His fans see him lined up with world-changing entrepreneurial legends like Steve Jobs, Henry Ford and Thomas Edison. For his opponents he is an unrestrained manipulator or an immature troublemaker who likes to flout the rules.
The fact is: With Tesla, the 50-year-old has made electric cars, which have long been frowned upon, look attractive and put established car giants under pressure. His aerospace company SpaceX manages to land rocket stages for reuse and prevailed against industrial conglomerates as a private company. At his start-up Neuralink, Musk is researching brain implants that will connect people to computers. Oh, and Tesla is also developing humanoid robots, which Musk says will become even more valuable than the auto business.
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In all of this, the tech billionaire is someone who compared Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau to Hitler on Twitter. And casually calling a British diver he had a fight with a pedophile. Someone who gets abusive easily and just this weekend captioned a photo of Microsoft founder Bill Gates saying the sight is the surest way to get rid of an unwelcome erection. Someone who enjoys taking on government officials and has been accused by the US Securities and Exchange Commission of defrauding investors in a failed attempt to delist Tesla.
In addition, Musk has a large fan base, which flocks to him on Twitter, among other things. So not only do critics have a hard time, but a cryptic tweet from Musk can be enough to cause the value of cryptocurrencies to fluctuate, for example. Commentator Matt Levine at the Bloomberg financial service sees Twitter as Musk’s favorite computer game – and it is only logical for the richest person in the world to want to own his favorite toy.
Musk once earned his seed capital as a co-founder of the payment service Paypal, and eBay’s takeover of the company in 2002 brought him a fortune. Musk is worth $257 billion on paper, according to the latest Bloomberg calculations. However, his wealth consists almost entirely of shares in Tesla and SpaceX.
Source: Nachrichten
