There is no lack of spectacular moments in the biography of billionaire Elon Musk, 47, who has just bought the social network Twitter for US$ 44 billion.
Bold ideas, controversies, betrayals, provocations and challenges are the keynote of the South African’s personal and professional life, described in the authorized biography “Elon Musk – How the Billionaire CEO of SpaceX and Tesla is Shaping Our Future”, by journalist Ashlee Vance .
Written in 2015, the book chronicles a difficult childhood, in which the current businessman was mistreated at school and almost died from malaria (he lost 20 kg and took six months to recover).
The son of a model and an engineer who divorced when he was eight years old, Musk moved in with his father, who put him through a rough patch, according to the biography.
“Suffering has always been typical of Musk. His father played cruel mind games. Elon later assaulted himself by working hours at an inhuman pace, always pushing his business to the limit,” writes Vance.
He traveled to Canada to attend university, emigrated to the United States in 1992, dropped out of school and started to undertake.
Passionate about science fiction novels as a child, in his adult life he decided to populate Mars with earthlings, started to publicize as a mission to end the use of fossil fuels and became the first to bring a rocket propellant back to the ground to the point of reusing it. it.
In 30 years, he amassed a personal fortune of US$ 20 billion. Last year, he became the richest man in the world, according to Forbes magazine. In his account was $219 billion.
Along the way, according to his biographer, Musk several times decided to do things his own way — and with his own hands — and ended up being labeled arrogant, crazy and brutal by disaffections.
The frictions have run through the history of the payments company Paypal, which he helped found and sold to eBay in the 2000s.
Its most famous companies, SpaceX and the automaker Tesla, were often on the brink of bankruptcy. In 2013, Tesla came to a halt. Musk called employees from all walks of life—HR, design, engineering, finance—and ordered them to call all the customers who had booked and made purchases.
The crisis was so severe that Musk reached out to his friend Larry Page at Google and struck a deal in which Page would buy Tesla.
“While Musk, Page and Google’s lawyers were discussing the terms of an acquisition, a miracle happened”: The makeshift task force had managed to sell so many cars that it saved the company.
He had six children from his first marriage to Justine Wilson. The first died at just over two months old, in a traumatic episode that Musk avoids talking about.
After them came twins and triplets. Eight years later, the couple divorced amid accusations and legal disputes over the division of the fortune.
Musk then started a relationship with actress Talulah Riley, also very troubled.
More recently, the businessman has fathered a boy and a girl with Canadian singer Grimes.
I have over 8 years of experience in the news industry. I have worked for various news websites and have also written for a few news agencies. I mostly cover healthcare news, but I am also interested in other topics such as politics, business, and entertainment. In my free time, I enjoy writing fiction and spending time with my family and friends.
