With an estimated net worth of $263.7 billion, Elon Musk is the richest man in the world and it is no wonder because he has direct and indirect participation, as well as boasts some of the most valuable companies worldwide and whose list continues to grow.
Musk’s first company.
Today, Tesla or SpaceX are some of Musk’s most famous firms, however, a long time ago there were other firms that began to forge the legacy of the billionaire.
In 1995, Elon created the firm Zip2 – originally called Global Link Information – in conjunction with his brother Kimbal Musk. The company provided local guide software for newspapers on the Internet, initially only to local companies, but over the years they also managed to sign with The New York Times, Knight Rider and Hearst Corporation.
Just four years after its creation, zip2’s peak came when it was acquired by Compaq Computer for a total of $307 million. For that transaction, Elon Musk got $22 million and his brother Kimbal $15 million, the rest went to shareholders.
He started a project that would mark a watershed in his career.
At the same time that he finalized the sale of Zip2, Musk partnered with three other partners to found a new company, a financial startup called X.com, for this, Elon invested 12 million dollars.
The page as such, fulfilled functions of an internet bank and its first two months of operation managed to obtain 200 thousand people registered on its platform. This firm had as its main competitor Confinity -creator of PayPal- and over the years they merged into the same product.
The company continued to grow and was renamed PayPal Inc, although there were certain disputes over who should be the CEO, in which Musk was involved, in the end the giant of electronic purchases, eBay decided to acquire the firm for one thousand 500 million dollars in 2002. It should be noted that prior to the sale, Elon was the majority shareholder with 11.7 percent of the shares, so in the end, he ended up earning 180 million dollars already after taxes.
This endowed Musk with more capital, so he created companies that have remained in his possession to date and that have grown exponentially in recent years.
SpaceX, Tesla and Solar City are coming.
In the first instance, Elon Musk was interested in the aerospace field, so he founded the firm SpaceX in 2002, which is dedicated to the manufacture of space transport services and is currently based in California. Its main objective was to reduce the costs of traveling to space, keeping in mind a future colonization of Mars.
Since then and to date, SpaceX has grown exponentially, having up to 8,000 employees at the end of 2020, in addition to winning contracts with NASA, which included from demonstrations of cargo delivery to the International Space Station, in addition to even in 2020 it took two astronauts into space. becoming the first private company to bring humans to the International Space Station.
In addition, they have a satellite internet service called Starlink, which aims to bring high-speed internet around the world.
Going back in time a bit, in 2004, Musk made the decision to join electric vehicle maker Tesla, which was founded in 2003 by two engineers. In total, he invested 6.5 million dollars, so he was appointed as president of the company and the rest has been history, since, at present, it has become the flagship firm of intelligent electric cars, with its models S, X, 3 and Y. Not to mention that the Tesla Roadster, Semi, Cybertruck and Cyberquad are on their way.
In 2021 alone, it generated revenues of 53.8 billion pesos and currently Elon Musk is the majority shareholder with 20.8 percent of its shares.
Now, another company that was a pillar of Musk’s fortune development is called SolarCity, founded to provide energy services to homeowners, businesses and government organizations by designing and installing solar energy systems.
Although it started as an independent firm, it eventually merged with Tesla in 2016.
A new generation of companies arrives.
After growing his first projects, now consolidated globally, Musk continued to diversify his investments with bets also focused on developing technologies that have been cataloged as «those of the future».
In 2016 he founded Neuralink, a neurotechnology firm that specializes in developing brain-computer interfaces using implants.
From the beginning of the promotion of the company, it was announced that although there were medium-term objectives on curing serious brain diseases, in reality the final goal would be transhumanism, that is, to achieve a kind of total symbiosis between human and artificial intelligence.
Also, in that year the tycoon also created The Boring Company, dedicated to excavation and infrastructure, which seeks to improve the speed of excavation and even establish an underground network of tunnels «economically feasible».
A curiosity of this firm is that in 2017, after a dynamic made on Twitter, Elon Musk gave the order to create a flamethrower to put it on sale. In total there were 20 thousand flamethrowers that were manufactured and that were sold out in a matter of days.
His most recent bet, the purchase of Twitter.
In April, just three weeks after the American billionaire Elon Musk became the largest shareholder of the social network Twitter, he made the purchase of said platform, after offering, in total, 44 billion dollars.
This came after several winks and publications made by Musk on Twitter, who said that the social network must have policies focused on free expression and thus avoid censorship. The payment promised by Musk and which was accepted by the different shareholders of the social network was $ 54.2 for each common share.
Elon Musk’s offer to acquire the social network is backed by various percentages, since one part will be given in cash and another will be obtained from financing from various financial institutions, for which he left Tesla shares in guarantee.
However, this purchase has not yet been completed, since this May 13, Musk tweeted about the transaction and is that he assured that the status is «temporarily suspended», since the social network presented a report of false accounts and spam, which would represent less than 5 percent of the 226 million monetizable daily assets.
While the billionaire expressed «remaining committed to the acquisition,» they are awaiting new details about fake accounts and bots. In case he retracts, he would only have to pay one billion dollars instead of 44 thousand, as compensation.
Nonetheless, this caused Twitter’s shares to fall by as much as 20 percent and trade at $35.95, nearly $20 less than the price offered by Musk.
It will be a matter of time to see if this purchase materializes and also to know what the next bet of the millionaire will be.
