E lon Musk is a visionary and often controversial entrepreneur who has founded and leads a portfolio of world-changing technology companies. Born in South Africa, he moved to Canada and then the U.S., where he made his first fortune as a co-founder of the online payment company PayPal, which was acquired by eBay. He used his proceeds to launch into far more ambitious ventures.

He is the co-founder and CEO of Tesla, the company that has revolutionized the automotive industry by popularizing electric vehicles, and the founder and CEO of SpaceX, which has transformed the aerospace industry with its reusable rockets and aims to colonize Mars. His other major ventures include Neuralink, which is developing brain-computer interfaces, and The Boring Company, an infrastructure firm. In 2022, he completed a tumultuous, high-profile acquisition of the social media platform Twitter, which he has since rebranded as X. He also founded the artificial intelligence company xAI.