46 Fun Facts About Elon Musk

In which city was Elon Musk born?

Pretoria, South Africa's administrative capital, is where Musk was born; at 17 he left for Canada, partly to avoid South African military service.

What BASIC video game did 12-year-old Musk sell to a magazine for about $500?

Blastar has since been rebuilt from its printed code as a browser game that anyone can play online.

After two years at Queen's University in Ontario, Musk transferred to which Ivy League school?

Penn is where Musk hosted big ticketed house parties to help pay his way through college.

Musk gave up a place in which university's graduate programme to found Zip2?

Stanford admitted Musk, but he left to join the internet boom, quitting after two days by one account or never enrolling by another.

Musk's first company, Zip2, provided what kind of software?

City guides for newspapers: in 1998 Zip2 agreed to merge with its rival CitySearch, then called the deal off weeks later, citing clashing cultures and technology.

Which PC maker bought Zip2 for $307 million in 1999?

Compaq's purchase let Musk fund his next venture right away, an online financial services company.

Musk's online bank merged with Confinity in 2000; which Confinity co-founder later replaced him as CEO?

Peter Thiel took over after the board ousted Musk in 2000, and he renamed the company after Confinity's more popular PayPal service.

Which company bought PayPal for $1.5 billion in 2002?

eBay's purchase made Musk rich, and he put $100 million of his PayPal fortune into starting SpaceX.

In 2017 Musk bought back which internet domain from PayPal?

X.com was the name of Musk's 1999 online bank that became PayPal; he bought the domain back in July 2017 and reused it when Twitter was rebranded as X.

Which SpaceX rocket failed on its first three launches before reaching orbit in 2008?

Falcon 1's fourth launch was make-or-break: Musk has said that had it failed, that would have been it for SpaceX.

In 2012 SpaceX's Dragon became the first commercial spacecraft to do what?

Dock with the ISS is the popular phrasing: in May 2012 astronaut Don Pettit caught Dragon with the station's robotic arm so it could be berthed.

Whose rocket company landed a booster after a trip to space a month before SpaceX's first landing in 2015?

Jeff Bezos's Blue Origin landed New Shepard in November 2015, but Musk pointed out that it had flown only a suborbital hop.

Which SpaceX rocket's first flight, in February 2018, carried Musk's Tesla Roadster into space?

Falcon Heavy's two recycled side boosters landed back at Cape Canaveral, but its centre core missed the drone ship and was lost.

Which novel's famous motto appeared on the dashboard screen of Musk's space-bound Roadster?

The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy is a boyhood favourite that Musk credits with shaping him, so its 'Don't Panic!' rode along as a nod.

The mannequin in the space-bound Roadster was named after a song by which artist?

David Bowie wrote 'Starman', the song that gave the mannequin its name, and the Roadster's stereo was set to loop his 'Space Oddity'.

SpaceX's 2020 Demo-2 mission made it the first private company to do what?

Put astronauts into orbit: the flight ended nine years in which NASA astronauts could reach orbit only aboard Russia's Soyuz.

What is the name of SpaceX's satellite internet constellation?

Starlink terminals were donated to Ukraine after the full-scale invasion of 2022, and in 2023 the Pentagon agreed to buy Starlink service for Ukraine.

Which two men incorporated Tesla Motors in 2003, before Musk joined?

Martin Eberhard and Marc Tarpenning incorporated Tesla Motors in July 2003; Musk led its 2004 funding round, and a 2009 lawsuit settlement let five men call themselves co-founders.

Tesla's 2018 struggle to mass-produce which car became known as 'production hell'?

Model 3 production kept missing its targets while about half a million people who had paid $1,000 deposits waited for their cars.

Tesla's first car, delivered from 2008, was the first mass-produced all-electric car to use what?

Lithium-ion battery cells powered the Roadster, but Tesla couldn't build enough of the cars and came close to bankruptcy in 2008.

Which Tesla vehicle's 'Armor Glass' windows shattered when a metal ball hit them at its 2019 unveiling?

Cybertruck designer Franz von Holzhausen threw the ball, and Musk later blamed an earlier sledgehammer blow that had cracked the base of the glass.

Musk's 2018 'funding secured' tweet led the SEC to make him give up which post?

Tesla chairman was the post Musk surrendered under the settlement, though he stayed CEO, and Musk and Tesla paid $40 million in penalties.

Which solar company, founded by Musk's cousins, did Tesla buy for about $2.6 billion in 2016?

SolarCity's takeover drew a shareholder lawsuit calling it a bailout, but a Delaware judge ruled in Musk's favour in 2022.

What did Musk unveil in 2013 as a cheaper way to travel long distances?

The Hyperloop was released by Musk as an open design, similar to Linux, so others could improve it and bring it to reality.

Musk co-founded which artificial intelligence lab in December 2015, later leaving it?

OpenAI began as a non-profit co-founded by Musk, Sam Altman, Greg Brockman and Ilya Sutskever; Musk left its board in February 2018 and later founded the rival lab xAI.

Neuralink's 2021 demo showed a monkey with a brain implant playing which classic video game?

Pong was the game: the macaque, Pager, had learned to steer the paddle for a banana smoothie delivered through a straw.

What did Neuralink call the brain implant given to its first human patient in 2024?

Telepathy went to Noland Arbaugh, a man with tetraplegia, who used it to move a cursor and play online chess by thought.

Musk said frustration with traffic in which city inspired the Boring Company?

Los Angeles traffic set off Musk's December 2016 tweets: 'Traffic is driving me nuts… Am going to build a tunnel boring machine and just start digging.'

The Boring Company sold 20,000 of which novelty item in a few days in 2018?

Flamethrowers at $500 each sold out despite warnings from US politicians, one of whom moved to ban their sale in California.

The Boring Company's first working transport system opened in 2021 beneath what venue?

The Las Vegas Convention Center Loop runs through 1.7 miles of tunnel between the halls and has since grown into the wider Vegas Loop.

How much did Musk pay to acquire Twitter in 2022?

$44B was the price: Twitter's board accepted Musk's takeover bid in April 2022, and Tesla shares sank 12.2% the next day.

Musk's Twitter offer priced shares at $54.20; the figure was widely seen as a reference to what?

The number 420, cannabis slang, was the widely read wink in the $54.20 offer; Musk had used the same figure in his 2018 'funding secured' tweet about taking Tesla private at $420.

In 2021, Tesla began accepting which cryptocurrency for its cars, then stopped weeks later?

Bitcoin payments were suspended when Musk cited concerns about the fossil fuels burned to mine the coin.

While hosting which TV show in 2021 did Musk say he has Asperger syndrome?

Saturday Night Live gave Musk the hosting slot on May 8 that year, and in his monologue he said he was the first host with Asperger's 'or at least the first to admit it'.

Musk appeared as himself in which Marvel film?

Iron Man 2 gave Musk a cameo after Robert Downey Jr. had turned to him for help getting into character as Tony Stark.

What name did Musk and Grimes originally give their first child in 2020?

X Æ A-12 was announced at his birth in May 2020, but amid questions over California's naming rules the couple swapped the 12 for Roman numerals.

In 2019, a US jury cleared Musk of defaming a British caver who helped rescue schoolboys trapped in which country?

Thailand's 2018 cave rescue drew Musk's offer of a mini-submarine, which caver Vernon Unsworth called a PR stunt before Musk insulted him online.

Which English actress was Musk married to, and divorced from, twice?

Talulah Riley's second marriage to Musk wobbled when he filed for divorce on New Year's Eve 2014; he withdrew it, but she filed herself in 2016.

Which body, known as DOGE, did Musk lead de facto after Trump's January 2025 inauguration?

Department of Government Efficiency was the name, chosen so its acronym DOGE matched the meme coin Musk had long promoted; he left the role at the end of May 2025.

Musk's younger brother, who co-founded Zip2 with him, is called what?

Kimbal Musk co-founded Zip2 with Elon in 1995 and later became a restaurateur, opening The Kitchen in Boulder, Colorado.

Musk's sister Tosca co-founded which streaming service devoted to romance adaptations?

Passionflix was co-founded by Tosca Musk to adapt romance novels, a genre she saw mainstream Hollywood neglecting.

At Tesla's 2021 AI Day, a dancer in a spandex suit stood in for which humanoid robot?

Optimus had no prototype to show in 2021, so the dancer took the stage, and semi-functional prototypes appeared at Tesla's next AI Day.

In 2017, at 69, Musk's mother Maye became the oldest spokesmodel for which cosmetics brand?

CoverGirl signed Maye Musk decades after she had, at one point, worked five jobs to support her children.

What did xAI launch in October 2025 as an AI-generated alternative to Wikipedia?

Grokipedia launched with entries generated by the Grok chatbot, and users soon found whole paragraphs copied from existing encyclopedia pages.

After his 2025 feud with Donald Trump, Musk announced a new political party with what name?

America Party was billed as a challenge to the two-party system, launched after Musk polled his followers on whether a new party was needed.

In May 2025, residents voted to turn SpaceX's Texas launch site into a city named what?

Starbase voters backed the change 212 to 6, handing the new city's SpaceX-linked leaders power over planning and local taxes.