Elon Musk at his new Tesla factory near Berlin, March 22, 2022 (POOL/AFP/Archives/Patrick Pleul)
He has his head in the stars, his wallet in electric cars, here he is now attacking Twitter: Elon Musk, successful boss and richest man in the world, continues to venture into all areas.
Born in South Africa, American and Canadian citizen, leader of SpaceX and Tesla, the whimsical man has become a central figure of American capitalism with extra-planetary and increasingly political ambitions.
His last objective: to seize Twitter, which he accuses in particular of curbing freedom of expression. In two weeks, the tech planet learned that he had bought 9% of the shares, that he was going to join the board of directors, then that he would not go, and finally, on Thursday, that he wanted to buy back 100% of the social network.
Meanwhile, the 50-year-old opened Tesla’s new mega-factory in Texas, where he moved the company’s headquarters from California to the runaway success, the source of much of its fortune staggering, estimated by Forbes at nearly 274 billion dollars – equivalent to the GDP of Finland.
And, at the same time, its jewel SpaceX managed to send the first entirely private mission to the International Space Station.
Elon Musk must also face other less rosy news. Tesla is targeted in California by complaints of harassment, sexual harassment and discrimination against black workers.
Megalomaniac, workaholic, Elon Musk hates following the rules, especially with his Twitter account with 81 million subscribers on which he posts memes, SpaceX videos and a few jokes, launches controversies. Thursday is also where he published the document announcing his desire to buy the network.
Illustrative photograph showing Elon Musk’s Twitter account, April 14, 2022, in front of one of his photographs (AFP / Olivier DOULIERY)
Divorced three times, Mr. Musk is the father of eight children, one of whom died at 10 weeks. Known for his eccentricities in his professional and private life, he named his last child, whom he had with singer Grimes, Exa Dark Sideræl Musk, little sister of “X Æ A-12”.
Another socialite chronicle, the entrepreneur is expected as a witness in the trial which opposes for defamation the actors Johhny Depp and Amber Heard, ex-girlfriend of Elon Musk.
– Create a “space civilization” –
Born in Pretoria, South Africa, on June 28, 1971 to an engineer father and a Canadian model, he left his native country to study in Ontario (Canada) and then in the United States.
At less than 25 years old, he created Zip2, an online software company, and became a millionaire before his 30th birthday by selling it to the computer manufacturer Compaq in 1999 for more than 300 million dollars. The young entrepreneur then founded X.com, which was merged with PayPal, then bought by eBay in 2002 for 1.5 billion.
With SpaceX, founded in stride, he has had a string of successes, from an exclusive contract signed with NASA to build the American agency’s next moon landing module to the first orbital mission in history with no professional astronauts. on board.
“The overall goal is to allow life to develop on several planets and to make humanity a space civilization,” said Mr. Musk in an interview with Time Magazine, which named him at the end of 2021 personality of the year.
Never shrinking from provocation, he recently challenged Vladimir Putin to a duel via Twitter, or even defended opponents of health restrictions in Canada by comparing Prime Minister Justin Trudeau to Adolf Hitler.
Elon Musk during the inauguration of the huge Tesla factory in Austin, Texas, on April 7, 2022 (AFP/SUZANNE CORDEIRO)
Always wishing to go faster, he regularly criticizes red tape. He had engaged in a bitter fight in the spring of 2020 with the Californian authorities when they decided to temporarily close the production site in the face of the spread of Covid-19.
In 2018, during a crazy two-hour interview broadcast live on the internet, we see him drinking whiskey, brandishing a samurai sword or smoking cannabis – legal in California – while evoking the conquest of space, the end of the world or… the libido of bonobo monkeys.
The man splits between an army of fans who adore him and ensure his publicity and those who hate him. But it’s hard to deny Tesla’s success.
Long in deficit, the company is now an immense industrial and financial success, with a record profit of 5.5 billion dollars in 2021 and an immense stock market valuation.
This multi-recidivist of entrepreneurship is also the boss of Neuralink, a start-up which aims to directly and intimately connect the human brain to the computer, and of Boring Company, which is working on tunnels supposed to revolutionize urban transport.
© 2022 AFP
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