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Elon Musk has lost a whopping $100 million this year alone, but the problem isn’t just because of his new Twitter role.
It seems his finances have been suffering in other areas too…
Tesla has taken a huge hit.
Scroll down for the full story!
We all know Elon Musk from his adventures in space.
The entrepreneur’s SpaceX program has garnered a lot of publicity.
But who is the man behind the business?
Let’s take a closer look at how he got to where he is today…
The fifty-one-year-old was born in Pretoria, South Africa on June 28, 1971.
Born to a Canadian mother and South African father, the entrepreneur left his birth country for Canada in 1988.
His mom is quite the icon in her own right!
Seventy-four-year-old Maye Musk is a professional model and dietician, with many an impressive achievements to her name…
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She is the oldest star to ever appear on the cover of Sports Illustrated!
Other modeling gigs of hers include a Time magazine cover, a Beyoncé music video, and she can even be seen on boxes of Special K cereal!
However, his relationship with his dad Errol Musk is a lot rockier…
As per The Guardian, in an interview, Errol was asked if he was proud of his sun. He replied: “No. You know, we are a family that have been doing a lot of things for a long time, it’s not as if we suddenly started doing something.”
However, this tricky relationship didn’t stop Musk from rocketing his way to success.
He has a long history of success in business.
His first big win was when he sold a video game at just twelve years old.
The game was called Blastar, and he sold it to a computer magazine for an impressive $500.
In terms of education, once Musk moved to Canada he began to attend Queen’s University in Ontario. However, he later transferred to the University of Pennsylvania.
He gained 2 degrees from Pennsylvania – a BA in physics and a BSc in economics.
The entrepreneur then made his start by interning at 2 different Silicon Valley groups in 1994.
He worked for energy storage company Pinnacle Research as well as video game startup Rocket Science Games.
Musk was actually then accepted into a Ph.D. program at Stanford University in 1995.
However, according to Bloomberg, the then twenty-four-year-old dropped out after just 2 days!
He decided to follow the dot-com boom that was beginning to get going in California instead.
This is where Musk’s rise really started to get underway!
He first founded Zip2 alongside his brother, Kimbal, which provided online newspapers with the tools to create city guides.
The company worked with big-name brands such as The New York Times and the Chicago Tribune.
Less than 5 years later, Musk sold the company for over $300 million!
This deal alone made Musk a hefty $22 million.
It was at this point Musk founded the online banking company X.com.
According to Insider, he used about $10 million of his money from the sale of Zip2.
And from here is where Musk’s story becomes a lot more familiar to most of us, as, after roughly a year, X.com merged with another company to make PayPal.
He became CEO of the freshly merged company.
He faced some turbulence in this role, however. He was ousted as CEO after disagreements on what servers the company should use.
Peter Thiel, one of PayPal’s original co-founders, replaced Musk.
In spite of this, Musk still came away from PayPal with an impressive $180 million in 2002.
As Money reported, Musk came away from the company’s $1.5 billion sale to eBay with his fair share.
Then, in 2002, Musk set his sights on the final frontier – space!
This is where one of the most adventurous companies of the twenty-first century, SpaceX, came into being.
With $100 million of the sale from PayPal, Musk founded SpaceX to achieve his goal of space exploration.
The company was ready to take on other big players in the space industry, such as Boeing and Orbital Sciences.
During its twenty years of operation, Musk’s space program has seen many a high but also a lot of lows…
Scroll on to discover just why SpaceX is so special…
Back in 2010, SpaceX achieved its first big feat as the first private company to successfully launch a payload into orbit, and get it back to Earth in one piece.
Previously, only government organizations had managed to achieve this.
They were also the first private company to send humans into orbit in 2020.
The Independent even reported that Musk is aiming to put humans on Mars by 2029!
However, it hasn’t been all plain sailing for the aerospace business, with its landmark satellite program being blamed for clogging up space.
As per The Guardian, the head of the leading European Space Agency accused Musk of “making the rules” when it came to space.
The so-called Starlink satellites are able to provide internet access to millions across the globe, but their launch is rather controversial.
Aside from the taking up space argument, others dispute whether companies such as Musk’s should be able to alter the look of the night’s sky.
Musk has also faced allegations of sexual misconduct from a former SpaceX employee.
The BBC reported that the billionaire has denied the claims and settled a lawsuit with the former employee for $250,000.
But that’s not where Musk and controversy ends…
From Twitter to Tesla, Musk is never far away from drama…
The year 2004 was when Musk first invested in the electric car company Tesla.
This is the endeavour that Musk would arguably go on to become best-known for.
Although he is not the founder of the company, Musk has been Tesla’s CEO since 2008.
This was after he ousted one of the firm’s founders from the leading position!
Even during the 2008 crisis when Tesla was facing bankruptcy, Musk dove into his own pockets to help save the company.
According to Insider, he invested $40 million and loaned the company another $40 million on top of that!
Despite 2008 being an undeniably tough year for Musk, things started looking up once Tesla found more external investors.
From there, the rise of the electric car company has been huge.
That’s not to say though that Tesla hasn’t faced its fair share of dramas…
Aside from quality control and safety issues, there has been a range of debates around Musk’s leadership itself.
His appearance on Joe Rogan’s podcast didn’t help matters.
One of Musk’s most talked about moments is where he can be seen smoking marijuana during the podcast.
The fallout of the podcast episode led to Tesla’s shares falling more than nine percent, according to the BBC.
His eccentric antics appeared to shake investor confidence in the firm.
Musk was even sued by Tesla shareholders when the company acquired a solar panel company owned by 2 of his cousins.
Although the billionaire won the lawsuit, Tesla’s solar power business has also faced further backlash after delays and price increases.
Twitter sued Musk as a result, claiming that he violated his acquisition agreement.
However, Musk has hit back and countersued, alleging that Twitter committed fraud and breach of contract.
In terms of his private life, the world’s richest man has dated a fair few familiar names…
Read on to discover just who Musk has dated.
The billionaire’s first wife Justine referred to herself as his “starter wife” in an interview with Marie Claire.
The Canadian author had 5 children with Musk, and they divorced in 2008.
Just 6 weeks after he divorced his first wife, Musk then got engaged to British actress Talulah Riley.
The pair went on to marry in 2010, but divorced in 2012. However, they then remarried the next year, and eventually divorced again in 2016.
Then, Musk dated another actress — this time it was Amber Heard.
The pair dated for several months in 2017.
One of Musk’s most significant relationships has been with musician Grimes.
The couple reportedly first started seeing each other in April 2018, and made their red carpet debut a month later at the Met Gala.
In March 2022, Grimes told Vanity Fair that her and Musk’s relationship is “very fluid.”
She said: “I would probably refer to him as my boyfriend, but we’re very fluid. We live in separate houses. We’re best friends. We see each other all the time… We just have our own thing going on, and I don’t expect other people to understand it.”
And all of this is before we even get to Twitter!
This is Musk’s most recent controversial move.
In April 2022, the businessman offered to purchase the social media site for $44 billion.
This came in the same month that he became their largest stakeholder in the company.
However, then the merger went awry thanks to Musk’s hesitations over the deal.
He claimed that Twitter didn’t meet its contractual obligations.
However, he did finally buy the company out, confirming it by tweeting to advisers.
“Dear Twitter Advertisers, I wanted to reach out personally to share my motivation in acquiring Twitter,” he explained.
“There has been much speculation about why I bought Twitter and what I think about advertising. Most of it is wrong.”
Musk explained he bought out the company “because it is important to the future of civilization to have a common digital town square, where a wide range of beliefs can be debated in a healthy manner, without resorting to violence.”
He further expanded on his reason for why he bought out the company.
“I didn’t do it to help make more money. I did it to try and help humanity, whom I love.
“And I do so with humility, recognizing that failure in pursuing this goal, despite our best efforts, is a very real possibility.
But it seems as though Musk is not quite on top of his new position…
“Just received this email from Twitter. This is an actual, real email that was autogenerated.” he shared, along with a laughing emoji.
“So demanding to allow a mere 30 days to learn this priceless information! But Management 201 is such a tantalizing carrot.”
“My title is Chief Twit right there in the bio. No idea who the CEO is.”
Musk has even changed his bio to read “chief Twit.”
But then it was revealed by a tech website Platformer’s Casey Newton that Twitter is leaning towards a big step toward revamping the platform…
The proposals included asking verified users to pay for the privilege of a blue tick.
Reportedly, there are currently 400,000 verified users on Twitter.
Making them pay could actually benefit the company as 5 percent of all users and heavy tweeters make up less than ten percent of the site’s monthly users.
And some celebrities have been unhappy with Musk’s takeover…
Which has led to many leaving the platform…
Including screenwriter Shonda Rhimes.
Rhimes, who joined Twitter in November 2008 and has 1.9 million followers, posted a tweet that suggested she would no longer use the social media platform in light of Musk’s acquisition.
“Not hanging around for whatever Elon has planned. Bye,” she wrote.
Rhimes did not offer further clarification but remains active on other social media sites, including Instagram and TikTok.
This Is Us executive producer, Ken Olin is also gone.
He left an emotional tweet to say goodbye.
“Hey all – I’m out of here. No judgement. Let’s keep the faith. Let’s protect our democracy.
“Let’s try to be kinder. Let’s try to save the planet. Let’s try to be more generous. Let’s look to find peace in the world,” he wrote.
Actor Josh Gad, who voices Olaf in Frozen, also shared his views.
It seems he’s feeling conflicted over whether to leave or not.
“Let’s try to be kinder. Let’s try to save the planet. Let’s try to be more generous. Let’s look to find peace in the world.
“Leaning toward staying, but if today is a sign of things to come, not sure what the point is. Freedom of speech is great. Hate speech intended to incite harm, (with no consequences) ain’t what I signed up for,” Gad wrote.
Actor Rob Reiner is feeling similarly conflicted.
You may recognize Reiner from The is Spinal Tap.
“For those who are fighting to preserve our Constitutional Democracy, now is not the time to leave Twitter.
“Now is the time to VOTE BLUE!” Reiner said.
Gigi Hadid…
Her time on the social media platform came to an end.
On Saturday, she announced her departure from Twitter due to its new leadership.
“It’s becoming more and more of a cesspool of hate & bigotry, and its not a place I want to be a part of,” Hadid said on her Instagram story.
The twenty-seven-year-old explained Twitter in a nutshell, saying it is no longer “a safe place for anyone, nor a platform that will do more good than harm.”
And the list doesn’t end there…
Captain Sully, Sully Sullenberger, the former pilot behind the 2009 miracle landing on the Hudson River in New York, has become the latest celeb to depart from Twitter.
On Wednesday he announced on his social media page he would take a step back from the social media site.
However, the main reason behind his leave is still unclear.
“To my friends on Twitter,” he wrote.
“I will be taking a step back from the platform for now. Connect with me on Facebook, LinkedIn or Instagram to stay informed and hear my latest personal and professional updates.”
Since then, Musk has revealed he’s extra busy now that he owns Twitter…
He also responded to an assumption that many business leaders in Asia wanted to be the “Elon Musk of the East” at an event in Bali.
Although it was unclear whether the billionaire was in Bali, he spoke at the event and said that business leaders should be careful about what they wish for…
“I’d be careful what you wish for. I’m not sure how many people would actually like to be me,” Musk said.
“They would like to be what they imagine being me, which is not the same thing as actually being me. The amount that I torture myself is next level, frankly,” he added.
Musk also opened up about how busy he is since the takeover…
He said he was “at the absolute most amount… from morning til night, seven days a week.”
“I have too much work on my plate that is for sure,” Musk added.
So much so, that the fifty-one-year-old even claimed he was sleeping at Twitter HQ!
As per Insider, the billionaire revealed this in a now-deleted tweet.
“I’ve been at Twitter SF HQ all night,” he said.
“Will be working and sleeping here until org is fixed.”
But the latest development is regarding Musk’s employees…
As per Forbes, he sent out an email titled “A Fork in the Road.”
The email asked for employees to click on a link if they wished to stay.
It explained that if they didn’t, then they would no longer be employees as soon as the set time period ran out.
If they chose not to stay for “Twitter 2.0” then they would be given 3 months severance pay.
Musk explained that the company would become “extremely hardcore” and that “only exceptional performance will constitute a passing grade.”
“If you are sure that you want to be part of the new Twitter, please click yes on the link below…
“Whatever decision you make, thank you for your efforts to make Twitter successful,” it read.
More details have emerged from Twitter’s inner sanctum.
The new boss has defended his decision to require staff to send him weekly email updates on their work, as per Insider.
Musk called his demand “not unreasonable to know if anything was accomplished.”
The email reportedly asked for a “weekly update” on employees’ projects and what they hope to achieve through them.
The email ends by saying: “Looking forward to making Twitter the highest-performing tech software company in the world.”
But it seems that might take some time to achieve, as Musk is slowly running out of money to fund his new venture.
Bloomberg Billionaires Index recently reported that Musk has lost a whopping $100.5 billion.
This is the result of Tesla stock falling dramatically due to a whole host of reasons.
One is the cost of living crisis leaving people unable to shell out thousands for their cars.
However, Musk has said that the car company is “recession resilient.”
Another cause of stock prices dropping is Musk’s involvement with Twitter.
Musk is now reportedly worth $189.4 billion and still holds the spot as the richest man in the world, despite his recent loss of earnings.
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