What would you do with a million bucks? Tesla Motors Inc (NASDAQ:TSLA) CEO Elon Musk doesn’t just buy himself nice things with all of his millions. He also takes his millions and puts them into companies he sees as the future of technology. He’s now involved with so many major companies he may not have time for much else.
Business Insider’s Kyle Russell put together a summary of Elon Musk’s life in pictures.
Musk’s early life revolved around technology
Perhaps unsurprisingly, Elon Musk was interested in technology from an early age. He started coding while he was still young, teaching himself how to do it. When he was 12 years old, he made his first profit on a piece of technology by selling the code for his first video game for $500.
He went on to get multiple college degrees, including one in business and another in physics.
Elon Musk makes his first millions
In 1999, while he was still in his late 20s, the Tesla Motors Inc (NASDAQ:TSLA) CEO Made his first millions selling his first business Zip2 to Compaq. He founded that company with his brother. He raked in $22 million of that deal and then did it again with PayPal. In 2000 he married his first wife, although now he’s been divorced twice. It could be argued that he’s married to his work now.
In 2002, Musk sold PayPal to eBay Icn (NASDAQ:EBAY) for $1.5 billion. But his business interests didn’t end there, and neither did his investments into technology startups.
Musk founds SpaceX, helps Tesla, SolarCity
Before he even finished the sale of PayPal, Musk had already dived into SpaceX, the rocket maker he founded and which has been reporting a series of successful rocket launches. Elon Musk seeks to make spaceflight far less expensive by making certain rocket parts in such a way that they can be reused after they return safely to Planet Earth.
Then in 2004, he sunk some of his millions into Tesla Motors Inc (NASDAQ:TSLA), leading one of the automaker’s early investment rounds before becoming chairman. Today he’s now the company’s CEO and has helped with the designs for the Roadster and the Model S.
Just two years after getting involved with Tesla, his cousin Lyndon Rive founded SolarCity Corp (NASDAQ:SCTY). Of course Musk himself came up with the technology concepts the company uses, and he put some of his money into that company as well, helping to make it the single biggest solar power provider in the U.S.
Musk gains fame through Tesla
The same year, Tesla Motors Inc (NASDAQ:TSLA) leapt into the mainstream with its Roadster, which won Invention of the Year in the transportation category from Time magazine. In 2008, the Roadster went into full production, while SpaceX received a $1.6 billion contract with NASA to fly to the International Space Station.
Of course the Model S is currently his crowning achievement, earning several Car of the Year awards and becoming the talk of the tech and auto industries. But it probably won’t take long for Musk to invent yet another thing that will take people’s breath away.
He’s also planning on tossing some of his own money in on his futuristic Hyperloop transportation system after being convinced that he should build the prototype.
So is Elon Musk a real life Tony Stark? Some would say yes, and he was apparently the inspiration for Stark. Musk even had a cameo role in the Iron Man 2 movie.
There’s no telling what’s next for the billionaire, but there’s certainly a theme here. If he sees a way to build something that changes our world forever, he’s not afraid to sink his own money into it.
