But it hasn’t always been smooth sailing for Musk. He went from getting bullied in school to becoming a small-time entrepreneur, almost going broke, then inciting lawsuits and government scrutiny as his wealth and influence grew. Today, he is one of the most controversial figures in the world of business.

His South African beginnings

Elon Musk was born on June 28, 1971, in Pretoria, South Africa.

His father is Errol Musk, a South African engineer, pilot, sailor and property developer.

After their parents divorced in 1979, nine-year-old Elon and his younger brother, Kimbal, decided to live with their father. It wasn’t until after the move that Musk’s now notorious troubled relationship with his dad began to emerge. “It was not a good idea,” Musk said in a Rolling Stone interview about moving in with his father.

In 1983, at the age of 12, Musk sold a simple game called Blastar to a computer magazine for US$500. Musk has been widely quoted as describing it as “a trivial game ... but better than Flappy Bird”.

Still, Musk’s school days weren’t easy – he was once hospitalised after being attacked by bullies who threw him down a set of stairs and beat him until he blacked out.

After graduating from high school, Musk moved to Canada with his mother Maye, his sister Tosca, and his brother Kimbal, and spent two years studying at Queen’s University in Kingston, Ontario.

Degrees earned – and given up

Musk finished his studies at the University of Pennsylvania, earning degrees in physics and economics.

While there, Musk and a classmate, Adeo Ressi, once rented out a 10-bedroom frat house and turned it into a nightclub – one of his first entrepreneurial experiments.

After graduating, Musk moved to Stanford University for his PhD – but he barely started the programme before leaving it. He deferred his admission after only two days in California, deciding to try his luck in the dot-com boom that was just getting under way. He never returned to finish his studies at Stanford.

Early dot-com ventures

With his brother Kimbal, Musk launched Zip2. A cluster of Silicon Valley investors helped fund the company, which provided city travel guides to newspapers like The New York Times and Chicago Tribune.

While Zip2 got off the ground, Musk literally lived in the office and showered at a local YMCA. The hard work paid off when Compaq bought Zip2 in a deal worth US$341 million in cash and stock, earning Musk US$22 million.

Musk next started X.com, an online banking company. He launched the company in 1999 using US$10 million of the money he got from the Zip2 sale. About a year later, X.com merged with Confinity, a financial start-up co-founded by Peter Thiel, to form PayPal.

Musk was named the CEO of newly minted PayPal – but that wouldn’t last long. In October 2000, he started a huge fight among the PayPal co-founders by pushing for them to move its servers from the free Unix operating system to Microsoft Windows. PayPal co-founder and then CTO Max Levchin pushed back, hard.

But things worked out for Musk – he made another windfall when eBay bought PayPal in late 2002. As PayPal’s single biggest shareholder, he netted US$165 million of the US$1.5 billion eBay paid.

Even before the PayPal sale, Musk was dreaming up his next move, including a wild plan to send mice or plants to Mars. In early 2002, Musk put up US$100 million to found the company that would be known as Space Exploration Technologies, or SpaceX. Musk’s stated goal was to make space flight cheaper by a factor of 10.

Joining Tesla

Musk has also been keeping busy pushing progress here on Earth, particularly with Tesla Motors. In 2004, Musk made the first of what would be US$70 million of total investments in the electric car company co-founded by veteran start-up exec Martin Eberhard.

Musk took an active product role at Tesla, helping develop its first car, the Roadster. The all-electric model debuted in 2006, when Musk was serving as Tesla’s chairman. He’s now also its CEO.

In 2007, Musk staged a boardroom coup at Tesla, first ousting Eberhard from his CEO seat, and then from the company’s board and executive suites entirely.

In 2008, with the financial crisis seriously limiting his options, Musk personally saved Tesla from bankruptcy. Musk invested US$40 million in Tesla and loaned the company US$40 million more. Not coincidentally, he was named the company’s CEO the same year.

But between SpaceX, Tesla and another venture, SolarCity, Musk nearly went broke. According to various media, he describes 2008 as “the worst year of my life”. Tesla kept losing money, and SpaceX was having trouble launching its Falcon 1 rocket. By 2009, Musk was living off personal loans.

Family life

Musk’s love life was in upheaval too: he divorced his wife Justine, a Canadian author, in 2008. The couple had got married in 2000. Their first son – Nevada – died of SIDS at 10 weeks old, but they went on to have twins and triplets, all boys.

Musk started dating actress Talulah Riley later that year. They went on to get married in 2010, then divorced in 2012. In July 2013, they remarried. In December 2014, Musk filed for a divorce but withdrew the paperwork. In March 2016, Riley filed for divorce, which was finalised that October.

Changing fortunes

At Christmas 2008, Musk got two pieces of good news: SpaceX had landed a US$1.5 billion contract with Nasa to deliver supplies into space, and Tesla had finally found more outside investors.

By June 2010, Tesla held a successful initial public offering. The company raised US$226 million, becoming the first car company to go public since Ford in 1956. To get his finances back on track, Musk sold shares worth about US$15 million in the offering.

Musk’s extraordinary career was starting to get noticed in other circles too, most notably in Hollywood. Robert Downey Jr.’s portrayal of Tony Stark in the Iron Man films is at least partially based on Musk. He even had a cameo in Iron Man 2 (2010).

SpaceX racks up successes

By the end of 2015, SpaceX had made 24 launches on assignments such as resupplying the International Space Station, setting lots of records along the way. In 2016, the SpaceX Falcon 9 achieved an especially important goal: making the first successful ocean landing of a reusable orbital rocket.

In late 2015, Musk co-founded OpenAI, a non-profit dedicated to researching artificial intelligence and ensuring it doesn’t destroy humanity.

Musk has expressed concern that the race for better AI could end up sparking a third world war.

In February 2018, Musk announced he was stepping down from the board of OpenAI to avoid any potential conflicts of interest with Tesla, which has made strides into artificial intelligence for its self-driving car technology.

Musk courts controversy

SEC vs Musk

Musk ran into trouble in 2018 when he sent a tweet declaring he was considering taking Tesla private at US$420 per share and that he had already secured funding. Just a few days later, the SEC sent Tesla subpoenas about the company’s plans to go private and Musk’s comments.

By September, the SEC had formally filed a lawsuit against Musk, accusing him of making “false and misleading statements”. Musk settled with them, which resulted in both he and Tesla paying a US$20 million fine and Musk agreeing to step down as chairman of Tesla’s board.

Additionally, Tesla was required to appoint a committee to oversee Musk’s communications.

New arrivals

In November 2019, Musk debuted a new Tesla vehicle: the Cybertruck, the company’s first – and very highly anticipated – pickup truck.

Since the unveiling, Musk has been spotted a few times cruising around in the truck, including on a night out to dinner at Nobu with Grimes.

Grimes then dropped a bombshell in January 2020 when she posted a photo of herself where she appeared pregnant. The musician later confirmed that she was expecting a baby with Musk.

Outspoken on Covid-19

Musk has been outspoken about the coronavirus crisis in the US since early March, when he first tweeted that panic over the virus was “dumb”.

Since then, Musk has gone on to promote a malaria drug as a potential treatment for Covid-19 patients despite a lack of scientific proof, has caused confusion over his promise to deliver ventilators to hospitals, and has promoted misinformation, such as a tweet that said “kids are essentially immune” from the virus.

Soon to be homeless

Despite having a substantial real estate portfolio at the time, Musk said in mid-2020 that he “will own no house” and would sell almost all of his physical possessions. By June 2021, he had reportedly sold at least seven properties on Zillow and was planning to sell his last remaining house.

On May 4, Grimes gave birth to a baby boy who the couple named X Æ A-Xii Musk, or “X Ash A-12 Musk”.

2020 milestones

In May 2020, SpaceX partnered with Nasa to complete its first launch of astronauts into space. Then, in November, SpaceX completed its first “operational” human space flight by sending four astronauts to the International Space Station for a six-month stay.

Today, thanks to Tesla’s stock surging in 2020 in line with other tech stocks, Musk is the second-richest person in the world, with a net worth of US$167.1 billion according to Forbes. His wealth surpassed Mark Zuckerberg and Bill Gates and now is second only to Amazon’s Jeff Bezos.

This article originally appeared on Business Insider

Want more stories like this? Sign up here. Follow STYLE on Facebook, Instagram, YouTube and Twitter.