How Elon Musk made $12 Billion

Elon Musk: Founder of SpaceX, Tesla Motors and Contributor to Paypal.

Elon Musk, is a South African born entrepreneur that has taken the world by storm, making impact in many different industries. He started out as an entrepreneur at age 12 and taught himself computer programming, allowing himself to sell video game code for $500.

After moving around a lot living with his dad in Africa, he later became a Canadian citizen where is mother lived and then ended up in the U.S. where he went to the University of Pennsylvania and later Stanford.

He got a bachelor’s degree in Physics, as well as Economics, but dropped out of Stanford when he decided to pursue entrepreneurship.

The South African born entrepreneur who started out trying to make his way selling video game code, later started SpaceX (a space travel company), as well as well known companies such as Tesla Motors.

He even helped found Paypal, one of the world’s most well known payment processing services. Musk is now worth an estimated $12 billion.

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In early 2002, Musk founded the company that would be known as Space Exploration Technologies, or SpaceX. Musk's goal was to make spaceflight cheaper by a factor of ten. SpaceX's first vehicles were named after Star Wars' Millennium Falcon spaceship. They were the Falcon 1 and 9. Another early vehicle was named after the song "Puff the Magic Dragon." The name of the spacecraft, the Dragon, was Musk's jab at skeptics who told him SpaceX would never be able to put vehicles into space.

SpaceX's long-term goal is to make colonizing Mars affordable. SpaceX won't file for an initial public offering until what Musk calls the "Mars Colonial Transporter" is flying regularly, he said.

Musk has also been keeping plenty busy here on Earth, particularly with Tesla Motors. In 2004, Musk made the first of what would be $70 million of total investments in Tesla, an electric car company co-founded by veteran startup exec Martin Eberhard. Musk took an active product role at Tesla, helping develop its first car, the Roadster. The all-electric Roadster launched in 2006, when Musk was serving as Tesla's chairman. He's now its CEO also.

As if that wasn't enough, Musk came up with the idea for SolarCity, a solar energy company. Musk gave his cousins Peter and Lyndon Rive the working capital to get SolarCity off the ground in 2006.

But back at Tesla, all was not well. With Eberhard as CEO, Tesla was burning way more cash than it was taking in. In 2007, Musk staged an boardroom coup, 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 $40 million into Tesla and loaned the company $40 million more. Not coincidentally, he was named the company's CEO the same year.

But between SpaceX, Tesla, and SolarCity, Musk very nearly went broke. 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 just to survive. (Source: VentureBeat)

Around the same time, Musk was going through a divorce. Musk had six sons with Justine Musk, a Canadian author.

But right around Christmas 2008, things started looking up again. Musk got two pieces of good news: SpaceX landed a $1.5 billion contract with NASA to deliver supplies into space, and Tesla finally found more outside investors. By 2010, things had seriously turned around, with Tesla holding a successful initial public offering. Tesla raised $226 million in the IPO that June, becoming the first car company to go public since Ford in 1956. To get his finances back on track, Musk sold shares worth about $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" movies is at least partially based on Musk. Musk even had a cameo in "Iron Man 2."

All the while, Musk's personal life has been in continual flux. In 2008, Musk started dating actress Talulah Riley. They got married in 2010 and 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; that divorce was finalised in October.

Work is going well, though, particularly at SpaceX. By the end of 2015, SpaceX had made 24 launches on assignments like resupplying the International Space Station, setting lots of records along the way. In 2016, the SpaceX Falcon 9 made the first successful water landing of a reusable orbital rocket.

So far, 2017 has been a rocky year for Musk, at least politically. Musk joined President Trump's business advisory council, a move which caused a huge public backlash. He initially defended the move, saying he would be able to use his proximity to the White House to effect change. But he quit after Trump pulled the US out of the Paris Agreement on climate change.