Elon Musk
Elon Musk is a South African-born American entrepreneur who founded [[SpaceX]], led [[Tesla]] as chief executive officer, and co-founded PayPal. He is also the founder of [[Neuralink]] and The Boring Company, acquired Twitter (renamed X) in 2022, and founded [[xAI]] in 2023. He has been the world's richest person for much of the 2020s, with a peak net worth of $852 billion in March 2026,[^c1] approaching trillionaire status as SpaceX prepared to go public at a $1.77 trillion valuation.[^c12][^c13] In June 2026, SpaceX set a fixed IPO price of $135 per share for a June 12 Nasdaq listing under the ticker SPCX — the largest IPO in history — with roadshow demand described as "insatiable." The offering was expected to make Musk the world's first trillionaire, with a net worth of approximately $988 billion based on the IPO price.[^c13]
Musk simultaneously consolidated SpaceX, xAI, and X into a unified corporate group, using a $20 billion bridge loan secured by SpaceX to refinance $17.5 billion in high-yield debt and reduce annual interest costs by nearly $1 billion.[^c7][^c8] He also discussed merging Tesla and SpaceX after the IPO, a combination that would have been valued at approximately $3.4 trillion.[^c9] Musk's AI company xAI was dissolved and folded into SpaceX in May 2026, while SpaceX leased its Colossus supercomputer to competitor [[Anthropic]] in a landmark compute deal.
Musk's business career began with the founding of Zip2 in 1995, followed by X.com (later PayPal). Since 2002, he has built SpaceX into a dominant launch provider,[^c2] developed the [[Starlink]] satellite internet network (which reached 10.3 million subscribers in Q1 2026),[^c14] and led Tesla through a strategic pivot toward humanoid robots and autonomy after discontinuing the Model S and Model X in April 2026. Tesla began mass production of the Optimus Gen 3 humanoid robot and Cybercab in mid-2026. SpaceX's Starship V3, the largest and most powerful rocket ever built, completed its debut flight in May 2026, deploying mock Starlink satellites and achieving a controlled splashdown.[^c10][^c15]
In 2025, Musk served as de facto head of the [[DOGE|Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE)]] in Donald Trump's second administration, overseeing the dismissal of 300,000 federal workers before stepping down in May 2025 after publicly criticizing Trump's tax bill.[^c3][^c5] In July 2025 he founded the [[America Party]], which remained in the concept stage without registered candidates. His public feud with Trump was followed by a reconciliation in January 2026. In May 2026, Musk met Pope Francis at the Vatican with four of his sons, and confirmed on X that his estranged trans daughter Vivian Wilson was the reason for his entry into politics.
A jury unanimously ruled against Musk in his lawsuit against [[OpenAI]] in May 2026 on statute-of-limitations grounds, clearing the way for OpenAI's planned IPO. Musk announced an appeal to the Ninth Circuit.