This Elon Musk trivia quiz has 50 free questions with answers and follows the whole arc: the Pretoria kid who sold a video game at twelve, the Zip2 and PayPal windfalls, the three Falcon 1 failures that nearly sank SpaceX, the Tesla takeover, the Roadster looping David Bowie on its way past Mars, the $44 billion Twitter deal and the more recent turns through Neuralink, the Boring Company and Washington. It is built for tech-minded quiz nights, business students and anyone who follows the space and EV worlds. The easy questions cover the companies everyone knows; the hard ones dig into deal sizes, dates and the people who were actually in the room. Questions stick to documented facts rather than opinion. Every answer has been checked against encyclopaedic and primary sources, so you can trust the numbers even when the story keeps changing.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01In which city was Elon Musk born?
Pretoria
He was born on June 28, 1971, into a wealthy family in South Africa's administrative capital.
Q 02Musk holds Canadian citizenship from birth because of which relative?
His mother, born in Saskatchewan
His mother Maye is a model and dietitian; her father moved the family to South Africa in 1950.
Q 03What BASIC video game did 12-year-old Musk sell to a magazine for about $500?
Blastar
He had taught himself to program from the manual of a Commodore VIC-20.
Q 04Which Canadian university did Musk attend for two years before transferring to Penn?
Queen's
He arrived in Canada in June 1989 and worked on a farm and in a lumber mill before enrolling.
Q 05Musk was accepted to a graduate programme at which university in 1995 but never enrolled?
Stanford
He dropped the materials-science plan to start his first company during the dot-com boom.
Q 06Musk's first company, Zip2, provided what kind of software?
City guides for newspapers
He built a fake supercomputer casing around an ordinary PC to impress investors.
Q 07Which computer company bought Zip2 for $307 million in 1999?
Compaq
Musk's 7 percent share earned him $22 million.
Q 08Musk's online payments start-up X.com merged in 2000 with which company to form what became PayPal?
Confinity
Confinity, founded by Max Levchin and Peter Thiel, already ran the more popular PayPal service.
Q 09Which company bought PayPal for $1.5 billion in 2002?
eBay
As the largest shareholder, with 11.72 percent, Musk received $175.8 million.
Q 10In 2017 Musk bought back which internet domain from PayPal, saying it had sentimental value?
X.com
He later used it in his rebranding of Twitter.
Q 11In what year did Musk found SpaceX?
2002
He put in $100 million of his own fortune and took the titles of CEO and chief engineer.
Q 12How many times did SpaceX's first rocket fail before it finally reached orbit in 2008?
Three
The failures nearly bankrupted the company; the fourth launch made SpaceX the first private firm to put a liquid-fuelled rocket in orbit.
Q 13In 2012 SpaceX's Dragon became the first commercial spacecraft to do what?
Dock with the ISS
NASA had awarded the company a $1.6 billion resupply contract in 2008.
SpaceX first landed a Falcon 9 first stage back on land in which year?
Q 21How much did Musk invest in Tesla's 2004 Series A to become its largest shareholder?
$6.35M
He became CEO and product architect four years later, in 2008.
Q 22Tesla's first car, delivered from 2008, was the first mass-produced all-electric car to use what?
Lithium-ion battery cells
About 2,500 of the two-seat sports cars were sold.
Q 23Musk's car company is named in tribute to which inventor?
Nikola Tesla
Company headquarters moved from California to Austin, Texas.
Musk's 2018 "funding secured" tweet about taking Tesla private led the SEC to fine him and Tesla how much apiece?
2015
Reusing boosters was the key to slashing launch costs.
Q 15What dummy payload rode on the first Falcon Heavy launch in 2018?
Musk's own Tesla Roadster
A spacesuited mannequin called Starman sat in the driver's seat with the stereo looping David Bowie.
Q 16The Roadster launched into space carries which novel in its glovebox, plus a towel?
The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy
Musk has cited the book, along with Lord of the Rings and the Foundation series, as an influence.
Q 17The mannequin in the space-bound Roadster was named after a song by which artist?
David Bowie
The car's sound system was set to loop "Space Oddity" by the same singer.
Q 18SpaceX's 2020 Demo-2 mission made it the first private company to do what?
Put astronauts into orbit
The crewed Dragon docked with the ISS, restoring American crew launches for the first time since the Shuttle.
Q 19What is the name of SpaceX's satellite internet constellation?
Starlink
Development began in 2015; SpaceX estimated the decade-long project would cost $10 billion.
Q 20Musk was not one of Tesla's original founders. Who incorporated Tesla Motors in 2003?
Martin Eberhard and Marc Tarpenning
A 2009 lawsuit settlement allowed five men, Musk included, to call themselves co-founders.
$20M
He also had to give up the chairmanship for three years while staying on as CEO.
Q 25Which solar company, founded by Musk's cousins, did Tesla buy for about $2 billion in 2016?
SolarCity
Lyndon and Peter Rive founded it in 2006 on Musk's concept and seed money.
Q 26What did Musk unveil in 2013 as a cheaper way to travel long distances?
The Hyperloop
He assigned engineers from Tesla and SpaceX to sketch out the concept.
Q 27Musk co-founded which artificial intelligence lab in December 2015, later leaving it?
OpenAI
He pledged $1 billion but donated $50 million; his later rival lab was xAI.
Q 28Musk co-founded Neuralink in which year?
2016
He put in $100 million; in 2021 the company showed a macaque playing Pong with an implant.
Q 29What did Neuralink call the brain implant given to its first human patient in 2024?
Telepathy
By February the patient could move a computer mouse by thought.
Q 30Musk said frustration with traffic in which city inspired the Boring Company?
Los Angeles
He announced the idea in December 2016; its first working system was the Las Vegas Convention Center Loop in 2021.