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NEW YORK: Whether the topic is transforming the car or conquering the next frontier of space, Elon Musk has shown a knack for captivating an audience beyond investors and science geeks.
The cheeky Tesla CEO, now the world’s richest person after the electric carmaker’s meteoric rise, was Silicon Valley’s quintessential disruptor, except he no longer lives in California.
The rule-breaking entrepreneur, who has more than 41 million Twitter followers and a fortune now estimated at more than $ 180 billion, announced last month that he had moved to Texas and could not withstand one last dig in the state. from the west coast.
“If a team has been winning for too long, it tends to get a little complacent, a little entitlement, and then they don’t win the championship anymore,” Musk said at a conference organized by the Wall Street Journal.
“California has been winning for a long time … and they are taking it for granted.”
On Thursday, Musk surpassed Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos as the richest person in the world.
“How strange,” Musk said on Twitter when informed of the distinction.
“Well, back to work …”
Musk, 49, was born in South Africa and has US and Canadian passports after completing his studies in Ontario and the state of Pennsylvania.
At 25, he had created Zip2, an online advertising platform, and at 30 he was a millionaire after selling the company to Compaq Computer in 1999.
He followed that success with the creation of the online bank, X.com, which later merged with PayPal, which eBay bought in 2002 for $ 1.5 billion.
But Musk has entered a new stratosphere in recent years as Tesla has grown closer to accomplishing a mission that he says is not purely economic.
“Tesla’s success is very important to the future of the world,” Musk said in 2018.
“It is very important for all life on Earth.”
Take a step
A linchpin of Musk’s broader goal of remaking transportation has been the Tesla Model 3, destined to be his first vehicle intended for the mid-market rather than luxury.
After setting ambitious targets for the model’s startup, Musk ran into a problem in 2018 when Tesla missed targets while burning cash.
In an especially infamous moment, Musk in August 2018 shook the markets by announcing on Twitter that he was considering taking Tesla private and boasting that he had “secured” the funding to do so.
Musk quickly abandoned the private effort, but became embroiled in a bitter dispute with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), which accused Musk of fraud, fined him $ 20 million, and demanded that he step down as president and President of Tesla. You agree to follow the protocols supervised by the board in your use of social media.
Around the same time, Musk also publicly confronted a British caver, who had scoffed at the Tesla CEO’s offer for a mini-submarine to rescue young footballers trapped in a cave in Thailand in the summer of 2018.
Speleologist Vernon Unsworth sued Musk after Tesla’s boss called him a “fart boy” on social media, but a California jury in December 2019 ruled the comment was not libel.
But Musk – and Tesla – took a step forward in 2020, with the company dramatically increasing production in California and Shanghai, breaking new ground at new factories and earning a series of profitable quarters as its market value soared.
During this period, Musk has been embroiled in fewer controversies.
But one exception came this spring when the Tesla boss criticized public health authorities in Alameda County for restrictions due to Covid-19.
Musk raged against the restrictions for days, garnering the support of US President Donald Trump.
Musk and California officials eventually reached a compromise, with Tesla’s factory exempted from the most recent curfew after workers were deemed essential.
