PayPal, SpaceX, Testa and SolarCity. Behind all these successes lies a single mind: that of Elon Musk
Zip2 , PayPal , SpaceX , Tesla , SolarCity . Reading this list you can guess that Elon Musk is a rather active guy. Born in ’71, he can boast a CV that would be the envy of any engineer and executive in Silicon Valley and, above all, he seems to have a King Midas touch: whatever he touches, he turns it into gold. Whether it’s an Internet service company, the most innovative electronic payment system – PayPal – or an electric car , the South African engineer and entrepreneur seems capable of transforming even the most insane of ideas into a worldwide success.
The beginnings
Musk’s entrepreneurial career began two days after receiving his degree from Stanford: it was 1995 when together with his brother he decided to create Zip2 , an online content provider. He passes a few years and the two sell the entire company to Compaq for a staggering $370 million. With his share of the proceeds, Musk decides to throw himself into the field of electronic payments and, even in this case, he succeeds.
PayPal
PayPal was founded in 2000 following the merger between X.com (an online financial services company founded by Musk himself) and Confinity (a company founded by Max Levchin and three other young computer engineers active in the payments and cryptography sector, including Reid Hoffman ). PayPal immediately stood out for the high level of reliability and security it offered its customers. It was the first company in the sector to protect payments thanks to the CAPTCHA system , which gave it a significant advantage over its direct competitors.
Ebay, in the meantime, was closely monitoring the situation and, given the growing amount of money managed by PayPal, decided to enter the field with a rather attractive offer.
In 2002 the two parties reached a historic agreement (for the time): the most famous auction site in the world took home the most famous and reliable payment system in the world for the monstrous sum of 1.5 billion dollars. With a huge fortune behind him, Musk decided to put an end (or almost) to the chapter related to information technology and the Internet. They were – and are – realities that were far too limited for a man with immense imagination and desire to do things like Musk.
SpaceX
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Since his ambition is limitless, Musk thought it best to distract himself a bit by dedicating himself to what was his childhood dream: creating a space company. So, there wasn’t even time to clear Paypal’s desk, and in 2002 Musk founded SpaceX , the first private company to launch a liquid fuel carrier into space. But the successes don’t stop there. In 2008, in fact, NASA signed a 1.6 billion dollar contract with Elon’s company for 12 cargo trips to the International Space Station ( ISS ), deciding to delegate to SpaceX the tasks previously carried out by Shuttle .
The first of these journeys experienced its highlight on May 25, 2012 when the Dragon carrier rocket, one of the flagships of the SpaceX workshops, docked with the ISS, thus becoming the first private spacecraft to complete this maneuver.
NASA has been joined by other government bodies and private companies interested in launching commercial and non-commercial satellites into orbit. In March 2017, however, the first reuse and landing of a first stage of a rocket took place, followed by the recovery of the cargo hull and the reuse of the freight transport. Unforgettable, then, was the launch of the Tesla Roadster sent into a heliocentric orbit, accompanied by one of David Bowie’s greatest hits, “Space Oddity”.
The process for sending spacecraft for human use began in March 2019; launch into orbit number one took place on May 30, 2020 with the SpaceX Crew Dragon Demo 2 which reached the International Space Station the following day. In January 2021, SpaceX stands as the company with the highest number of satellites launched into orbit in a single flight, marking another success in the already rich list of personal victories for the visionary Musk.
Tesla
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Musk, in the meantime, decides to embark on another adventure, dedicating himself to another great passion of his: that of supercars. Even in this case, however, he wants to put his own spin on it and decides that his cars must be equipped exclusively with electric motors. In 2003 he then founded Tesla, the first American car company to produce only electric cars .
The beginnings were not the simplest and the Tesla project risked failing several times, but even in this case luck smiled on the South African entrepreneur.
With the arrival of Barack Obama, the White House starts a series of heavy investments in the electric car sector and it goes without saying that Elon is among the first to benefit from it (in 2010 Tesla’s coffers were replenished with public funding for a total of approximately half a billion dollars).
Although Tesla research laboratories have long been working on various models and prototypes (such as the Tesla Model X, for example), the real successor to the Roadster is undoubtedly the Tesla Model 3 . The sales data speak for themselves: in 2017, 1,550 examples were delivered, rising to 63,150 in 2018 with an increase that reached 97.5%; 2019+ was no exception, with 92,550 Model 3s delivered turnkey to as many lucky motorists.
The year of the real boom, however, was 2020, contrary to all expectations, given the global declines due to the Covid pandemic.
As many as 365,240 cars with a starting price of around 35 thousand dollars (which becomes more than 48 thousand euros in Italy) left Tesla’s factories. Elon Musk’s electric car fits forcefully into the luxury car segment, already occupied by important cars such as the Audi A4 and the BMW 3 Series. The Model 3, just like the Model S, is equipped with all the hardware necessary to operate the Tesla Autopilot, an automatic pilot which has the task of improving the safety of the car’s occupants.
SolarCity
Not just electric cars and space launchers. Elon was also involved, as co-founder and president, in the activities of SolarCity , a leading company in the renewable energy sector in the United States. Based on a door-to-door sales and leasing system, without initial costs but with the obligation to purchase the energy generated by the panels themselves for 20 years from the company, SolarCity has been able to count on a business model that has become among the best known in the United States. United, making it among the most used in the country.Fastweb Mobile Full
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With the joys, however, also came the sorrows: the acquisition by Tesla in 2016 came with a debt of 1.5 billion dollars, complete with a lawsuit brought against the tycoon by the very angry shareholders of the car company .
Hyperloop
In August 2013, Musk unveils yet another innovative and revolutionary project: creating a magnetic levitation passenger train capable of exceeding the speed of sound and traveling at over 1,000 kilometers per hour. Hyperloop – this is the name of the project – was created to connect the cities of San Francisco and Los Angeles in less than an hour. As the years went by, many other construction consortia approached the Hyperloop project . The goal is to build an ultra-fast rail line in the United States, but the plans have slipped forward, exceeding the deadline set in 2020 (approximately).
The Slovak Ministry of Transport and Hyperloop Transportation Technologies have also reached an agreement to build a supersonic railway connecting Budapest, Bratislava and Vienna. According to the work plans, the train should have entered into operation by 2017, but the project is stalled.
Meanwhile, in May 2017, the first full-scale test was carried out by Hyperloop One, complete with propulsion, levitation, complete structures and vacuum path.
In July of the same year, the company showed images of its first pod prototype, the spacecraft that will host travelers in the future. The name change to Virgin Hyperloop dates back to October 2017, thanks to the substantial investment by the founder of Virgin Group Richard Branson. Musk’s super-fast train will also arrive in Italy. In June 2021, the Zaha Hadid Architects studio, in collaboration with Hyperloop Italia, took charge of the project for the construction of a line which by 2030 should be capable of transporting passengers *in Milan to Malpensa airport.
OpenAI
In December 2015 OpenAI arrived , a non-profit foundation that wants to carry out research in the field of artificial intelligence . The goal is to create a “general” AI that brings benefits to all of humanity and counterbalances the power of large corporations that could derive many advantages and powers from the exclusive use of artificial intelligence.
In July 2020, OpenAI launched GPT-3, a language model for AI that has created great interest in the sector, opening the door to a futuristic vision of computers capable of writing news, poetry, programming and much more.
Unfortunately, however, the result produced a Boccaccio-style AI, particularly accustomed to the use of scurrilous and racist jargon. Only in June 2021 did news emerge of a study regarding the introduction of tools that shape the tone and personality of models based on the needs introduced into the model.
Neuralink
It is a neural interface implanted in the brain, produced by the Neuralink Corporation also founded by Musk. Born in 2016, it received funding of 158 million dollars in 2019 to support the studies of high-profile neuroscientists from different universities.
In April 2021, the company showed the whole world a monkey which, connected to a system of micro electrodes implanted directly in the brain and discharges of neural impulses, was able to play a game of the historic video game “Pong” without lifting a finger. There has been no shortage of criticism, but nothing insurmountable for a technological discovery like that of Neuralink for father Musk.
Martian funeral
And while the rest of the world thinks about planning their short/medium term future, Musk is already thinking about his funeral. To be more precise, he thinks about the place where it will take place. PayPal’s dad wishes to die on Mars and wants his remains to be buried on the Red Planet. ” I don’t care – specifies Musk – to die during the landing phase, but after having spent part of my life there “.
Musk plans to be able to touch Martian soil with one of the rockets produced by his SpaceX within two decades at most.
vAccording to his most optimistic predictions, men will be able to reach the fourth planet of the Solar System in just a decade, but if there are some problems in the design phase of the carrier rocket and in the construction of all the necessary means, then the time frame could even double. Whatever happens, it seems that he wants to be one of the first to move to Mars, building a beautiful villa overlooking Earth.
