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Wikipedia Summary for Elon Musk

Elon Reeve Musk ( EE-lon; born June 28, 1971) is an entrepreneur and business magnate. He is the founder, CEO and lead designer at SpaceX; early stage investor, CEO, and product architect of Tesla, Inc.; founder of The Boring Company; and co-founder of Neuralink and OpenAI. A centibillionaire, Musk is one of the richest people in the world.

Musk was born to a Canadian mother and South African father and raised in Pretoria, South Africa. He briefly attended the University of Pretoria before moving to Canada aged 17 to attend Queen's University. He transferred to the University of Pennsylvania two years later, where he received bachelors' degrees in economics and physics. He moved to California in 1995 to attend Stanford University but decided instead to pursue a business career, co-founding the web software company Zip2 with his brother Kimbal. The startup was acquired by Compaq for $307 million in 1999. Musk co-founded online bank X.com that same year, which merged with Confinity in 2000 to form PayPal. The company was bought by eBay in 2002 for $1.5 billion.

In 2002, Musk founded SpaceX, an aerospace manufacturer and space transport services company, of which he is CEO, CTO, and lead designer. In 2004, he joined electric vehicle manufacturer Tesla Motors, Inc. (now Tesla, Inc.) as chairman and product architect, becoming its CEO in 2008. In 2006, he helped create SolarCity, a solar energy services company that was later acquired by Tesla and became Tesla Energy. In 2015, he co-founded OpenAI, a nonprofit research company that promotes friendly artificial intelligence. In 2016, he co-founded Neuralink, a neurotechnology company focused on developing brain–computer interfaces, and founded The Boring Company, a tunnel construction company. Musk has proposed the Hyperloop, a high-speed vactrain transportation system.

Musk has been the subject of criticism due to unorthodox or unscientific stances and highly publicized controversies. In 2018, he was sued for defamation by a diver who advised in the Tham Luang cave rescue; a California jury ruled in favor of Musk. In the same year, he was sued by the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) for falsely tweeting that he had secured funding for a private takeover of Tesla. He settled with the SEC, temporarily stepping down from his chairmanship and accepting limitations on his Twitter usage. Musk has spread misinformation about the COVID-19 pandemic and has received criticism from experts for his other views on such matters as artificial intelligence and public transport.

Don't be afraid of new arenas.

--Elon Musk

There's a tremendous bias against taking risks. Everyone is trying to optimize their ass-covering.

--Elon Musk

I came to the conclusion that we should aspire to increase the scope and scale of human consciousness in order to better understand what questions to ask. Really, the only thing that makes sense is to strive for greater collective enlightenment.

--Elon Musk

Most people can learn a lot more than they think they can. They sell themselves short without trying.

--Elon Musk

My motivation for all my companies has been to be involved in something that I thought would have a significant impact on the world.

--Elon Musk

For my part, I will never give up, and I mean never.

--Elon Musk

If you need inspiring words, don't do it.

--Elon Musk

The first step is to establish that something is possible; then probability will occur.

--Elon Musk

You have to be pretty driven to make it happen. Otherwise, you will just make yourself miserable.

--Elon Musk

Pay attention to negative feedback and solicit it, particularly from friends. Hardly anyone does that, and it's incredibly helpful.

--Elon Musk

Being an entrepreneur is like eating glass and staring into the abyss of death.

--Elon Musk

They were building a Ferrari for every launch, when it was possible that a Honda Accord might do the trick.

--Elon Musk

I could go and buy one of the islands in the
Bahamas and turn it into my personal fiefdom, but I am much more interested in trying to build and
create a new company.

--Elon Musk

If you're trying to create a company, it's like baking a cake. You have to have all the ingredients in the right proportion.

--Elon Musk

It's OK to have your eggs in one basket as long as you control what happens to that basket.

--Elon Musk

So we originally expected to make about 35 gigawatt hours at the cell level and about 50 gigawatt hours at the module or pack level. Now we are expecting to do about 150 gigawatt hours in the same volumetric space as the original design.

--Elon Musk

I will never be happy without having someone. Going to sleep alone kills me.

--Elon Musk

I do think there should be some regulations on AI.

--Elon Musk

The pace of progress on Mars depends upon the pace of progress of SpaceX.

--Elon Musk

The key to making things affordable is design and technology improvements, as well as scale.

--Elon Musk

Particularly Instagram, people look like they have a much better life than they really do. People basically seem like they are way better-looking than they really are, and they are way happier-seeming than they really are.

--Elon Musk

Every person in your company is a vector. Your progress is determined by the sum of all vectors.

--Elon Musk

Constantly seek criticism. A well thought out critique of whatever you're doing is as valuable as gold.

--Elon Musk

Fear is a hard thing to deal with. I feel it quite strongly. If I think something is important enough, I'll make myself do it in spite of fear. But it can really sap the will. I hate fear, I wish I had it less.

--Elon Musk

I'm trying to construct a world that maximises the probability that SpaceX continues its mission without me.

--Elon Musk

I had so many people try to talk me out of starting a rocket company, it was crazy.

--Elon Musk

Starting a business is not for everyone. Starting a business -- I'd say, number one is have a high pain threshold.

--Elon Musk

I'm not trying to be anyone's savior. I just try to think about the future and not be sad.

--Elon Musk

I have made the mistaken assumption -- and I will attempt to be better at this -- of thinking that because somebody is on Twitter and is attacking me that it is open season. And that is my mistake.

--Elon Musk

Man has the power to act as his own destroyer -- and that is the way he has acted through most of his history.

--Elon Musk

If you look at our current technology level, something strange has to happen to civilisations, and I mean strange in a bad way. And it could be that there are a whole lot of dead, one-planet civilisations.

--Elon Musk

We're running the most dangerous experiment in history right now, which is to see how much carbon dioxide the atmosphere can handle before there is an environmental catastrophe.

--Elon Musk

It is true that SpaceX is partially a government contractor, but it would be unfair to say that SpaceX is entirely a government contractor.

--Elon Musk

If we're going to have any chance of sending stuff to other star systems, we need to be laser-focused on becoming a multi-planet civilisation.

--Elon Musk

Facebook is quite entrenched and has a network effect. It's hard to break into a network once it's formed.

--Elon Musk

The key test for an acronym is to ask whether it helps or hurts communication.

--Elon Musk

The reason we should do a carbon tax is because it's the right thing to do. It's economics 101, elementary stuff.

--Elon Musk

You need to live in a dome initially but over time you could terraform Mars to look like Earth and eventually walk around outside without anything on. ... So it's a fixer-upper of a planet.

--Elon Musk

No I don't ever give up. I would have to be dead or completely incapacitated.

--Elon Musk

The thing that's worth doing is trying to improve our understanding of the world and gain a better appreciation of the universe and not to worry too much about there being no meaning. And, you know, try and enjoy yourself. Because, actually, life's pretty good. It really is.

--Elon Musk

Going from PayPal, I thought: 'Well, what are some of the other problems that are likely to most affect the future of humanity?' Not from the perspective, 'What's the best way to make money?'

--Elon Musk

For me it was never about money, but solving problems for the future of humanity.

--Elon Musk

I think you should always be seeking negative feedback.

--Elon Musk

Actively seek out and listen carefully to negative feedback.

--Elon Musk

I think that's an important thing to do, to really pay attention to negative feedback, and solicit it, particularly from friends. This may sound like simple advice, but hardly anyone does that, and it's incredibly helpful.

--Elon Musk

In the case of Apple, they did originally do production internally, but then along came unbelievably good outsourced manufacturing from companies like Foxconn. We don't have that in the rocket business. There's no Foxconn in the rocket business.

--Elon Musk

The extension of life beyond Earth is the most important thing we can do as a species.

--Elon Musk

I think we should be very careful about artificial intelligence. If I had to guess at what our biggest existential threat is, it's probably that. So we need to be very careful...With artificial intelligence we're summoning the demon.

--Elon Musk

I'm increasingly inclined to think there should be some regulatory oversight, maybe at the national and international level just to make sure that we don't do something very foolish.

--Elon Musk

With artificial intelligence, we are summoning the demon. In all those stories where there's the guy with the pentagram and the holy water, it's like, yeah, he's sure he can control the demon. Didn't work out.

--Elon Musk

There's a real opportunity to have a vertical takeoff and landing electric supersonic jet.

--Elon Musk

The tough thing is figuring out what questions to ask, but … once you do that, the rest is really easy.

--Elon Musk

We have this handy fusion reactor in the sky called the sun, you don't have to do anything, it just works. It shows up every day.

--Elon Musk

It's really incumbent upon us as life's agents to extend life to another planet. I think that being a multi-planet species will significantly increase the richness and scope of the human experience.

--Elon Musk

It is a mistake to hire huge numbers of people to get a complicated job done. Numbers will never compensate for talent in getting the right answer (two people who don't know something are no better than one), will tend to slow down progress, and will make the task incredibly expensive.

--Elon Musk

We're already cyborgs. Your phone and your computer are extensions of you, but the interface is through finger movements or speech, which are very slow.

--Elon Musk

You should be innovating so fast that you're invalidating your prior patents.

--Elon Musk

I think whenever something is -- whenever there's something that affects the public good, then there does need to be some form of public oversight.

--Elon Musk

There's no better place in the world for technology start-ups than Silicon Valley; there's such an incredible well of talent and capital and resources. The whole system is set up to foster the creation of new companies.

--Elon Musk

I'm a Silicon Valley guy. I just think people from Silicon Valley can do anything.

--Elon Musk

So, there's quite a big keep-out zone, and when you factor the keep-out zone into account, the solar panels put on that area would typically generate more power than that nuclear power plant.

--Elon Musk

On one of the SpaceX flights, we had a secret payload: a wheel of cheese. We flew to orbit and brought it back, so it was the world's first 'space cheese.' It was, in part, a tribute to Monty Python.

--Elon Musk

Physics is a good framework for thinking. ... Boil things down to their fundamental truths and reason up from there.

--Elon Musk

The idea of lying on a beach as my main thing just sounds like the worst. It sounds horrible to me. I would go bonkers. I would have to be on serious drugs. I'd be super-duper bored. I like high intensity.

--Elon Musk

To our knowledge, life exists on only one planet, Earth. If something bad happens, it's gone. I think we should establish life on another planet -- Mars in particular -- but we 're not making very good progress. SpaceX is intended to make that happen.

--Elon Musk

The only thing that makes sense to do is strive for greater collective enlightenment.

--Elon Musk

Buy and hold stock in companies where you love the product roadmap, sell where you don't.

--Elon Musk

I mean, I think that if people are concerned about volatility, they should definitely not buy our stock. I'm not here on an earnings call to convince you to buy Tesla stock. Do not buy it if volatility is scary. There you go.

--Elon Musk

The overarching goal of Tesla is to help reduce carbon emissions and that means low cost and high volume. We will also serve as an example to the auto industry, proving that the technology really works and customers want to buy electric vehicles.

--Elon Musk

Obviously Tesla is about helping solve the consumption of energy in a sustainable manner but you need the production of energy in a sustainable manner.

--Elon Musk

Even if there's a zombie apocalypse, you'll still be able to travel using the Tesla Supercharging system.

--Elon Musk

I wish we could be private with Tesla. It actually makes us less efficient to be a public company.

--Elon Musk

I care very deeply about the people at Tesla. I feel like I have a great debt to the people of Tesla who are making the company successful.

--Elon Musk

If you don't have sustainable energy, you have unsustainable energy. The fundamental value of a company like Tesla is the degree to which it accelerates the advent of sustainable energy faster than it would otherwise occur.

--Elon Musk

The lessons of history would suggest that civilisations move in cycles. You can track that back quite far -- the Babylonians, the Sumerians, followed by the Egyptians, the Romans, China. We're obviously in a very upward cycle right now and hopefully that remains the case. But it may not.

--Elon Musk

Land on Mars, a round-trip ticket -- half a million dollars. It can be done.

--Elon Musk

Many things are improbable, only a few are impossible.

--Elon Musk

It is remarkable how many things you can explode. I'm lucky I have all my fingers.

--Elon Musk

If you go back a few hundred years, what we take for granted today would seem like magic -- being able to talk to people over long distances, to transmit images, flying, accessing vast amounts of data like an oracle. These are all things that would have been considered magic a few hundred years ago.

--Elon Musk

When I started SpaceX I thought that the most likely outcome was failure. And I think to have any other expectation would have been irrational.

--Elon Musk

You want to have a future where you're expecting things to be better, not one where you're expecting things to be worse.

--Elon Musk

When you struggle with a problem, that's when you understand it.

--Elon Musk

I tend to approach things from a physics framework. And physics teaches you to reason from first principles rather than by analogy.

--Elon Musk

I think it would be great to be born on Earth and to die on Mars. Just hopefully not at the point of impact.

--Elon Musk

You want to be extra rigorous about making the best possible thing you can. Find everything that's wrong with it and fix it. Seek negative feedback, particularly from friends.

--Elon Musk

Life on Earth must be about more than just solving problems. It's got to be something inspiring, even if it is vicarious.

--Elon Musk

Persistence is very important. You should not give up unless you are forced to give up.

--Elon Musk

No, I don't ever give up. I'd have to be dead or completely incapacitated.

--Elon Musk

I think it is possible for ordinary people to choose to be extraordinary.

--Elon Musk

If something is important enough, even if the odds are against you, you should still do it.

--Elon Musk

There have only been about a half dozen genuinely important events in the four-billion-year saga of life on Earth: single-celled life, multicelled life, differentiation into plants and animals, movement of animals from water to land, and the advent of mammals and consciousness.

--Elon Musk

You could power the entire United States with about 150 to 200 square kilometers of solar panels, the entire United States. Take a corner of Utah... there's not much going on there, I've been there. There's not even radio stations.

--Elon Musk

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