, Canadian, and American.

Where is Elon Musk from?

He is originally from South Africa.

Why did Elon Musk buy Twitter?

He said he wanted to turn it into a platform that supports free speech globally, and framed the purchase as being about that goal rather than growing his wealth.

When did Musk buy Twitter?

He made the initial $44 billion offer on April 14, 2022, later tried to back out over concerns about bot and spam accounts, and completed the acquisition on October 27, 2022, at the original price after Twitter sued to enforce the deal.

Does Musk have autism?

Yes — he confirmed this during a TED talk, saying that being on the spectrum shaped his early, intense interest in science and technology.

Did Elon Musk release a single?

Yes. His track, “Don’t Doubt Your Vibe,” is available on SoundCloud; he wrote the lyrics, and it has drawn millions of listens.

Is Elon Musk really a trillionaire?

As of mid-2026, yes — Forbes and Bloomberg both estimate his net worth above $1 trillion, though the figure moves significantly with SpaceX and Tesla’s share prices.