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Elon Musk
Also Known As Elon Reeve Musk
CEO of Twitter
Elon Reeve Musk is a CEO of Twitter, Inc.(TWTR)
Musk expressed interest in buying Twitter as early as 2017,and had previously questioned the platform's commitment to freedom of speech. In January 2022, Musk started purchasing Twitter shares, reaching a 9.2% stake by April, making him the largest shareholder. When this was publicly disclosed, Twitter shares experienced the largest intraday price surge since the company's 2013 IPO. On April 4, Musk agreed to a deal that would appoint him to Twitter's board of directors and prohibit him from acquiring more than 14.9% of the company. However, on April 13, Musk made a $43 billion offer to buy Twitter, launching a takeover bid to buy 100% of Twitter's stock at $54.20 per share. In response, Twitter's board adopted a "poison pill" shareholder rights plan to make it more expensive for any single investor to own more than 15% of the company without board approval.Nevertheless, by the end of the month Musk had successfully concluded his bid for approximately $44 billion. This included about $12.5 billion in loans against his Tesla stock and $21 billion in equity financing.
Tesla's stock market value sank by over $100 billion the next day in reaction to the deal, causing Musk to lose around $30 billion of his net worth. He subsequently tweeted criticism of Twitter executive Vijaya Gadde's policies to his 86 million followers, which led to some of them engaging in sexist and racist harassment against her.[203] Exactly a month after announcing the takeover, Musk stated that the deal was "on hold" following a report that 5% of Twitter's daily active users were spam accounts,causing Twitter shares to drop more than 10 percent.[205] Although he initially affirmed his commitment to the acquisition, he sent notification of his termination of the deal in July; Twitter's Board of Directors responded that they were committed to holding him to the transaction.[207] On July 12, 2022, Twitter formally sued Musk in the Chancery Court of Delaware for breaching a legally binding agreement to purchase Twitter.[208] In October 2022, Musk reversed again, offering to purchase Twitter at $54.20 per share. The acquisition was officially completed on October 27.
Immediately after the acquisition, Musk fired top Twitter executives like CEO Parag Agrawal, whom he replaced. He instituted a $7.99 monthly subscription for a "blue check", and laid off a significant portion of the company's staff.Musk lessened content moderation, and in December, Musk released internal documents relating to Twitter's moderation of Hunter Biden's laptop in the leadup to the 2020 presidential election. The Southern Poverty Law Center noted that Twitter has verified numerous extremists. A study of millions of tweets following the acquisition indicated that hate speech on the platform has become "more visible" under Musk's leadership.
Within the first weeks of ownership, Musk made a series of short-lived decisions and changes that he quickly reversed, including introducing a paid blue checkmark, creating an "official" label and forbidding linking to one's profiles on other social media platforms. Under Musk's management, Twitter experienced several large scale outages.
In April 2022, The Washington Post reported that Musk privately claimed supposed censorship on the platform, including the banning of accounts such as The Babylon Bee, had prompted him to begin the acquisition. Following the acquisition, he made reinstatement of accounts like the Bee an immediate priority. The New York Post revealed that Musk's ex-wife Talulah Riley had encouraged Musk to purchase Twitter, specifically citing the Bee's ban.
On December 18, Musk posted a poll to his Twitter account asking users to decide whether he should step down as the head of Twitter, with 57.5% out of the more than 17.5 million votes supporting that decision. Musk then announced that he would resign as CEO "as soon as I find someone foolish enough to take the job".
Early Life
Elon Reeve Musk born on June 28, 1971 in Pretoria, one of South Africa's capital cities. Musk has British and Pennsylvania Dutch ancestry. His mother is Maye Musk (née Haldeman), a model and dietitian born in Saskatchewan, Canada, and raised in South Africa.His father, Errol Musk, is a South African electromechanical engineer, pilot, sailor, consultant, and property developer, who was a half-owner of a Zambian emerald mine near Lake Tanganyika. Musk has a younger brother, Kimbal, and a younger sister, Tosca.
Musk's family was wealthy during his youth. His father was elected to the Pretoria City Council as a representative of the anti-apartheid Progressive Party, with his children cited as sharing their father's dislike of apartheid. His maternal grandfather, Joshua Haldeman, was an adventurous American-born Canadian who took his family on record-breaking journeys to Africa and Australia in a single-engine Bellanca airplane. After his parents divorced in 1980, Musk chose to mostly live with his father. Musk regretted his decision and has become estranged from his father. He has a paternal half-sister and a half-brother.
Ashlee Vance described Musk as an awkward and introverted child.At age ten, he developed an interest in computing and video games, teaching himself how to program from the VIC-20 user manual. At age twelve, he sold his BASIC-based game Blastar to PC and Office Technology magazine for approximately $500.
Musk attended Waterkloof House Preparatory School, Bryanston High School, and Pretoria Boys High School, from which he graduated. Musk applied for a Canadian passport through his Canadian-born mother, knowing that it would be easier to immigrate to the United States this way. While waiting for his application to be processed, he attended the University of Pretoria for five months.
Musk arrived in Canada in June 1989 and lived with a second cousin in Saskatchewan for a year, working odd jobs at a farm and lumber mill. In 1990, he entered Queen's University in Kingston, Ontario.Two years later, he transferred to the University of Pennsylvania (UPenn), where he completed studies for a Bachelor of Arts degree in physics and a Bachelor of Science degree in economics from the Wharton School. Although Musk claims he earned the degrees in 1995, UPenn maintains it awarded them in 1997. He reportedly hosted large, ticketed house parties to help pay for tuition, and wrote a business plan for an electronic book-scanning service similar to Google Books.
In 1994, Musk held two internships in Silicon Valley: one at the energy storage startup Pinnacle Research Institute, which investigated electrolytic ultracapacitors for energy storage, and another at the Palo Alto–based startup Rocket Science Games. In 1995, he was accepted to a PhD program in materials science at Stanford University. However, Musk decided to join the Internet boom, instead dropping out two days after being accepted and applied for a job at Netscape, to which he reportedly never received a response.
Education
- Bryanston High School - Waterkloof House Preparatory School -
- Graduated - Pretoria Boys High School
Career
- Twitter - CEO
Recognition
Musk was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society (FRS) in 2018. In 2015, he received an honorary doctorate in engineering and technology from Yale University and IEEE Honorary Membership. Awards for his contributions to the development of the Falcon rockets include the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics George Low Transportation Award in 2008, the Fédération Aéronautique Internationale Gold Space Medal in 2010, and the Royal Aeronautical Society Gold Medal in 2012. He was listed among Time magazine's 100 Most Influential People in 2010, 2018, and 2021.Musk was selected as Time's "Person of the Year" for 2021. Time editor-in-chief Edward Felsenthal wrote that "Person of the Year is a marker of influence, and few individuals have had more influence than Musk on life on Earth, and potentially life off Earth too". In 2022, Musk was elected as a member of the National Academy of Engineering.