Elon Musk Elon Reeve Musk FRS (/ˈiːlɒn/ EE-lon; born June 28, 1971) is a business magnate and investor. He is the founder, CEO and chief engineer of SpaceX; angel investor, CEO and product architect of Tesla, Inc.; owner and CEO of Twitter, Inc.; founder of The Boring Company; co-founder of Neuralink and OpenAI; and president of the philanthropic Musk Foundation. With an estimated net worth of around $196 billion as of February 15, 2023, primarily from his ownership stakes in Tesla and SpaceX,[4][5] Musk is the second-wealthiest person in the world, according to both the Bloomberg Billionaires Index and Forbes's real-time billionaires list.[6][7] Musk was born in Pretoria, South Africa, and briefly attended at the University of Pretoria before moving to Canada at age 18, acquiring citizenship through his Canadian-born mother. Two years later, he matriculated at Queen's University and transferred to the University of Pennsylvania, where he received bachelor's degrees in economics and physics. He moved to California in 1995 to attend Stanford University. After two days, he dropped out and with his brother Kimbal, co-founded the online city guide software company Zip2. In 1999, Zip2 was acquired by Compaq for $307 million and Musk co-founded X.com, a direct bank. X.com merged with Confinity in 2000 to form PayPal, which eBay acquired for $1.5 billion in 2002. With $175.8 million, Musk founded SpaceX in 2002, a spaceflight services company. In 2004, he was an early investor in the electric vehicle manufacturer Tesla Motors, Inc. (now Tesla, Inc.). He became its chairman and product architect, assuming the position of CEO in 2008. In 2006, he helped create SolarCity, a solar energy company that was later acquired by Tesla and became Tesla Energy. In 2015, he co-founded OpenAI, a nonprofit artificial intelligence research company. The following year, he co-founded Neuralink—a neurotechnology company developing brain–computer interfaces—and The Boring Company, a tunnel construction company. Musk has also proposed a hyperloop high-speed vactrain transportation system. In 2022, his acquisition of Twitter for $44 billion was completed. Musk has made controversial statements on politics and technology, particularly on Twitter, and is a polarizing figure. He has been criticized for making unscientific and misleading statements, including spreading COVID-19 misinformation. In 2018, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) sued Musk for falsely tweeting that he had secured funding for a private takeover of Tesla. Musk stepped down as chairman of Tesla and paid a $20 million fine as part of a settlement agreement with the SEC. Early life Childhood and family Further information: Musk family Elon Reeve Musk was born on June 28, 1971, in Pretoria, one of South Africa's capital cities.[8][9] Musk has British and Pennsylvania Dutch ancestry.[10][11] His mother is Maye Musk (née Haldeman), a model and dietitian born in Saskatchewan, Canada, and raised in South Africa.[12][13][14] 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.[15][16][17][18] Musk has a younger brother, Kimbal, and a younger sister, Tosca.[14][19] Musk's family was wealthy during his youth.[18] 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.[8] 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.[20][21][22] After his parents divorced in 1980, Musk chose to mostly live with his father.[10] Musk regretted his decision and has become estranged from his father.[23] He has a paternal half-sister and a half-brother.[20][24] Ashlee Vance described Musk as an awkward and introverted child.[25] At age ten, he developed an interest in computing and video games, teaching himself how to program from the VIC-20 user manual.[26] At age twelve, he sold his BASIC-based game Blastar to PC and Office Technology magazine for approximately $500.[27][28] Education An ornate school building Musk graduated from Pretoria Boys High School in South Africa. Musk attended Waterkloof House Preparatory School, Bryanston High School, and Pretoria Boys High School, from which he graduated.[29] Musk applied for a Canadian passport through his Canadian-born mother,[30][31] knowing that it would be easier to immigrate to the United States this way.[32] While waiting for his application to be processed, he attended the University of Pretoria for five months.[33] Musk arrived in Canada in June 1989 and lived with a second cousin in Saskatchewan for a year,[34] working odd jobs at a farm and lumber mill.[35] In 1990, he entered Queen's University in Kingston, Ontario.[36][37] 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.[38][39][40][41] Although Musk claims he earned the degrees in 1995, UPenn maintains it awarded them in 1997.[42] 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.[43] 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.[44][45] In 1995, he was accepted to a PhD program in materials science at Stanford University.[46][47] 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.[48][30] Business career Zip2 Main article: Zip2 External video video icon Musk speaks of his early business experience during a 2014 commencement speech at USC on YouTube In 1995, Musk, his brother Kimbal, and Greg Kouri founded Zip2.[49][50] Errol Musk provided them with $28,000 in funding.[51] The company developed an Internet city guide with maps, directions, and yellow pages, and marketed it to newspapers.[52] They worked at a small rented office in Palo Alto,[53] Musk coding the website every night.[53] Eventually, Zip2 obtained contracts with The New York Times and the Chicago Tribune.[43] The brothers persuaded the board of directors to abandon a merger with CitySearch;[54] however, Musk's attempts to become CEO were thwarted.[55] Compaq acquired Zip2 for $307 million in cash in February 1999,[56][57] and Musk received $22 million for his 7-percent share.[58] X.com and PayPal Main articles: X.com, PayPal, and PayPal Mafia Later in 1999, Musk co-founded X.com, an online financial services and e-mail payment company.[59] X.com was one of the first federally insured online banks, and over 200,000 customers joined in its initial months of operation.[60] Even though Musk founded the company, investors regarded him as inexperienced and replaced him with Intuit CEO Bill Harris by the end of the year.[61] In 2000, X.com merged with online bank Confinity to avoid competition,[53][61][62] as Confinity's money-transfer service PayPal was more popular than X.com's service.[63] Musk then returned as CEO of the merged company. His preference for Microsoft over Unix-based software caused a rift among the company's employees, and led Peter Thiel, Confinity's founder, to resign.[64] With the company suffering from compounding technological issues and the lack of a cohesive business model, the board ousted Musk and replaced him with Thiel in September 2000.[65][b] Under Thiel, the company focused on the money-transfer service and was renamed PayPal in 2001.[67][68] In 2002, PayPal was acquired by eBay for $1.5 billion in stock, of which Musk—the largest shareholder with 11.72% of shares—received $175.8 million.[69][70] In 2017, more than 15 years later, Musk purchased the X.com domain from PayPal for its sentimental value.[71][72] In 2022, Musk discussed a goal of creating "X, the everything app".[73] SpaceX Main article: SpaceX Musk shakes hands with NASA Administrator Charles Bolden before a SpaceX Dragon capsule NASA Administrator Charles Bolden congratulates Musk in front of the SpaceX Dragon following its successful 2012 mission. In early 2001, Musk became involved with the nonprofit Mars Society and discussed funding plans to place a growth-chamber for plants on Mars.[74] In October of the same year, he traveled to Moscow with Jim Cantrell and Adeo Ressi to buy refurbished intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs) that could send the greenhouse payloads into space. He met with the companies NPO Lavochkin and Kosmotras; however, Musk was seen as a novice[75] and the group returned to the United States empty-handed. In February 2002, the group returned to Russia with Mike Griffin (president of In-Q-Tel) to look for three ICBMs. They had another meeting with Kosmotras and were offered one rocket for $8 million, which Musk rejected. He instead decided to start a company that could build affordable rockets.[75] With $100 million of his own money,[76] Musk founded SpaceX in May 2002 and became the company's CEO and Chief Engineer.[77][78] SpaceX attempted its first launch of the Falcon 1 rocket in 2006.[79] Though the rocket failed to reach Earth orbit, it was awarded a Commercial Orbital Transportation Services program contract from NASA Administrator (and former SpaceX consultant[80]) Mike Griffin later that year.[81][82] After two more failed attempts that nearly caused Musk and his companies to go bankrupt,[79] SpaceX succeeded in launching the Falcon 1 into orbit in 2008.[83] Later that year, SpaceX received a $1.6 billion Commercial Resupply Services contract from NASA for 12 flights of its Falcon 9 rocket and Dragon spacecraft to the International Space Station, replacing the Space Shuttle after its 2011 retirement.[84] In 2012, the Dragon vehicle docked with the ISS, a first for a commercial spacecraft.[85] Musk examining F9R Dev1 debris in 2014 Working towards its goal of reusable rockets, in 2015 SpaceX successfully landed the first stage of a Falcon 9 on an inland platform.[86] Later landings were achieved on autonomous spaceport drone ships, an ocean-based recovery platform.[87] In 2018, SpaceX launched the Falcon Heavy; the inaugural mission carried Musk's personal Tesla Roadster as a dummy payload.[88][89] Since 2019,[90] SpaceX has been developing Starship, a fully-reusable, super-heavy-lift launch vehicle intended to replace the Falcon 9 and the Falcon Heavy.[91] In 2020, SpaceX launched its first crewed flight, the Demo-2, becoming the first private company to place astronauts into orbit and dock a crewed spacecraft with the ISS.[92] Starlink Main article: Starlink 50 Starlink satellites shortly before deployment to low Earth orbit, 2019 In 2015, SpaceX began development of the Starlink constellation of low-Earth-orbit satellites to provide satellite Internet access,[93] with the first two prototype satellites launched in February 2018. A second set of test satellites, and the first large deployment of a piece of the constellation, occurred in May 2019, when the first 60 operational satellites were launched.[94] The total cost of the decade-long project to design, build, and deploy the constellation is estimated by SpaceX to be about $10 billion.[95][c] Some critics, including the International Astronomical Union, have alleged that Starlink blocks the view of the sky and poses a collision threat to spacecraft.[98][99][100] During the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine, Musk sent Starlink terminals to Ukraine to provide Internet access and communication.[101] However, Musk refused to block Russian state media on Starlink, declaring himself "a free speech absolutist".[102][103] In October 2022, Musk stated that about 20,000 satellite terminals had been donated to Ukraine, together with free data transfer subscriptions, which cost SpaceX $80 million. After asking the United States Department of Defense to pay for further units and future subscriptions on behalf of Ukraine,[104] Musk publicly stated that SpaceX would continue to provide Starlink to Ukraine for free, at a yearly cost to itself of $400 million.[105][106][107] Tesla Main article: Tesla, Inc. Musks stands, arms crossed and grinning, before a Tesla Model S Musk next to a Tesla Model S, 2011 Tesla, Inc.—originally Tesla Motors—was incorporated in 2003 by Martin Eberhard and Marc Tarpenning, who financed the company until the Series A round of funding. Both men played active roles in the company's early development prior to Musk's involvement.[108] Musk led the Series A round of investment in February 2004; he invested $6.5 million, became the majority shareholder, and joined Tesla's board of directors as chairman.[109] Musk took an active role within the company and oversaw Roadster product design but was not deeply involved in day-to-day business operations.[110] Following a series of escalating conflicts in 2007, and the financial crisis of 2007–2008, Eberhard was ousted from the firm.[111][page needed][112] Musk assumed leadership of the company as CEO and product architect in 2008.[113] A 2009 lawsuit settlement with Eberhard designated Musk as a Tesla co-founder, along with Tarpenning and two others.[114][115] As of 2019, Musk was the longest-tenured CEO of any automotive manufacturer globally.[116] In 2021, Musk nominally changed his title to "Technoking" while retaining his position as CEO.[117] Musk speaking with a microphone, a projected image of a Tesla is behind him Musk before a Model X at the 2014 Tesla Inc. annual shareholder meeting Tesla first built an electric sports car, the Roadster, in 2008. With sales of about 2,500 vehicles, it was the first serial production all-electric car to use lithium-ion battery cells.[118] Tesla began delivery of its four-door Model S sedan in 2012.[119] A cross-over, the Model X was launched in 2015.[120] A mass-market sedan, the Model 3, was released in 2017.[121] The Model 3 is the all-time bestselling plug-in electric car worldwide, and in June 2021 it became the first electric car to sell 1 million units globally.[122][123] A fifth vehicle, the Model Y crossover, was launched in 2020.[124] The Cybertruck, an all-electric pickup truck, was unveiled in 2019.[125] Under Musk, Tesla has also constructed multiple lithium-ion battery and electric vehicle factories, named Gigafactories.[126] Since its initial public offering in 2010,[127] Tesla stock has risen significantly; it became the most valuable carmaker in summer 2020,[128][129] and it entered the S&P 500 later that year.[130][131] In October 2021, it reached a market capitalization of $1 trillion, the sixth company in U.S. history to do so.[132] In November 2021, Musk proposed, on Twitter, to sell 10% of his Tesla stock, since "much is made lately of unrealized gains being a means of tax avoidance".[133] After more than 3.5 million Twitter accounts supported the sale, Musk sold $6.9 billion of Tesla stock within a week,[133] and a total of $16.4 billion by year end, reaching the 10% target.[134] In February 2022, The Wall Street Journal reported that both Elon and Kimbal Musk were under investigation by the SEC for possible insider trading related to the sale.[135] In 2022, Musk unveiled a robot developed by Tesla, Optimus.[136] SEC and shareholder lawsuits regarding tweets In 2018, Musk was sued by the SEC for a tweet claiming that funding had been secured for potentially taking Tesla private.[137][d] The lawsuit characterized the tweet as false, misleading, and damaging to investors, and sought to bar Musk from serving as CEO of publicly traded companies.[137][141][142] Two days later, Musk settled with the SEC, without admitting or denying the SEC's allegations. As a result, Musk and Tesla were fined $20 million each, and Musk was forced to step down for three years as Tesla chairman but was able to remain as CEO.[143] Musk has stated in interviews that he does not regret posting the tweet that triggered the SEC investigation.[144][145] In April 2022, the shareholder who sued Musk over the tweet, along with several Tesla shareholders, said that a federal judge had ruled that the tweet was false, although the ruling in question has not been unsealed.[146] In February 2023, the jury found Musk and Tesla not liable.[147] In 2019, Musk stated in a tweet that Tesla would build half a million cars that year.[148] The SEC reacted to Musk's tweet by filing in court, asking the court to hold him in contempt for violating the terms of a settlement agreement with such a tweet; the accusation was disputed by Musk. This was eventually settled by a joint agreement between Musk and the SEC clarifying the previous agreement details.[149] The agreement included a list of topics that Musk would need preclearance before tweeting about.[150] In 2020, a judge prevented a lawsuit from proceeding that claimed a tweet by Musk regarding Tesla stock price ("too high imo") violated the agreement.[151][152] FOIA-released records showed that the SEC itself concluded Musk has subsequently violated the agreement twice by tweeting regarding "Tesla's solar roof production volumes and its stock price".[153] SolarCity and Tesla Energy Main articles: SolarCity and Tesla Energy Two green vans sporting the SolarCity logo SolarCity solar-panel installation vans in 2009 Musk provided the initial concept and financial capital for SolarCity, which his cousins Lyndon and Peter Rive founded in 2006.[154] By 2013, SolarCity was the second largest provider of solar power systems in the United States.[155] In 2014, Musk promoted the idea of SolarCity building an advanced production facility in Buffalo, New York, triple the size of the largest solar plant in the United States.[156] Construction of the factory started in 2014 and was completed in 2017. It operated as a joint venture with Panasonic until early 2020.[157][158] Tesla acquired SolarCity for over $2 billion in 2016 and merged it with its battery unit to create Tesla Energy. The deal's announcement resulted in a more than 10% drop in Tesla's stock price. At the time, SolarCity was facing liquidity issues.[159] Multiple shareholder groups filed a lawsuit against Musk and Tesla's directors, claiming that the purchase of SolarCity was done solely to benefit Musk and came at the expense of Tesla and its shareholders.[160][161] Tesla directors settled the lawsuit in January 2020, leaving Musk the sole remaining defendant.[162][163] Two years later, the court ruled in Musk's favor.[164] Neuralink Main article: Neuralink Musk standing next to bulky medical equipment on a stage Musk discussing a Neuralink device during a live demonstration in 2020 In 2016, Musk co-founded Neuralink, a neurotechnology startup company, with an investment of $100 million.[165][166] Neuralink aims to integrate the human brain with artificial intelligence (AI) by creating devices that are embedded in the brain to facilitate its merging with machines. Such technology could enhance memory or allow the devices to communicate with software.[166][167] The company also hopes to develop devices with which to treat neurological conditions such as Alzheimer's disease, dementia, and spinal cord injuries.[168] In 2019, Musk announced work on a device akin to a sewing machine that could embed threads into a human brain.[165] Musk is listed as the sole author of an October 2019 paper that details some of Neuralink's research,[169] although Musk's being listed as such rankled the Neuralink team's researchers.[170] At a 2020 live demonstration, Musk described one of their early devices as "a Fitbit in your skull" that could soon cure paralysis, deafness, blindness, and other disabilities. Many neuroscientists and publications criticized these claims,[171][172][173] with MIT Technology Review describing them as "highly speculative" and "neuroscience theater".[171] During the demonstration, Musk revealed a pig with a Neuralink implant that tracked neural activity related to smell.[168] In 2022, Neuralink announced that clinical trials would begin by the end of the year.[174] Neuralink has conducted further animal testing on macaque monkeys at the University of California, Davis' Primate Research Center. In 2021, the company released a video in which a Macaque played the video game Pong via a Neuralink implant. The company's animal trials—which have caused the deaths of some monkeys—have led to claims of animal cruelty. The Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine has alleged that Neuralink's animal trials have violated the Animal Welfare Act.[175] Employees have complained that pressure from Musk to accelerate development has led to botched experiments and unnecessary animal deaths. In 2022, a federal probe was launched into possible animal welfare violations by Neuralink.[176] The Boring Company Main article: The Boring Company Musk speaks to a crowd of journalists. Behind him is a lighted tunnel. Musk during the 2018 inauguration of the Boring Test Tunnel in Hawthorne, California In 2017, Musk founded the Boring Company to construct tunnels and revealed plans for specialized, underground, high-occupancy vehicles that could travel up to 150 miles per hour (240 km/h) and thus circumvent above-ground traffic in major cities.[177][178] Early in 2017, the company began discussions with regulatory bodies and initiated construction of a 30-foot (9.1 m) wide, 50-foot (15 m) long, and 15-foot (4.6 m) deep "test trench" on the premises of SpaceX's offices, as that required no permits.[179] The Los Angeles tunnel, less than two miles (3.2 km) in length, debuted to journalists in 2018. It used Tesla Model X's and was reported to be a rough ride while traveling at suboptimal speeds.[180] Two tunnel projects announced in 2018, in Chicago and West Los Angeles, have been canceled.[181][182] However, a tunnel beneath the Las Vegas Convention Center was completed in early 2021.[183] Local officials have approved further expansions of the tunnel system.[184] In 2021, tunnel construction was approved for Fort Lauderdale, Florida.[185] Twitter Further information: Acquisition of Twitter by Elon Musk Elon Musk Royal Society (crop2).jpg Elon Musk Twitter @elonmusk I made an offer https://sec.gov/Archives/edgar... April 14, 2022[186] Musk expressed interest in buying Twitter as early as 2017,[187] and had previously questioned the platform's commitment to freedom of speech.[188][189] In January 2022, Musk started purchasing Twitter shares, reaching a 9.2% stake by April,[190] making him the largest shareholder.[191][e] When this was publicly disclosed, Twitter shares experienced the largest intraday price surge since the company's 2013 IPO.[193] 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.[194][195] 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.[191][196] 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.[197] Nevertheless, by the end of the month Musk had successfully concluded his bid for approximately $44 billion.[198] This included about $12.5 billion in loans against his Tesla stock and $21 billion in equity financing.[199][200] 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.[201][202] 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,[204] causing Twitter shares to drop more than 10 percent.[205] Although he initially affirmed his commitment to the acquisition,[206] 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.[209] The acquisition was officially completed on October 27.[210] Immediately after the acquisition, Musk fired top Twitter executives like CEO Parag Agrawal,[210][211] whom he replaced.[212] He instituted a $7.99 monthly subscription for a "blue check",[213][214][215] and laid off a significant portion of the company's staff.[216][217] Musk lessened content moderation,[218] 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.[219] The Southern Poverty Law Center noted that Twitter has verified numerous extremists.[220] A study of millions of tweets following the acquisition indicated that hate speech on the platform has become "more visible" under Musk's leadership.[221] 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,[222] creating an "official" label[223] and forbidding linking to one's profiles on other social media platforms.[224] 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.[225] Musk then announced that he would resign as CEO "as soon as I find someone foolish enough to take the job".[226] Leadership style Musk giving a speech to SpaceX employees in 2012 Musk is often described as a micromanager and has called himself a "nano-manager".[227] The New York Times has characterized his approach as absolutist.[228] Musk does not make formal business plans;[228] instead, he says he prefers to approach engineering problems[non sequitur] with an "iterative design methodology" and "tolerance for failures".[229] He has forced employees to adopt the company's own jargon and launched ambitious, risky, and costly projects against his advisors' recommendations, such as removing front-facing radar from Tesla Autopilot. His insistence on vertical integration causes his companies to move most production in-house. While this resulted in saved costs for SpaceX's rocket,[230] vertical integration has caused many usability problems for Tesla's software.[227] Musk's handling of employees—whom he communicates with directly through mass emails—has been characterized as "carrot and stick", rewarding those "who offer constructive criticism" while also being known to impulsively threaten, swear at, and fire his employees.[231][232][233] Musk said he expects his employees to work for long hours, sometimes for 80 hours per week.[234] He has his new employees sign strict non-disclosure agreements and often fires in sprees,[235][236] such as during the Model 3 "production hell" in 2018.[236] In 2022, Musk revealed plans to fire 10 percent of Tesla's workforce, due to his concerns about the economy.[237] That same month, he suspended remote work at SpaceX and Tesla and threatened to fire employees who do not work 40 hours per week in the office.[238] Musk's leadership has been praised by some, who credit it with the success of Tesla and his other endeavors,[227] and criticized by others, who see him as callous and his managerial decisions as "show[ing] a lack of human understanding."[233][239] The 2021 book Power Play contains anecdotes of Musk berating employees.[240] The Wall Street Journal reported that, after Musk insisted on branding his vehicles as "self-driving", he faced criticism from his engineers for putting customer "lives at risk", with some employees resigning in consequence.[241] Other activities Musk Foundation Musk is the president of the Musk Foundation,[242] whose stated purpose is to: provide solar-power energy systems in disaster areas; support research, development, and advocacy (for interests including human space exploration, pediatrics, renewable energy and "safe artificial intelligence"); and support science and engineering educational efforts.[243] From 2002 to 2018, the foundation gave $25 million directly to non-profit organizations, nearly half of which went to Musk's OpenAI,[244] which was at the time a non-profit.[245] Since 2002, the foundation has made over 350 donations. Around half were to scientific research or education nonprofits. Notable beneficiaries include the Wikimedia Foundation, his alma mater the University of Pennsylvania, and his brother Kimbal's Big Green.[246] In 2012, Musk took the Giving Pledge, thereby committing to give the majority of his wealth to charitable causes either during his lifetime or in his will.[247] He has endowed prizes at the X Prize Foundation, including $100 million to reward improved carbon capture technology.[248] Vox said "the Musk Foundation is almost entertaining in its simplicity and yet is strikingly opaque", noting that its website was only 33 words in plain-text.[244] The foundation has been criticized for the relatively small amount of wealth donated.[249] In 2020, Forbes gave Musk a philanthropy score of 1, because he had given away less than 1% of his net worth.[246] In November 2021, Musk donated $5.7 billion of Tesla's shares to charity, according to regulatory filings;[250] however, Bloomberg News noted that all of it went to his own foundation, bringing Musk Foundation's assets up to $9.4 billion at the end of 2021. The foundation disbursed $160 million to non-profits that year.[251] Hyperloop Main articles: Hyperloop and Hyperloop pod competition A long white tube about 10 feet in diameter A tube part of the 2017 Hyperloop pod competition sponsored by SpaceX In 2013, Musk announced plans for a version of a vactrain—a vacuum tube train—and assigned a dozen engineers from SpaceX and Tesla to establish the conceptual foundations and create initial designs.[252] Later that year, Musk unveiled the concept, which he dubbed the hyperloop.[253] The alpha design for the system was published in a whitepaper posted to the Tesla and SpaceX blogs.[254] The document scoped out the technology and outlined a notional route where such a transport system could be built between the Greater Los Angeles Area and the San Francisco Bay Area, at an estimated cost of $6 billion.[255] The proposal, if technologically feasible at the costs cited, would make Hyperloop travel cheaper than any other mode of transport for such long distances.[256] Subsequently, Vance has claimed that the original purpose of Musk's Hyperloop proposal was to thwart a high-speed rail project in California.[257] In 2015, Musk announced a design competition for students and others to build Hyperloop pods, to operate on a SpaceX-sponsored mile-long track, for a 2015–2017 Hyperloop pod competition. The track was used in January 2017, and Musk also announced that the company started a tunnel project, with Hawthorne airport as its destination.[258] In July 2017, Musk claimed that he had received "verbal government approval" to build a hyperloop from New York City to Washington, D.C., with stops in both Philadelphia and Baltimore.[259] Mention of the projected DC-to-Baltimore leg was removed from the Boring Company website in 2021.[260] The tunnel project to Hawthorne was discontinued in 2022 and is cited to be converted into parking spots for SpaceX workers.[261] OpenAI Main article: OpenAI In 2015, Musk co-founded OpenAI, a not-for-profit artificial intelligence (AI) research company aiming to develop artificial general intelligence intended to be safe and beneficial to humanity.[262] A particular focus of the company is to democratize artificial superintelligence systems, against governments and corporations.[23] In 2018, Musk left the OpenAI board to avoid possible future conflicts with his role as CEO of Tesla as the latter company increasingly became involved in AI through Tesla Autopilot.[263] Since then, OpenAI has made significant advances in machine learning, producing neural networks such as GPT-3 (producing human-like text),[264] and DALL-E (generating digital images from natural language descriptions).[265] Tham Luang cave rescue and defamation case Further information: Tham Luang cave rescue Equipment during the Tham Luang cave rescue During the Tham Luang cave rescue (pictured), Musk had proposed a mini-submarine to evacuate the children, which was rejected. In July 2018, Musk arranged for his employees to build a mini-submarine to assist the rescue of children trapped in a flooded cavern in Thailand.[266] Richard Stanton, leader of the international rescue diving team, urged Musk to facilitate the construction of the vehicle as a back-up, in case flooding worsened.[267] Engineers at SpaceX and the Boring Company built the mini-submarine from a Falcon 9 liquid oxygen transfer tube in eight hours and personally delivered it to Thailand.[268][269] By this time, however, eight of the 12 children, had already been rescued, the rescuers employing full face masks, oxygen, and anesthesia; consequently, Thai authorities declined to use the submarine.[266] In March 2019, Musk was later one of the 187 people who received various honors conferred by the King of Thailand for involvement in the rescue effort.[270] Soon after the rescue, Vernon Unsworth, a British recreational caver who had been exploring the cave for the previous six years and played a key advisory role in the operation, criticized the submarine on CNN as amounting to nothing more than a public relations effort with no chance of success, maintaining that Musk "had no conception of what the cave passage was like" and "can stick his submarine where it hurts". Musk asserted on Twitter that the device would have worked and referred to Unsworth as a "pedo guy".[271] He deleted the tweets,[271] and apologized,[272] and he deleted his responses to critical tweets from Cher Scarlett, a software engineer, which had caused his followers to harass her.[273] In an email to BuzzFeed News, Musk later called Unsworth a "child rapist" and said that he had married a child.[274][275] In September, Unsworth filed a defamation suit in Los Angeles federal court.[276][277] In his defense, Musk argued that "'pedo guy' was a common insult used in South Africa when I was growing up ... synonymous with 'creepy old man' and is used to insult a person's appearance and demeanor".[29] The defamation case began in December 2019, with Unsworth seeking $190 million in damages.[278] During the trial Musk apologized to Unsworth again for the tweet. On December 6, the jury found in favor of Musk and ruled he was not liable.[279][280] 2018 Joe Rogan podcast appearance In 2018, Musk appeared on The Joe Rogan Experience podcast and discussed various topics for over two hours. During the interview, Musk sampled a puff from a cigar consisting, the host claimed, of tobacco laced with cannabis. Tesla stock dropped after the incident, which coincided with the confirmation of the departure of Tesla's vice president of worldwide finance earlier that day.[281] Fortune wondered if the cannabis use could have ramifications for SpaceX contracts with the United States Air Force, though an Air Force spokesperson told The Verge that there was no investigation and that the Air Force was still determining the facts.[282] In 2022, Musk claimed that he and other Space-X employees were subjected to random drug tests for about a year following the incident.[283] In a 60 Minutes interview, Musk said of the incident: "I do not smoke pot. As anybody who watched that podcast could tell, I have no idea how to smoke pot."[284] Music In 2019, Musk, through Emo G Records, released a rap track, "RIP Harambe", on SoundCloud. The track, which refers to the killing of Harambe the gorilla and the subsequent Internet sensationalism surrounding the event, was performed by Yung Jake, written by Yung Jake and Caroline Polachek, and produced by BloodPop.[285][286] The following year, Musk released an EDM track, "Don't Doubt Ur Vibe", featuring his own lyrics and vocals.[287] While Guardian critic Alexi Petridis described it as "indistinguishable... from umpteen competent but unthrilling bits of bedroom electronica posted elsewhere on Soundcloud",[288] TechCrunch said it was "not a bad representation of the genre".[287] Private jet In 2003, Musk said his favorite plane he owned was an L-39 Albatros.[289] He uses a private jet owned by Falcon Landing LLC, a SpaceX-linked company, and acquired a second jet in August 2020.[290][291] His heavy use of the jet—it flew over 150,000 miles in 2018—and the consequent fossil fuel usage has received criticism.[290][292] ElonJet account Main articles: ElonJet and 2022 Twitter suspensions His flight usage is tracked on social media through ElonJet. The Twitter version of the account was blocked in December 2022, after Musk claimed that his son X AE A-XII had been harassed by a stalker after the account posted the airport at which his jet had landed.[293][294][295] This led to Musk banning the ElonJet account on Twitter, as well as the accounts of journalists that posted stories regarding the incident, including Donie O'Sullivan, Keith Olbermann, and journalists from The New York Times, The Washington Post, CNN, and The Intercept.[296] Musk equated the reporting to doxxing.[297] The police do not believe there is a link between the account and alleged stalker.[298] Musk later took a Twitter poll on whether the journalists' accounts should be reinstated, which resulted in reinstating the accounts.[299][296] Wealth A graph of Musk's net worth from 2012 to 2021, displaying a roughly exponential trend Musk's net worth from 2013 to 2022 as estimated by Forbes magazine Musk made $175.8 million when PayPal was sold to eBay in 2002.[300] He was first listed on the Forbes Billionaires List in 2012, with a net worth of $2 billion.[301] At the start of 2020, Musk had a net worth of $27 billion.[302] By the end of the year his net worth had increased by $150 billion, mostly driven by his ownership of around 20% of Tesla stock.[303] During this period, Musk's net worth was often volatile. For example, it dropped $16.3 billion in September, the largest single-day plunge in Bloomberg Billionaires Index's history.[304] In November of that year, Musk passed Facebook co-founder Mark Zuckerberg to become the third-richest person in the world; a week later he passed Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates to become the second-richest.[305] In January 2021, Musk, with a net worth of $185 billion, surpassed Amazon founder Jeff Bezos to become the richest person in the world.[306] Bezos reclaimed the top spot the following month.[307] On September 27, 2021, after Tesla stock surged, Forbes announced that Musk had a net worth of over $200 billion, and was the richest person in the world.[308] In November 2021, Musk became the first person worth over $300 billion.[309] On December 30, 2022, it was reported that Musk had lost $200 billion from his net worth due to declining stock values in Tesla, becoming the first person in history to lose such a large sum of money.[310][311] In January 2023, Musk was recognised by Guinness World Records for experiencing the "largest loss of personal fortune in history" with regards to his financial losses since November 2021, which Guinness quoted a Forbes estimate of $182 billion.[312] Sources of wealth Around 75% of Musk's wealth derived from Tesla stock in November 2020,[305] a proportion that fell to about 37% as of December 2022,[f] after selling nearly $40 billion in company shares since late 2021.[313] Musk does not receive a salary from Tesla; he agreed with the board in 2018 to a compensation plan that ties his personal earnings to Tesla's valuation and revenue.[303] The deal stipulated that Musk only receives the compensation if Tesla reaches certain market values.[314] It was the largest such deal ever done between a CEO and a company board.[315] In the first award, given in May 2020, he was eligible to purchase 1.69 million Tesla shares (about 1% of the company) at below-market prices, which was worth about $800 million.[315][314] Musk paid $455 million in taxes on $1.52 billion of income between 2014 and 2018.[316] According to ProPublica, Musk paid no federal income taxes in 2018.[317] He claimed his 2021 tax bill was estimated at $12 billion based on his sale of $14 billion worth of Tesla stock.[316] Musk has repeatedly described himself as "cash poor",[318][319] and has "professed to have little interest in the material trappings of wealth".[318] In May 2020, he pledged to sell almost all physical possessions.[319] Musk has defended his wealth by saying he is accumulating resources for humanity's outward expansion to space.[320] Personal views and Twitter usage Main article: Views of Elon Musk Since joining Twitter in 2009,[321] Musk has been an active user and has over 100 million followers as of June 2022.[322] He posts memes, promotes business interests, and comments on contemporary political and cultural issues.[323] Musk's statements have provoked controversy, such as for mocking preferred gender pronouns,[324][325] and comparing Canadian prime minister Justin Trudeau to Adolf Hitler.[326] The New York Times describes his contributions to international relations as "chaotic", and critics of Musk argue that there is a lack of separation between his opinions and his business interests.[327] Existential threats Musk standing at a wooden podium talking at the 2006 Mars Society Conference Musk giving details about Falcon 9 and Dragon spacecraft at the 2006 Mars Society Conference Musk has been described as believing in longtermism, emphasizing the needs of future populations.[328] Accordingly, Musk has stated that artificial intelligence poses the greatest existential threat to humanity.[329][330] He has warned of a "Terminator-like" AI apocalypse and suggested that the government should regulate its safe development.[331][332] In 2015, Musk was a cosignatory, along with Stephen Hawking and hundreds of others, of the Open Letter on Artificial Intelligence, which called for the ban of autonomous weapons.[333] Musk's AI stances have been called alarmist and sensationalist by critics such as computer scientist Yann LeCun and Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg,[334][335] and led the think tank Information Technology and Innovation Foundation to award Musk its Annual Luddite Award in 2016.[336] Musk has described climate change as the greatest threat to humanity after AI,[337] and has advocated for a carbon tax.[338] Musk was a critic of President Donald Trump's stance on climate change,[339][340] and resigned from two presidential business advisory councils following Trump's 2017 decision to withdraw the United States from the Paris Agreement.[341] Musk has long promoted the colonization of Mars and argues that humanity should become a "multiplanetary species".[342] He has suggested the use of nuclear weapons to terraform Mars.[343][344] He envisioned establishing a direct democracy on Mars, with a system in which more votes would be required to create laws than remove them.[345] Musk has also voiced concerns about human population decline,[346][347] saying that "Mars has zero human population. We need a lot of people to become a multiplanet civilization."[348] Speaking at The Wall Street Journal's CEO Council session in 2021, Musk stated that a declining birth rate, and consequent population decline, is one of the biggest risks to human civilization.[349] Politics Musk converses with U.S. Senator Dianne Feinstein beside a red Tesla Musk converses with U.S. Vice President Mike Pence, the Second Lady, and other officials Musk with Senator Dianne Feinstein at the opening of the Tesla Fremont Factory (2010), and with Vice President Mike Pence at the Kennedy Space Center before SpaceX's Crew Dragon Demo-2 launch (2020) While often described as libertarian, Musk has called himself "politically moderate" and was a registered independent voter when he lived in California. The New York Times wrote that Musk "expresses views that don't fit neatly into [the American] binary, left-right political framework".[350] Historically, Musk has donated to both Democrats and Republicans,[351] many of whom are in states in which he has a vested interest.[350] Beginning in the late 2010s, Musk's political contributions have shifted to almost entirely supporting Republicans.[352] Musk voted for Hillary Clinton in the 2016 U.S. presidential election.[353] In the 2020 Democratic Party presidential primaries, Musk endorsed candidate Andrew Yang and expressed support for his proposed universal basic income.[354] He also endorsed Kanye West's 2020 presidential campaign.[355] He said he voted for Joe Biden in the 2020 U.S. presidential election.[353] In 2022, Musk said that he could "no longer support" the Democrats because they are the "party of division & hate",[356][357] and wrote a tweet encouraging "independent-minded voters" to vote Republican in the 2022 U.S. elections, which was an outlier among social media executives who typically avoid partisan political advocacy.[358][359] He also leaned towards supporting Republican Ron DeSantis in the 2024 U.S. presidential election if DeSantis were a candidate.[360][361] Musk opposes a "billionaire's tax",[362] and has argued on Twitter with more left-leaning Democratic politicians such as Bernie Sanders,[363][364] Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez,[365] and Elizabeth Warren.[366] He has stated that "hands up, don't shoot" (a rallying cry that arose after the 2014 shooting of an unarmed black teenager Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri) was based in "fiction", and has raised questions about the Black Lives Matter protests.[367][368] Musk also promoted a baseless theory relating to the attack of Speaker Nancy Pelosi's husband, but Musk deleted his tweet.[369] Musk has praised China and has been described as having mounted a "charm offensive" to woo the Chinese government and gain access to its markets for Tesla.[370] In 2022, Musk wrote an article for China Cyberspace, the official publication of Cyberspace Administration of China, which enforces Internet censorship in China. His writing the article was described as conflicting with his advocacy for free speech.[371][372] Musk later advocated for Taiwan to become a special administrative region of China which drew cross-party criticism from Taiwanese lawmakers.[373][374][375] In October 2022, Musk posted a Twitter poll and "peace plan" to resolve the Russian invasion of Ukraine.[376][377] It was reported that Musk allegedly spoke with Russian President Vladimir Putin prior to the proposal, which Musk denied.[378][379][380][381] COVID-19 Musk wearing a face mask Musk wears a bandana as a face mask during the COVID-19 pandemic. Musk was criticized for his public comments and conduct related to the COVID-19 pandemic.[382][383] He spread misinformation about the virus, including promoting a widely discredited paper on the benefits of chloroquine and claiming that COVID-19 death statistics were inflated.[384] In March 2020, Musk stated, "The coronavirus panic is dumb."[385][386] In an email to Tesla employees, Musk referred to COVID-19 as a "specific form of the common cold" and predicted that confirmed COVID-19 cases would not exceed 0.1% of the U.S. population.[382] On March 19, 2020, Musk predicted that there would be "probably close to zero new cases in [the U.S.] by end of April".[383] Politico labeled this statement one of "the most audacious, confident, and spectacularly incorrect prognostications [of 2020]".[387] Musk also claimed falsely that children "are essentially immune" to COVID-19.[388][389] Musk condemned COVID-19 lockdowns and initially refused to close the Tesla Fremont Factory in March 2020, defying the local shelter-in-place order.[382][390][391] In May 2020, he reopened the Tesla factory, defying the local stay-at-home order,[392][393] and warned workers that they would be unpaid, and their unemployment benefits might be jeopardized, if they did not report to work.[393] In December 2022, Musk called for prosecution of former NIAID director Anthony Fauci.[394][395] In March 2020, Musk promised that Tesla would make ventilators for COVID-19 patients if there were a shortage.[396] After figures like New York City mayor Bill de Blasio responded to Musk's offer,[397] Musk offered to donate ventilators which Tesla would build or buy from a third party.[396] However, Musk ended up buying and donating BiPAP and CPAP machines, which are non-invasive ventilators, rather than the much more expensive and sought-after invasive mechanical ventilator machines.[398][399] In September 2020, Musk stated that he would not get the COVID-19 vaccine, because he and his children were "not at risk for COVID".[400][401] Two months later, Musk contracted COVID-19 and suggested his COVID-19 rapid antigen test results were dubious, after which the phrase "Space Karen" trended on Twitter, in reference to Musk.[402][403] However, in December 2021, Musk revealed that he and his eligible children had received the vaccine.[404] In January 2023, Musk revealed that he experienced intense adverse reactions after his 2nd COVID-19 vaccine booster shot.[405] Finance Musk said that the U.S. government should not provide subsidies to companies, but impose a carbon tax to discourage poor behavior.[406][407] The free market, in his view, would achieve the best solution, and producing environmentally unfriendly vehicles should have consequences.[408] Tesla has received billions of dollars in subsidies.[409] In addition, Tesla made large sums from government-initiated systems of zero-emissions credits offered in California and at the United States federal level, which facilitated initial consumer adoption of Tesla vehicles, as the tax credits given by governments enabled Tesla's battery electric vehicles to be price-competitive, in comparison with existing lower-priced internal combustion engine vehicles.[410] Notably, Tesla generates some of its revenue from its sales of carbon credits granted to the company, by both the European Union Emissions Trading System and the Chinese national carbon trading scheme.[411][412][413][414] Musk, a longtime opponent of short-selling, has repeatedly criticized the practice and argued it should be illegal.[415][416] Wired magazine speculated that Musk's opposition to short-selling stems from how short sellers have an incentive to find and promote unfavorable information about his companies.[417] In early 2021, he encouraged the GameStop short squeeze.[418][419] In December 2022, Musk sold $3.6 billion of his stock in Tesla, equal to 22 million shares in the company,[420] despite pledging earlier in the year that he would not sell any additional shares.[421] Technology Musk has promoted cryptocurrencies and supports them over traditional government-issued fiat currencies.[422] Given the influence of Musk's tweets in moving cryptocurrency markets,[423] his statements about cryptocurrencies have been viewed as market manipulation by some, such as economist Nouriel Roubini.[424] Musk's social media praising of Bitcoin and Dogecoin was credited for increasing their prices. Consequently, Tesla's 2021 announcement, against the backdrop of Musk's social media behavior, that it bought $1.5 billion worth of Bitcoin, raised questions.[425] Tesla's announcement that it would accept Bitcoin for payment was criticized by environmentalists and investors, due to the environmental impact of cryptocurrency mining. A few months later, in response to the criticism, Musk announced on Twitter that Tesla would no longer accept payments in Bitcoin and would not engage in any Bitcoin transactions until the environmental issues are solved.[426][427] Despite the Boring Company's involvement in building mass transit infrastructure, Musk has criticized public transport and promoted individualized transport (private vehicles).[428][429][430] His comments have been called "elitist" and have sparked widespread criticism from both transportation and urban planning experts, who have pointed out that public transportation in dense urban areas is more economical, more energy efficient, and requires much less space than private cars.[429][431][430] Personal life From the early 2000s until late 2020, Musk resided in California, where both Tesla and SpaceX were founded.[432] In 2020, he moved to Texas, saying that California had become "complacent" about its economic success.[432][433] While hosting Saturday Night Live in May 2021, Musk said that he has Asperger syndrome.[434] Musk met his first wife, Canadian Justine Wilson, while attending Queen's University in Ontario, Canada; and they married in 2000.[435] In 2002, their first child died of sudden infant death syndrome at the age of 10 weeks.[436] After his death, the couple decided to use IVF to continue their family.[437] They had twins in 2004 followed by triplets in 2006.[437] The couple divorced in 2008 and shared custody of their children.[438][439] In 2022, one of the twins officially changed her name to reflect her gender identity, and to use Wilson as her last name because she no longer wished to be associated with Musk.[440] In an October 2022 interview with FT.com, Musk blamed the estrangement of his daughter on what the Financial Times characterized as "the supposed takeover of elite schools and universities by neo-Marxists."[441] In 2008, Musk began dating English actress Talulah Riley.[442] They married two years later at Dornoch Cathedral in Scotland.[443][444] In 2012, the couple divorced, before remarrying the following year.[445] After briefly filing for divorce in 2014,[445] Musk finalized a second divorce from Riley in 2016.[446] Musk then dated Amber Heard for several months in 2017;[447] he had reportedly been pursuing her since 2012.[448] Musk was later accused by Johnny Depp of having an affair with Heard while she was still married to Depp.[449][450] Musk and Heard both denied the affair.[449] In 2018, Musk and Canadian musician Grimes revealed that they were dating.[451] Grimes gave birth to their son in May 2020.[452][453] According to Musk and Grimes, his name was "X Æ A-12"; however, the name would have violated California regulations as it contained characters that are not in the modern English alphabet,[454][455] and was then changed to "X Æ A-Xii". This drew more confusion, as Æ is not a letter in the modern English alphabet.[456] The child was eventually named X AE A-XII Musk, with "X" as a first name, "AE A-XII" as a middle name, and "Musk" as surname.[457] In December 2021, Grimes and Musk had a second child, a daughter named Exa Dark Sideræl Musk (nicknamed "Y"), born via surrogacy.[1] Despite the pregnancy, Musk confirmed reports that the couple were "semi-separated" in September 2021; in an interview with Time in December 2021, he said he was single.[458][459] In March 2022, Grimes said of her relationship with Musk: "I would probably refer to him as my boyfriend, but we're very fluid."[1] Later that month, Grimes tweeted that she and Musk had broken up again but remained on good terms.[460] In July 2022, Insider published court documents revealing that Musk had had twins with Shivon Zilis, director of operations and special projects at Neuralink, in November 2021.[3] They were born weeks before Musk and Grimes had their second child via surrogate in December. The news "raise[d] questions about workplace ethics", given that Zilis directly reported to Musk.[461] Also in July 2022, The Wall Street Journal reported that Musk allegedly had an affair with Nicole Shanahan, the wife of Google co-founder Sergey Brin, in 2021, leading to their divorce the following year.[462] Musk denied the report.[463] Sexual misconduct allegations In May 2022, Business Insider cited an anonymous friend of an unnamed SpaceX contract flight attendant, alleging that Musk engaged in sexual misconduct in 2016. The source stated that in November 2018, Musk, SpaceX, and the former flight attendant entered into a severance agreement granting the attendant a $250,000 payment in exchange for a promise not to sue over the claims.[464] Musk responded, "If I were inclined to engage in sexual harassment, this is unlikely to be the first time in my entire 30-year career that it comes to light". He accused the article from Business Insider of being a "politically motivated hit piece".[465][466] After the release of the Business Insider article, Tesla's stock fell by more than 6%,[467] decreasing Musk's net worth by $10 billion.[468] Barron's wrote "...some investors considered key-man risk – the danger that a company could be badly hurt by the loss of one individual."[469] Public perception Though Musk's ventures were influential within their own industries in the 2000s, Musk only became a public figure in the early 2010s. He is often described as an eccentric who makes spontaneous and controversial statements, contrary to other billionaires who prefer reclusiveness to protect their businesses.[470][471] Celebrated by fans and hated by critics, Musk was described by Vance as having become very polarizing because of his "part philosopher, part troll" role on Twitter.[472] Media appearances See also: Elon Musk filmography With Steve Jobs and Donald Trump, Musk served as inspiration for the characterization of Tony Stark in the Marvel film Iron Man (2008).[473] Musk had a cameo appearance in the 2010 sequel, Iron Man 2.[474] Musk has made cameos and appearances in other films such as Machete Kills (2013),[475] Why Him? (2016),[476] and Men in Black: International (2019).[477] Television series in which he has appeared include The Simpsons ("The Musk Who Fell to Earth", 2015),[478] The Big Bang Theory ("The Platonic Permutation", 2015),[479] South Park ("Members Only", 2016),[480][481] Rick and Morty ("One Crew over the Crewcoo's Morty", 2019),[482][483] Young Sheldon ("A Patch, a Modem, and a Zantac®", 2017),[484] and Saturday Night Live (2021).[485] He contributed interviews to the documentaries Racing Extinction (2015) and the Werner Herzog-directed Lo and Behold (2016).[486][487] Recognition

COMPUTER AND IT’S IMPORTANCE WHAT IS A COMPUTER? A computer is a machine that can be programmed to carry out sequences of arithmetic or logical operation (computation) automatically. Modern digital electronic computers can perform generic sets of operations known as programs. These programs enable computers to perform a wide range of tasks. A computer system is a nominally complete computer that includes the hardware, operating system (main software), and peripheral equipment needed and used for full operation. This term may also refer to a group of computers that are linked and function together, such as a computer network. In the history of computers, advancements of modern computers are referred as the generation of computers. Currently, we are on the 5th generation of computers. Let us have a look at the important features all five generations. HISTORY • 1st Generation: This was from the period 1940-1955. This was when machine language was developed for the use of computers. They used vacuum tubes for the circuitry. For the purpose of memory, they used magnetic drums. • 2nd Generation: There was the up-gradation from vacuum tubes to transistors. Since they advanced from binary to assembly languages, this made the computers smaller, faster and energy-efficient. • 3rd Generation: The hallmark of this period (1964-1971) was the development of integrated circuits (ICs). • 4th Generation: The invention of the microprocessors brought along the 4th generation of computers. This was when the computers were produced for personal use. Another important aspect is the development of higher computer languages such as Java and C++. • 5th Generation: This is the present and the future in the computer world. Artificial intelligence is the defining aspect of this generation. The use of parallel processing and superconductors provide a lot of scope for the future and are making this a reality. Concept of modern computer . 1.1.1 Mobile computers Mobile Computing System is a distributed system, which is connected via a wireless network for communication. The clients or the nodes possess mobility and the ability to provide computing at anytime, anywhere. Below are few examples where mobile computing is in use. • Online delivery systems associated with credit card verification. • Taxi/cab services operated via smartphones and mobile apps. • Location-aware mobile services used to transmit weather and road conditions. • Social media applications and e-mail access via smartphones. • Smart wearable devices which are used to measure and record medical/health conditions of individuals. 1.1.2 Artificial intelligence It is the science and engineering of making intelligent machines, especially intelligent computer programs. It is related to the similar task of using computers to understand human intelligence, but AI does not have to confine itself to methods that are biologically observable. Advantages of Computers: Certain advantages of computers are as follows: High Speed i. It is a very fast device. ii. It is capable to perform calculations of a very large set of data. iii. Its units of speed are the microsecond, nanosecond, and even the picosecond. iv. It is capable to perform millions of calculations in a few seconds as compared to the manual effort that takes many months to perform the same task. Accuracy i. In addition to being very fast, computers are accurate as well. ii. The calculations are error-free. iii. All jobs are performed with accuracy, but make sure that the input is correct. Storage Capability i. One of the important characteristics of computers is memory. ii. a Large amount of data can be stored in a computer. iii. Any type of data like images, videos, text, audio, etc. can be stored. Diligence i. A computer is free from monotony, tiredness, and lack of concentration. ii. It can continue to work without any fatigue and boredom. iii. Repeated tasks can be performed with the same speed and accuracy. Versatility i. A computer is very flexible in performing the jobs that can be done. ii. A computer can also solve problems related to various fields. iii. At one instance, it may be playing a card game and within the next moment, it may be solving a complex scientific problem. Reliability i. Modern electronic components have a long life. ii. The machines are designed to make maintenance easy. Automation i. Functions can be performed automatically. ii. Automation is required to perform a task automatically. Once the computer receives a program i.e., the program gets stored in the computer’s memory, then no human interaction is required for the program and instruction to control the program execution. Reduction in Paper Work and Cost i. The use of computers for data processing in an organization results in speeding up the process and also leads to a reduction in paperwork. ii. The problem of maintenance of a large number of paper files gets reduced as data in electronic files can be retrieved as and when required. iii. Since the initial investment for installing a computer is high, the cost of each of its transactions substantially gets reduced. .

COMPUTER AND IT’S IMPORTANCE WHAT IS A COMPUTER? A computer is a machine that can be programmed to carry out sequences of arithmetic or logical operation (computation) automatically. Modern digital electronic computers can perform generic sets of operations known as programs. These programs enable computers to perform a wide range of tasks. A computer system is a nominally complete computer that includes the hardware, operating system (main software), and peripheral equipment needed and used for full operation. This term may also refer to a group of computers that are linked and function together, such as a computer network. A broad range of industrial and consumer products use computers as control systems. Simple special-purpose devices like microwave ovens and remote controls are included, as are factory devices like industrial robots and computer-aided design, as well as general-purpose devices like personal computers and mobile devices like smartphones. Computers power the Internet, which links billions of other computers and users. 1.1 History 2 Pre-20th century The Ishango bone, a bone tool dating back to prehistoric Africa. Devices have been used to aid computation for thousands of years, mostly using one-to-one correspondence with fingers. The earliest counting device was most likely a form of tally stick. Later record keeping aids throughout the Fertile Crescent included calculi (clay spheres, cones, etc.) which represented counts of items, likely livestock or grains, sealed in hollow unbaked clay containers.[a][4] The use of counting rods is one example. The Chinese suanpan (算盘). The number represented on this abacus is 6,302,715,408. The abacus was initially used for arithmetic tasks. The Roman abacus was developed from devices used in Babylonia as early as 2400 BC. Since then, many other forms of reckoning boards or tables have been invented. In a medieval European counting house, a checkered cloth would be placed on a table, and markers moved around on it according to certain rules, as an aid to calculating sums of money. The Antikythera mechanism, dating back to ancient Greece circa 150–100 BC, is an early analog computing device. The Antikythera mechanism is believed to be the earliest known mechanical analog computer, according to Derek J. de Solla Price. It was designed to calculate astronomical positions. It was discovered in 1901 in the Antikythera wreck off the Greek island of Antikythera, between Kythera and Crete, and has been dated to approximately c. 100 BC. Devices of comparable complexity to the Antikythera mechanism would not reappear until the fourteenth century. Many mechanical aids to calculation and measurement were constructed for astronomical and navigation use. The planisphere was a star chart invented by Abū Rayhān al-Bīrūnī in the early 11th century. The astrolabe was invented in the Hellenistic world in either the 1st or 2nd centuries BC and is often attributed to Hipparchus. A combination of the planisphere and dioptra, the astrolabe was effectively an analog computer capable of working out several different kinds of problems in spherical astronomy. An astrolabe incorporating a mechanical calendar computer and gear-wheels was invented by Abi Bakr of Isfahan, Persia in 1235. Abū Rayhān al-Bīrūnī invented the first mechanical geared lunisolar calendar astrolabe an early fixed-wired knowledge processing machine with a gear train and gear-wheels, c. 1000 AD. The sector, a calculating instrument used for solving problems in proportion, trigonometry, multiplication and division, and for various functions, such as squares and cube roots, was developed in the late 16th century and found application in gunnery, surveying and navigation. The planimeter was a manual instrument to calculate the area of a closed figure by tracing over it with a mechanical linkage. A slide rule. The slide rule was invented around 1620–1630 by the English clergyman William Oughtred, shortly after the publication of the concept of the logarithm. It is a hand-operated analog computer for doing multiplication and division. As slide rule development progressed, added scales provided reciprocals, squares and square roots, cubes and cube roots, as well as transcendental functions such as logarithms and exponentials, circular and hyperbolic trigonometry and other functions. Slide rules with special scales are still used for quick performance of routine calculations, such as the E6B circular slide rule used for time and distance calculations on light aircraft. In the 1770s, Pierre Jaquet-Droz, a Swiss watchmaker, built a mechanical doll (automaton) that could write holding a quill pen. By switching the number and order of its internal wheels different letters, and hence different messages, could be produced. In effect, it could be mechanically "programmed" to read instructions. Along with two other complex machines, the doll is at the Musée d'Art et d'Histoire of Neuchâtel, Switzerland, and still operates.[15] In 1831–1835, mathematician and engineer Giovanni Plana devised a Perpetual Calendar machine, which, through a system of pulleys and cylinders and over, could predict the perpetual calendar for every year from AD 0 (that is, 1 BC) to AD 4000, keeping track of leap years and varying day length. The tide-predicting machine invented by the Scottish scientist Sir William Thomson in 1872 was of great utility to navigation in shallow waters. It used a system of pulleys and wires to automatically calculate predicted tide levels for a set period at a particular location. The differential analyser, a mechanical analog computer designed to solve differential equations by integration, used wheel-and-disc mechanisms to perform the integration. In 1876, Sir William Thomson had already discussed the possible construction of such calculators, but he had been stymied by the limited output torque of the ball-and-disk integrators. In a differential analyzer, the output of one integrator drove the input of the next integrator, or a graphing output. The torque amplifier was the advance that allowed these machines to work. Starting in the 1920s, Vannevar Bush and others developed mechanical differential analyzers. 3 First computer A portion of Babbage's Difference engine. Charles Babbage, an English mechanical engineer and polymath, originated the concept of a programmable computer. Considered the "father of the computer",[17] he conceptualized and invented the first mechanical computer in the early 19th century. After working on his revolutionary difference engine, designed to aid in navigational calculations, in 1833 he realized that a much more general design, an Analytical Engine, was possible. The input of programs and data was to be provided to the machine via punched cards, a method being used at the time to direct mechanical looms such as the Jacquard loom. For output, the machine would have a printer, a curve plotter and a bell. The machine would also be able to punch numbers onto cards to be read in later. The Engine incorporated an arithmetic logic unit, control flow in the form of conditional branching and loops, and integrated memory, making it the first design for a general-purpose computer that could be described in modern terms as Turing-complete.[18][19] The machine was about a century ahead of its time. All the parts for his machine had to be made by hand – this was a major problem for a device with thousands of parts. Eventually, the project was dissolved with the decision of the British Government to cease funding. Babbage's failure to complete the analytical engine can be chiefly attributed to political and financial difficulties as well as his desire to develop an increasingly sophisticated computer and to move ahead faster than anyone else could follow. Nevertheless, his son, Henry Babbage, completed a simplified version of the analytical engine's computing unit (the mill) in 1888. He gave a successful demonstration of its use in computing tables in 1906. 3.1.1 Analog computers Main article: Analog computer Sir William Thomson's third tide-predicting machine design, 1879–81 During the first half of the 20th century, many scientific computing needs were met by increasingly sophisticated analog computers, which used a direct mechanical or electrical model of the problem as a basis for computation. However, these were not programmable and generally lacked the versatility and accuracy of modern digital computers.[20] The first modern analog computer was a tide-predicting machine, invented by Sir William Thomson (later to become Lord Kelvin) in 1872. The differential analyser, a mechanical analog computer designed to solve differential equations by integration using wheel-and-disc mechanisms, was conceptualized in 1876 by James Thomson, the elder brother of the more famous Sir William Thomson.[16] The art of mechanical analog computing reached its zenith with the differential analyzer, built by H. L. Hazen and Vannevar Bush at MIT starting in 1927. This built on the mechanical integrators of James Thomson and the torque amplifiers invented by H. W. Nieman. A dozen of these devices were built before their obsolescence became obvious. By the 1950s, the success of digital electronic computers had spelled the end for most analog computing machines, but analog computers remained in use during the 1950s in some specialized applications such as education (slide rule) and aircraft (control systems). 3.1.2 Digital computers 3.1.2.1 Electromechanical By 1938, the United States Navy had developed an electromechanical analog computer small enough to use aboard a submarine. This was the Torpedo Data Computer, which used trigonometry to solve the problem of firing a torpedo at a moving target. During World War II similar devices were developed in other countries as well. Replica of Konrad Zuse's Z3, the first fully automatic, digital (electromechanical) computer. Early digital computers were electromechanical; electric switches drove mechanical relays to perform the calculation. These devices had a low operating speed and were eventually superseded by much faster all-electric computers, originally using vacuum tubes. The Z2, created by German engineer Konrad Zuse in 1939, was one of the earliest examples of an electromechanical relay computer.[21] In 1941, Zuse followed his earlier machine up with the Z3, the world's first working electromechanical programmable, fully automatic digital computer.[22][23] The Z3 was built with 2000 relays, implementing a 22 bit word length that operated at a clock frequency of about 5–10 Hz.[24] Program code was supplied on punched film while data could be stored in 64 words of memory or supplied from the keyboard. It was quite similar to modern machines in some respects, pioneering numerous advances such as floating-point numbers. Rather than the harder-to-implement decimal system (used in Charles Babbage's earlier design), using a binary system meant that Zuse's machines were easier to build and potentially more reliable, given the technologies available at that time.[25] The Z3 was not itself a universal computer but could be extended to be Turing complete.[26][27] Zuse's next computer, the Z4, became the world's first commercial computer; after initial delay due to the Second World War, it was completed in 1950 and delivered to the ETH Zurich.[28] The computer was manufactured by Zuse's own company, Zuse KG [de], which was founded in 1941 as the first company with the sole purpose of developing computers.[28] 3.1.2.2 Vacuum tubes and digital electronic circuits Purely electronic circuit elements soon replaced their mechanical and electromechanical equivalents, at the same time that digital calculation replaced analog. The engineer Tommy Flowers, working at the Post Office Research Station in London in the 1930s, began to explore the possible use of electronics for the telephone exchange. Experimental equipment that he built in 1934 went into operation five years later, converting a portion of the telephone exchange network into an electronic data processing system, using thousands of vacuum tubes.[20] In the US, John Vincent Atanasoff and Clifford E. Berry of Iowa State University developed and tested the Atanasoff–Berry Computer (ABC) in 1942,[29] the first "automatic electronic digital computer".[30] This design was also all-electronic and used about 300 vacuum tubes, with capacitors fixed in a mechanically rotating drum for memory.[31] Colossus, the first electronic digital programmable computing device, was used to break German ciphers during World War II. It is seen here in use at Bletchley Park in 1943. During World War II, the British code-breakers at Bletchley Park achieved a number of successes at breaking encrypted German military communications. The German encryption machine, Enigma, was first attacked with the help of the electro-mechanical bombes which were often run by women.[32][33] To crack the more sophisticated German Lorenz SZ 40/42 machine, used for high-level Army communications, Max Newman and his colleagues commissioned Flowers to build the Colossus.[31] He spent eleven months from early February 1943 designing and building the first Colossus.[34] After a functional test in December 1943, Colossus was shipped to Bletchley Park, where it was delivered on 18 January 1944[35] and attacked its first message on 5 February.[31] Colossus was the world's first electronic digital programmable computer.[20] It used a large number of valves (vacuum tubes). It had paper-tape input and was capable of being configured to perform a variety of boolean logical operations on its data, but it was not Turing-complete. Nine Mk II Colossi were built (The Mk I was converted to a Mk II making ten machines in total). Colossus Mark I contained 1,500 thermionic valves (tubes), but Mark II with 2,400 valves, was both five times faster and simpler to operate than Mark I, greatly speeding the decoding process. The ENIAC[38] (Electronic Numerical Integrator and Computer) was the first electronic programmable computer built in the U.S. Although the ENIAC was similar to the Colossus, it was much faster, more flexible, and it was Turing-complete. Like the Colossus, a "program" on the ENIAC was defined by the states of its patch cables and switches, a far cry from the stored program electronic machines that came later. Once a program was written, it had to be mechanically set into the machine with manual resetting of plugs and switches. The programmers of the ENIAC were six women, often known collectively as the "ENIAC girls".[39][40] It combined the high speed of electronics with the ability to be programmed for many complex problems. It could add or subtract 5000 times a second, a thousand times faster than any other machine. It also had modules to multiply, divide, and square root. High speed memory was limited to 20 words (about 80 bytes). Built under the direction of John Mauchly and J. Presper Eckert at the University of Pennsylvania, ENIAC's development and construction lasted from 1943 to full operation at the end of 1945. The machine was huge, weighing 30 tons, using 200 kilowatts of electric power and contained over 18,000 vacuum tubes, 1,500 relays, and hundreds of thousands of resistors, capacitors, and inductors.[41] 3.1.3 Modern computers 3.1.3.1 Concept of modern computer The principle of the modern computer was proposed by Alan Turing in his seminal 1936 paper,[42] On Computable Numbers. Turing proposed a simple device that he called "Universal Computing machine" and that is now known as a universal Turing machine. He proved that such a machine is capable of computing anything that is computable by executing instructions (program) stored on tape, allowing the machine to be programmable. The fundamental concept of Turing's design is the stored program, where all the instructions for computing are stored in memory. Von Neumann acknowledged that the central concept of the modern computer was due to this paper.[43] Turing machines are to this day a central object of study in theory of computation. Except for the limitations imposed by their finite memory stores, modern computers are said to be Turing-complete, which is to say, they have algorithm execution capability equivalent to a universal Turing machine. 3.1.3.2 Stored programs A section of the reconstructed Manchester Baby, the first electronic stored-program computer Early computing machines had fixed programs. Changing its function required the re-wiring and re-structuring of the machine.[31] With the proposal of the stored-program computer this changed. A stored-program computer includes by design an instruction set and can store in memory a set of instructions (a program) that details the computation. The theoretical basis for the stored-program computer was laid out by Alan Turing in his 1936 paper. In 1945, Turing joined the National Physical Laboratory and began work on developing an electronic stored-program digital computer. His 1945 report "Proposed Electronic Calculator" was the first specification for such a device. John von Neumann at the University of Pennsylvania also circulated his First Draft of a Report on the EDVAC in 1945.[20] The Manchester Baby was the world's first stored-program computer. It was built at the University of Manchester in England by Frederic C. Williams, Tom Kilburn and Geoff Tootill, and ran its first program on 21 June 1948.[44] It was designed as a testbed for the Williams tube, the first random-access digital storage device.[45] Although the computer was described as "small and primitive" by a 1998 retrospective, it was the first working machine to contain all of the elements essential to a modern electronic computer.[46] As soon as the Baby had demonstrated the feasibility of its design, a project began at the university to develop it into a practically useful computer, the Manchester Mark 1. The Mark 1 in turn quickly became the prototype for the Ferranti Mark 1, the world's first commercially available general-purpose computer.[47] Built by Ferranti, it was delivered to the University of Manchester in February 1951. At least seven of these later machines were delivered between 1953 and 1957, one of them to Shell labs in Amsterdam.[48] In October 1947 the directors of British catering company J. Lyons & Company decided to take an active role in promoting the commercial development of computers. Lyons's LEO I computer, modelled closely on the Cambridge EDSAC of 1949, became operational in April 1951[49] and ran the world's first routine office computer job. Grace Hopper was the first to develop a compiler for a programming language.[2] 3.1.3.3 Transistors Main articles: Transistor and History of the transistor Further information: Transistor computer and MOSFET Bipolar junction transistor (BJT) The concept of a field-effect transistor was proposed by Julius Edgar Lilienfeld in 1925. John Bardeen and Walter Brattain, while working under William Shockley at Bell Labs, built the first working transistor, the point-contact transistor, in 1947, which was followed by Shockley's bipolar junction transistor in 1948.[50][51] From 1955 onwards, transistors replaced vacuum tubes in computer designs, giving rise to the "second generation" of computers. Compared to vacuum tubes, transistors have many advantages: they are smaller, and require less power than vacuum tubes, so give off less heat. Junction transistors were much more reliable than vacuum tubes and had longer, indefinite, service life. Transistorized computers could contain tens of thousands of binary logic circuits in a relatively compact space. However, early junction transistors were relatively bulky devices that were difficult to manufacture on a mass-production basis, which limited them to a number of specialised applications.[52] At the University of Manchester, a team under the leadership of Tom Kilburn designed and built a machine using the newly developed transistors instead of valves.[53] Their first transistorised computer and the first in the world, was operational by 1953, and a second version was completed there in April 1955. However, the machine did make use of valves to generate its 125 kHz clock waveforms and in the circuitry to read and write on its magnetic drum memory, so it was not the first completely transistorized computer. That distinction goes to the Harwell CADET of 1955,[54] built by the electronics division of the Atomic Energy Research Establishment at Harwell.[54][55] MOSFET (MOS transistor), showing gate (G), body (B), source (S) and drain (D) terminals. The gate is separated from the body by an insulating layer (pink). The metal–oxide–silicon field-effect transistor (MOSFET), also known as the MOS transistor, was invented by Mohamed M. Atalla and Dawon Kahng at Bell Labs in 1959.[56] It was the first truly compact transistor that could be miniaturised and mass-produced for a wide range of uses.[52] With its high scalability,[57] and much lower power consumption and higher density than bipolar junction transistors,[58] the MOSFET made it possible to build high-density integrated circuits.[59][60] In addition to data processing, it also enabled the practical use of MOS transistors as memory cell storage elements, leading to the development of MOS semiconductor memory, which replaced earlier magnetic-core memory in computers. The MOSFET led to the microcomputer revolution,[61] and became the driving force behind the computer revolution.[62][63] The MOSFET is the most widely used transistor in computers,[64][65] and is the fundamental building block of digital electronics.[66] 3.1.3.4 Integrated circuits Main articles: Integrated circuit and Invention of the integrated circuit Further information: Planar process and Microprocessor Die photograph of a MOS 6502, an early 1970s microprocessor integrating 3500 transistors on a single chip. Integrated circuits are typically packaged in plastic, metal, or ceramic cases to protect the IC from damage and for ease of assembly. The next great advance in computing power came with the advent of the integrated circuit (IC). The idea of the integrated circuit was first conceived by a radar scientist working for the Royal Radar Establishment of the Ministry of Defence, Geoffrey W.A. Dummer. Dummer presented the first public description of an integrated circuit at the Symposium on Progress in Quality Electronic Components in Washington, D.C. on 7 May 1952.[67] The first working ICs were invented by Jack Kilby at Texas Instruments and Robert Noyce at Fairchild Semiconductor.[68] Kilby recorded his initial ideas concerning the integrated circuit in July 1958, successfully demonstrating the first working integrated example on 12 September 1958.[69] In his patent application of 6 February 1959, Kilby described his new device as "a body of semiconductor material ... wherein all the components of the electronic circuit are completely integrated".[70][71] However, Kilby's invention was a hybrid integrated circuit (hybrid IC), rather than a monolithic integrated circuit (IC) chip.[72] Kilby's IC had external wire connections, which made it difficult to mass-produce.[73] Noyce also came up with his own idea of an integrated circuit half a year later than Kilby.[74] Noyce's invention was the first true monolithic IC chip.[75][73] His chip solved many practical problems that Kilby's had not. Produced at Fairchild Semiconductor, it was made of silicon, whereas Kilby's chip was made of germanium. Noyce's monolithic IC was fabricated using the planar process, developed by his colleague Jean Hoerni in early 1959. In turn, the planar process was based on Mohamed M. Atalla's work on semiconductor surface passivation by silicon dioxide in the late 1950s.[76][77][78] Modern monolithic ICs are predominantly MOS (metal–oxide–semiconductor) integrated circuits, built from MOSFETs (MOS transistors).[79] The earliest experimental MOS IC to be fabricated was a 16-transistor chip built by Fred Heiman and Steven Hofstein at RCA in 1962.[80] General Microelectronics later introduced the first commercial MOS IC in 1964,[81] developed by Robert Norman.[80] Following the development of the self-aligned gate (silicon-gate) MOS transistor by Robert Kerwin, Donald Klein and John Sarace at Bell Labs in 1967, the first silicon-gate MOS IC with self-aligned gates was developed by Federico Faggin at Fairchild Semiconductor in 1968.[82] The MOSFET has since become the most critical device component in modern ICs.[79] The development of the MOS integrated circuit led to the invention of the microprocessor,[83][84] and heralded an explosion in the commercial and personal use of computers. While the subject of exactly which device was the first microprocessor is contentious, partly due to lack of agreement on the exact definition of the term "microprocessor", it is largely undisputed that the first single-chip microprocessor was the Intel 4004,[85] designed and realized by Federico Faggin with his silicon-gate MOS IC technology,[83] along with Ted Hoff, Masatoshi Shima and Stanley Mazor at Intel.[b][87] In the early 1970s, MOS IC technology enabled the integration of more than 10,000 transistors on a single chip.[60] System on a Chip (SoCs) are complete computers on a microchip (or chip) the size of a coin.[88] They may or may not have integrated RAM and flash memory. If not integrated, the RAM is usually placed directly above (known as Package on package) or below (on the opposite side of the circuit board) the SoC, and the flash memory is usually placed right next to the SoC, this all done to improve data transfer speeds, as the data signals don't have to travel long distances. Since ENIAC in 1945, computers have advanced enormously, with modern SoCs (Such as the Snapdragon 865) being the size of a coin while also being hundreds of thousands of times more powerful than ENIAC, integrating billions of transistors, and consuming only a few watts of power. 3.1.4 Mobile computers The first mobile computers were heavy and ran from mains power. The 50 lb (23 kg) IBM 5100 was an early example. Later portables such as the Osborne 1 and Compaq Portable were considerably lighter but still needed to be plugged in. The first laptops, such as the Grid Compass, removed this requirement by incorporating batteries – and with the continued miniaturization of computing resources and advancements in portable battery life, portable computers grew in popularity in the 2000s.[89] The same developments allowed manufacturers to integrate computing resources into cellular mobile phones by the early 2000s. 3.1.5 These smartphones and tablets run on a variety of operating systems and recently became the dominant computing device on the market.[90] These are powered by System on a Chip (SoCs), which are complete computers on a microchip the size of a coin. 3.1.6 Artificial intelligence A computer will solve problems in exactly the way it is programmed to, without regard to efficiency, alternative solutions, possible shortcuts, or possible errors in the code. Computer programs that learn and adapt are part of the emerging field of artificial intelligence and machine learning. Artificial intelligence based products generally fall into two major categories: rule-based systems and pattern recognition systems. Rule-based systems attempt to represent the rules used by human experts and tend to be expensive to develop. Pattern-based systems use data about a problem to generate conclusions. Examples of pattern-based systems include voice recognition, font recognition, translation and the emerging field of on-line marketing. Advantages of Computers: Certain advantages of computers are as follows: High Speed i. It is a very fast device. ii. It is capable to perform calculations of a very large set of data. iii. Its units of speed are the microsecond, nanosecond, and even the picosecond. iv. It is capable to perform millions of calculations in a few seconds as compared to the manual effort that takes many months to perform the same task. Accuracy i. In addition to being very fast, computers are accurate as well. ii. The calculations are error-free. iii. All jobs are performed with accuracy, but make sure that the input is correct. Storage Capability i. One of the important characteristics of computers is memory. ii. a Large amount of data can be stored in a computer. iii. Any type of data like images, videos, text, audio, etc. can be stored. Diligence i. A computer is free from monotony, tiredness, and lack of concentration. ii. It can continue to work without any fatigue and boredom. iii. Repeated tasks can be performed with the same speed and accuracy. Versatility i. A computer is very flexible in performing the jobs that can be done. ii. A computer can also solve problems related to various fields. iii. At one instance, it may be playing a card game and within the next moment, it may be solving a complex scientific problem. Reliability i. Modern electronic components have a long life. ii. The machines are designed to make maintenance easy. Automation i. Functions can be performed automatically. ii. Automation is required to perform a task automatically. Once the computer receives a program i.e., the program gets stored in the computer’s memory, then no human interaction is required for the program and instruction to control the program execution. Reduction in Paper Work and Cost i. The use of computers for data processing in an organization results in speeding up the process and also leads to a reduction in paperwork. ii. The problem of maintenance of a large number of paper files gets reduced as data in electronic files can be retrieved as and when required. iii. Since the initial investment for installing a computer is high, the cost of each of its transactions substantially gets reduced. Advantages of Computers: Certain advantages of computers are as follows: High Speed i. It is a very fast device. ii. It is capable to perform calculations of a very large set of data. iii. Its units of speed are the microsecond, nanosecond, and even the picosecond. iv. It is capable to perform millions of calculations in a few seconds as compared to the manual effort that takes many months to perform the same task. Accuracy i. In addition to being very fast, computers are accurate as well. ii. The calculations are error-free. iii. All jobs are performed with accuracy, but make sure that the input is correct. Storage Capability i. One of the important characteristics of computers is memory. ii. a Large amount of data can be stored in a computer. iii. Any type of data like images, videos, text, audio, etc. can be stored. Diligence i. A computer is free from monotony, tiredness, and lack of concentration. ii. It can continue to work without any fatigue and boredom. iii. Repeated tasks can be performed with the same speed and accuracy. Versatility i. A computer is very flexible in performing the jobs that can be done. ii. A computer can also solve problems related to various fields. iii. At one instance, it may be playing a card game and within the next moment, it may be solving a complex scientific problem. Reliability i. Modern electronic components have a long life. ii. The machines are designed to make maintenance easy. Automation i. Functions can be performed automatically. ii. Automation is required to perform a task automatically. Once the computer receives a program i.e., the program gets stored in the computer’s memory, then no human interaction is required for the program and instruction to control the program execution. Reduction in Paper Work and Cost i. The use of computers for data processing in an organization results in speeding up the process and also leads to a reduction in paperwork. ii. The problem of maintenance of a large number of paper files gets reduced as data in electronic files can be retrieved as and when required. iii. Since the initial investment for installing a computer is high, the cost of each of its transactions substantially gets reduced.

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This article is about the city proper in Nevada. For the metropolitan area, see Las Vegas Valley. For the tourist destination, see Las Vegas Strip. For the city in New Mexico, see Las Vegas, New Mexico. For other uses, see Las Vegas (disambiguation). "Vegas" redirects here. For other uses, see Vegas (disambiguation). Las Vegas, Nevada City Downtown Las Vegas Downtown Las Vegas World Market Center World Market Center Stratosphere Tower Stratosphere Tower Las Vegas Las Vegas Strip Las Vegas Strip Lou Ruvo Center for Brain Health Lou Ruvo Center for Brain Health Clark County Government Center Clark County Government Center Flag of Las Vegas, Nevada Flag Official seal of Las Vegas, Nevada Seal Etymology: Spanish: Las vegas (English: The meadows) Nickname(s): "Vegas",[1] "Sin City", "City of Lights", "The Gambling Capital of the World",[2] "The Entertainment Capital of the World", "Capital of Second Chances",[3] "The Marriage Capital of the World", "The Silver City", "America's Playground" Wikimedia | © OpenStreetMap Show Las Vegas Show Clark County Show Nevada Show the United States Show all Coordinates: 36°10′30″N 115°08′11″WCoordinates: 36°10′30″N 115°08′11″W Country United States State Nevada County Clark Founded May 15, 1905 Incorporated March 16, 1911 Government • Type Council–Manager • Mayor Carolyn Goodman (I) • Mayor Pro Tem Brian Knudsen (D) • City Council Members • City manager Jorge Cervantes Area[4] • City 141.91 sq mi (367.53 km2) • Land 141.85 sq mi (367.40 km2) • Water 0.05 sq mi (0.14 km2) Elevation 2,001 ft (610 m) Population (2020) • City 641,903 • Rank 25th in the United States 1st in Nevada • Density 4,525.16/sq mi (1,747.17/km2) • Urban 2,196,623 (US: 21st) • Urban density 5,046.3/sq mi (1,948.4/km2) • Metro[5] 2,265,461 (US: 29th) Demonym Las Vegan Time zone UTC−08:00 (PST) • Summer (DST) UTC−07:00 (PDT) ZIP Codes 89044, 89054, 891xx Area code 702 & 725 FIPS code 32-40000 GNIS feature ID 847388 Major airport LAS Interstate Highways I-15, I-515 Other major highways US 93, US 95, SR 159, SR 599, SR 604, CC 215 Website lasvegasnevada.gov Las Vegas (US: /lɑːsˈveɪɡəs/; Spanish for "The Meadows"), often known simply as Vegas, is the 25th-most populous city in the United States, the most populous city in the state of Nevada, and the county seat of Clark County. The city anchors the Las Vegas Valley metropolitan area and is the largest city within the greater Mojave Desert.[6] Las Vegas is an internationally renowned major resort city, known primarily for its gambling, shopping, fine dining, entertainment, and nightlife. The Las Vegas Valley as a whole serves as the leading financial, commercial, and cultural center for Nevada. The city bills itself as The Entertainment Capital of the World, and is famous for its luxurious and extremely large casino-hotels together with their associated activities. It is a top three destination in the United States for business conventions and a global leader in the hospitality industry, claiming more AAA Five Diamond hotels than any other city in the world.[7][8][9] Today, Las Vegas annually ranks as one of the world's most visited tourist destinations.[10][11] The city's tolerance for numerous forms of adult entertainment earned it the title of "Sin City",[12] and has made Las Vegas a popular setting for literature, films, television programs, and music videos. Las Vegas was settled in 1905 and officially incorporated in 1911. At the close of the 20th century, it was the most populated North American city founded within that century (a similar distinction was earned by Chicago in the 19th century). Population growth has accelerated since the 1960s, and between 1990 and 2000 the population nearly doubled, increasing by 85.2%. Rapid growth has continued into the 21st century, and according to the United States Census Bureau, the city had 641,903 residents in 2020,[13] with a metropolitan population of 2,227,053.[14] As with most major metropolitan areas, the name of the primary city ("Las Vegas" in this case) is often used to describe areas beyond official city limits. In the case of Las Vegas, this especially applies to the areas on and near the Las Vegas Strip, which are actually located within the unincorporated communities of Paradise and Winchester.[15][16] Nevada is the driest state, and Las Vegas is the driest major U.S. city. Over time and influenced by climate change, droughts in Southern Nevada have been increasing in frequency and severity,[17] putting a further strain on Las Vegas' water securityHistory Main article: History of Las Vegas For a chronological guide, see Timeline of Las Vegas. Southern Paiutes at Moapa wearing traditional Paiute basket hats with Paiute cradleboard and rabbit robe Nomadic Paleo-Indians traveled to the Las Vegas area 10,000 years ago, leaving behind petroglyphs. Ancient Puebloan and Paiute tribes followed at least 2,000 years ago.[19] A young Mexican scout named Rafael Rivera is credited as the first non-Native American to encounter the valley, in 1829.[20] Trader Antonio Armijo led a 60-man party along the Spanish Trail to Los Angeles, California in 1829.[21][22] In 1844, John C. Frémont arrived, and his writings helped lure pioneers to the area. Downtown Las Vegas's Fremont Street is named after him. Eleven years later, members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints chose Las Vegas as the site to build a fort halfway between Salt Lake City and Los Angeles, where they would travel to gather supplies. The fort was abandoned several years afterward. The remainder of this Old Mormon Fort can still be seen at the intersection of Las Vegas Boulevard and Washington Avenue. Las Vegas was founded as a city in 1905, when 110 acres (45 ha) of land adjacent to the Union Pacific Railroad tracks were auctioned in what would become the downtown area. In 1911, Las Vegas was incorporated as a city.[23] Golden Nugget and Pioneer Club along Fremont Street in 1952 1931 was a pivotal year for Las Vegas. At that time, Nevada legalized casino gambling and reduced residency requirements for divorce to six weeks. This year also witnessed the beginning of construction on nearby Hoover Dam. The influx of construction workers and their families helped Las Vegas avoid economic calamity during the Great Depression. The construction work was completed in 1935. In late 1941, Las Vegas Army Airfield was established. Renamed Nellis Air Force Base in 1950, it is now home to the United States Air Force Thunderbirds aerobatic team.[24] Following World War II, lavishly decorated hotels, gambling casinos, and big-name entertainment became synonymous with Las Vegas. This view of downtown Las Vegas shows a mushroom cloud in the background. Scenes such as this were typical during the 1950s. From 1951 to 1962, the government conducted 100 atmospheric tests at the nearby Nevada Test Site.[25] In 1951, nuclear weapons testing began at the Nevada Test Site, 65 miles (105 km) northwest of Las Vegas. During this time, the city was nicknamed the "Atomic City". Residents and visitors were able to witness the mushroom clouds (and were exposed to the fallout) until 1963 when the Partial Nuclear Test Ban Treaty required that nuclear tests be moved underground.[25] In 1955, the Moulin Rouge Hotel opened and became the first racially integrated casino-hotel in Las Vegas. The iconic "Welcome to Las Vegas" sign, which has never been located within municipal limits, was created in 1959 by Betty Willis.[26] Fremont Street in the late 1960s During the 1960s, corporations and business tycoons such as Howard Hughes were building and buying hotel-casino properties. Gambling was referred to as "gaming", which transitioned it into a legitimate business. Learning from Las Vegas, published during this era, asked architects to take inspiration from the city's highly decorated buildings, helping to start the postmodern architecture movement. In 1995, the Fremont Street Experience opened in Las Vegas's downtown area. This canopied five-block area features 12.5 million LED lights and 550,000 watts of sound from dusk until midnight during shows held at the top of each hour. Due to the realization of many revitalization efforts, 2012 was dubbed "The Year of Downtown". Projects worth hundreds of millions of dollars made their debut at this time, including the Smith Center for the Performing Arts, the DISCOVERY Children's Museum, the Mob Museum, the Neon Museum, a new City Hall complex, and renovations for a new Zappos.com corporate headquarters in the old City Hall building..Geography Astronaut photograph of Las Vegas at night Downtown Las Vegas with Red Rock Canyon in the background Las Vegas is situated within Clark County, in a basin on the floor of the Mojave Desert,[28] and is surrounded by mountain ranges on all sides. Much of the landscape is rocky and arid, with desert vegetation and wildlife. It can be subjected to torrential flash floods, although much has been done to mitigate the effects of flash floods through improved drainage systems.[29] The peaks surrounding Las Vegas reach elevations of over 10,000 feet (3,000 m), and act as barriers to the strong flow of moisture from the surrounding area. The elevation is approximately 2,030 ft (620 m) above sea level. According to the United States Census Bureau, the city has a total area of 135.86 sq mi (351.9 km2), of which 135.81 sq mi (351.7 km2) is land and 0.05 sq mi (0.13 km2) (0.03%) is water. After Alaska and California, Nevada is the third most seismically active state in the U.S. It has been estimated by the United States Geological Survey (USGS) that over the next 50 years, there is a 10–20% chance of an M6.0 or greater earthquake occurring within 50 km (31 mi) of Las Vegas.[30] Within the city, there are many lawns, trees and other greenery. Due to water resource issues, there has been a movement to encourage xeriscapes. Another part of conservation efforts is scheduled watering days for residential landscaping. A U.S. Environmental Protection Agency grant in 2008 funded a program that analyzed and forecast growth and environmental impacts through 2019. Climate Desert scene at the Red Rock Canyon National Conservation Area in the Las Vegas area Spring flowers at the Red Rock Canyon National Conservation Area in the Las Vegas area Las Vegas has a subtropical hot desert climate (Köppen climate classification: BWh), typical of the Mojave Desert in which it lies. This climate is typified by long, extremely hot summers; warm transitional seasons; and short winters with mild days and cool nights. There is abundant sunshine throughout the year, with an average of 310 sunny days and bright sunshine during 86% of all daylight hours.[31][32] Rainfall is scarce, with an average of 4.2 in (110 mm) dispersed between roughly 26 total rainy days per year.[33] Las Vegas is among the sunniest, driest, and least humid locations in North America, with exceptionally low dew points and humidity that sometimes remains below 10%.[34] The summer months of June through September are extremely hot, though moderated by extremely low humidity. July is the hottest month, with an average daytime high of 104.5 °F (40.3 °C). On average, 137 days per year reach or exceed 90 °F (32 °C), of which 78 days reach 100 °F (38 °C) and 10 days reach 110 °F (43 °C). During the peak intensity of summer, overnight lows frequently remain above 80 °F (27 °C), and occasionally above 85 °F (29 °C).[31] While most summer days are consistently hot, dry, and cloudless, the North American Monsoon sporadically interrupts this pattern and brings more cloud cover, thunderstorms, lightning, increased humidity, and brief spells of heavy rain. Potential monsoons affect Las Vegas between July and August. Summer in Las Vegas is marked by a significant diurnal temperature variation. While less extreme than other parts of the state, nighttime lows in Las Vegas are often 30 °F (16.7 °C) or more lower than daytime highs.[35] The average hottest night of the year is 90 °F (32 °C). The all-time record is at 95 °F (35 °C).[31] Las Vegas winters are short and generally very mild, with chilly (but rarely cold) daytime temperatures. Sunshine is abundant in all seasons. December is both the year's coolest and cloudiest month, with an average daytime high of 56.9 °F (13.8 °C) and sunshine occurring during 78% of its daylight hours. Winter evenings are defined by clear skies and swift drops in temperature after sunset, with overnight minima averaging around 40 °F (4.4 °C) in December and January. Owing to its elevation that ranges from 2,000 to 3,000 feet (610 to 910 m), Las Vegas experiences markedly cooler winters than other areas of the Mojave Desert and the adjacent Sonoran Desert that are closer to sea level. The city records freezing temperatures an average of 10 nights per winter. It is exceptionally rare for temperatures to reach or fall below 25 °F (−4 °C).[31] Most of the annual precipitation falls during the winter months. February, the wettest month, averages only four days of measurable rain. The mountains immediately surrounding the Las Vegas Valley accumulate snow every winter, but significant accumulation within the city is rare, although moderate accumulations occur every few years. The most recent accumulations occurred on February 18, 2019, when parts of the city received about 1 to 2 inches (2.5 to 5.1 cm) of snow[36] and on February 20 when the city received almost 0.5 inches (1.3 cm).[37] Other recent significant snow accumulations occurred on December 25, 2015, and December 17, 2008.[38] Unofficially, Las Vegas's largest snowfall on record was the 12 inches (30 cm) that fell in 1909.[39] In recent times, ice days have not occurred, although 29 °F (−2 °C) was measured in 1963.[31] On average the coldest day is 44 °F (7 °C).[31] 117 °F (47 °C) is the highest temperature officially observed for Las Vegas, as measured at Harry Reid International Airport on July 10, 2021, the last of five occasions.[31] The lowest temperature was 8 °F (−13 °C), recorded on two days: January 25, 1937, and January 13, 1963.[31] The highest temperature ever measured within the city of Las Vegas was 118 °F (48 °C) on July 26, 1931.[40] The official record hot daily minimum is 95 °F (35 °C) on July 19, 2005, and July 1, 2013. The official record cold daily maximum is 28 °F (−2 °C) on January 8 and 21, 1937.[31] Due to concerns about climate change in the wake of a 2002 drought, daily water consumption has been reduced from 314 US gallons (1,190 L) per resident in 2003 to around 205 US gallons (780 L) in 2015.[41]Economy The primary drivers of the Las Vegas economy are tourism, gaming, and conventions, which in turn feed the retail and restaurant industries. The Welcome to Fabulous Las Vegas sign, welcoming tourists to the city Tourism World Market Center Building A The Golden Nugget Las Vegas The Las Vegas Strip, primarily located in Paradise A view of the Las Vegas Valley looking north from the Stratosphere Tower The major attractions in Las Vegas are the casinos and the hotels, although in recent years other new attractions have begun to emerge. Most casinos in the downtown area are located on Fremont Street, with The STRAT Hotel, Casino & Skypod as one of the few exceptions. Fremont East, adjacent to the Fremont Street Experience, was granted variances to allow bars to be closer together, similar to the Gaslamp Quarter of San Diego, the goal being to attract a different demographic than the Strip attracts. Downtown casinos Main article: Downtown (Nevada gaming area) The Golden Gate Hotel and Casino, located downtown along the Fremont Street Experience, is the oldest continuously operating hotel and casino in Las Vegas; it opened in 1906 as the Hotel Nevada. In 1931, the Northern Club (now the La Bayou) opened.[58][59] The most notable of the early casinos may have been Binion's Horseshoe (now Binion's Gambling Hall and Hotel) while it was run by Benny Binion. Boyd Gaming has a major presence downtown operating the California Hotel & Casino, the Fremont Hotel & Casino, and the Main Street Casino. The Four Queens also operates downtown along the Fremont Street Experience. Downtown casinos that have undergone major renovations and revitalization in recent years include the Golden Nugget Las Vegas, The D Las Vegas (formerly Fitzgerald's), the Downtown Grand Las Vegas (formerly Lady Luck), the El Cortez Hotel & Casino, and the Plaza Hotel & Casino.[60] Las Vegas Strip Main article: Las Vegas Strip The center of the gambling and entertainment industry is located on the Las Vegas Strip, outside the city limits in the surrounding unincorporated communities of Paradise and Winchester in Clark County. Some of the largest casinos and buildings are located there.[61] Development See also: List of tallest buildings in Las Vegas When The Mirage opened in 1989, it started a trend of major resort development on the Las Vegas Strip outside of the city. This resulted in a drop in tourism in the downtown area, but many recent projects have increased the number of visitors to downtown. An effort has been made by city officials to diversify the economy by attracting health-related, high-tech and other commercial interests. No state tax for individuals or corporations, as well as a lack of other forms of business-related taxes, have aided the success of these efforts.[62] The Fremont Street Experience was built in an effort to draw tourists back to the area and has been popular since its startup in 1995. The city purchased 61 acres (25 ha) of property from the Union Pacific Railroad in 1995 with the goal of creating a better draw for more people to the downtown area. In 2004, Las Vegas Mayor Oscar Goodman announced plans for Symphony Park, which could include a mixture of offerings, such as residential space and office buildings. Already operating in Symphony Park is the Cleveland Clinic Lou Ruvo Center for Brain Health (opened in 2010), The Smith Center for the Performing Arts (opened in 2012) and the DISCOVERY Children's Museum (opened in 2013).[63] On land across from Symphony Park, the World Market Center Las Vegas opened in 2005. It currently encompasses three large buildings with a total of 5.1 million square feet. Trade shows for the furniture and furnishing industries are held there semiannually. Also located nearby is the Las Vegas North Premium Outlets. With a second expansion, completed in May 2015, the mall currently offers 175 stores.[64] City offices moved to a new Las Vegas City Hall in February 2013 on downtown's Main Street. The former City Hall building is now occupied by the corporate headquarters for the major online retailer, Zappos.com, which opened downtown in 2013. Zappos CEO Tony Hsieh took an interest in the urban area and contributed $350 million toward a revitalization effort called the Downtown Project.[65][66] Projects funded include Las Vegas's first independent bookstore, The Writer's Block.[67] Other industries A number of new industries have moved to Las Vegas in recent decades. Online shoe retailer Zappos.com (now an Amazon subsidiary) was founded in San Francisco but by 2013 had moved its headquarters to downtown Las Vegas. Allegiant Air, a low-cost air carrier, launched in 1997 with its first hub at Harry Reid International Airport and headquarters in nearby Summerlin. Planet 13 Holdings, a cannabis company, have opened the world's largest cannabis dispensary in Las Vegas at 112,000 sq ft (10,400 m2).[68][69] Impact of growth on water supply A growing population means the Las Vegas Valley used 1.2 billion US gallons (4.5×109 L) more water in 2014 than in 2011. Although water conservation efforts implemented in the wake of a 2002 drought have had some success, local water consumption remains 30 percent more than in Los Angeles, and over three times that of San Francisco metropolitan area residents. The Southern Nevada Water Authority is building a $1.4 billion tunnel and pumping station to bring water from Lake Mead, has purchased water rights throughout Nevada, and has planned a controversial $3.2 billion pipeline across half the state. By law, the Las Vegas Water Service District "may deny any request for a water commitment or request for a water connection if the District has an inadequate supply of water." However, limiting growth on the basis of an inadequate water supply has been unpopular with the casino and building industries.[41] Culture Main article: Las Vegas Valley § Culture and the arts The Smith Center for the Performing Arts & Discovery Museum Symphony Park in Downtown Las Vegas The city is home to several museums, including the Neon Museum (the location for many of the historical signs from Las Vegas's mid-20th century heyday), The Mob Museum, the Las Vegas Natural History Museum, the DISCOVERY Children's Museum, the Nevada State Museum and the Old Las Vegas Mormon Fort State Historic Park. The city is home to an extensive Downtown Arts District, which hosts numerous galleries and events including the annual Las Vegas Film Festival. "First Friday" is a monthly celebration that includes arts, music, special presentations and food in a section of the city's downtown region called 18b, The Las Vegas Arts District.[70] The festival extends into the Fremont East Entertainment District as well.[71] The Thursday evening prior to First Friday is known in the arts district as "Preview Thursday", which highlights new gallery exhibitions throughout the district.[72] The Las Vegas Academy of International Studies, Performing and Visual Arts is a Grammy award-winning magnet school located in downtown Las Vegas. The Smith Center for the Performing Arts is situated downtown in Symphony Park and hosts various Broadway shows and other artistic performances. Las Vegas has earned the moniker "Gambling Capital of the World", as the city currently has the largest number of land-based casinos in the world.[73] Sports Main article: Sports in the Las Vegas metropolitan area See also: Nevada § Sports The Las Vegas Valley is the home of three major professional teams: the National Hockey League (NHL)'s Vegas Golden Knights, an expansion team that began play in the 2017–18 NHL season at T-Mobile Arena in nearby Paradise,[74] the National Football League (NFL)'s Las Vegas Raiders, who relocated from Oakland, California in 2020 and play at Allegiant Stadium in Paradise,[75] and the Women's National Basketball Association (WNBA)'s Las Vegas Aces, who play at the Mandalay Bay Events Center. Two minor league sports teams play in the Las Vegas area. The Las Vegas Aviators of the Pacific Coast League, the Triple-A farm club of the Oakland Athletics, play at Las Vegas Ballpark in nearby Summerlin.[76] The Las Vegas Lights FC of the United Soccer League, play in Cashman Field in Downtown Las Vegas.[77][78] The mixed martial arts promotion, Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC), is headquartered in Las Vegas and also frequently holds fights in the city at T-Mobile Arena and at the UFC Apex training facility near the headquarters.[79]