Bill Gates

William Henry Gates III (born October 28, 1955) is an American business magnate, investor, philanthropist, and writer. He is a co-founder of Microsoft, along with his late childhood friend Paul Allen.[2][3] During his career at Microsoft, Gates held the positions of chairman, chief executive officer (CEO), president and chief software architect, while also being the largest individual shareholder until May 2014.[4] He was a major entrepreneur of the microcomputer revolution of the 1970s and 1980s. Gates was born and raised in Seattle. In 1975, he and Allen founded Microsoft in Albuquerque, New Mexico. It became the world's largest personal computer software company.[5][a] Gates led the company as chairman and CEO until stepping down as CEO in January 2000, succeeded by Steve Ballmer, but he remained chairman of the board of directors and became chief software architect.[8] During the late 1990s, he was criticized for his business tactics, which have been considered anti-competitive. This opinion has been upheld by numerous court rulings.[9] In June 2008, Gates transitioned to a part-time role at Microsoft and full-time work at the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the private charitable foundation he and his then-wife Melinda established in 2000.[10] He stepped down as chairman of the board of Microsoft in February 2014 and assumed a new post as technology adviser to support the newly appointed CEO Satya Nadella.[11] In March 2020, Gates left his board positions at Microsoft and Berkshire Hathaway to focus on his philanthropic efforts on climate change, global health and development, and education.[12] Since 1987, Gates has been included in the Forbes list of the world's wealthiest people.[13][14] From 1995 to 2017, he held the Forbes title of the richest person in the world every year except from 2010 to 2013.[15] In October 2017, he was surpassed by Amazon founder and CEO Jeff Bezos, who had an estimated net worth of US$90.6 billion compared to Gates's net worth of US$89.9 billion at the time.[16] As of February 2023, Gates has an estimated net worth of US$113 billion, making him the fourth-richest person in the world.[17] Later in his career and since leaving day-to-day operations at Microsoft in 2008, Gates has pursued many business and philanthropic endeavors. He is the founder and chairman of several companies, including BEN, Cascade Investment, TerraPower, bgC3, and Breakthrough Energy. He has given sizable amounts of money to various charitable organizations and scientific research programs through the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, reported to be the world's largest private charity.[18] Through the foundation, he led an early 21st century vaccination campaign that significantly contributed to the eradication of the wild poliovirus in Africa.[19][20] In 2010, Gates and Warren Buffett founded The Giving Pledge, whereby they and other billionaires pledge to give at least half of their wealth to philanthropy.[21] Early life Bill Gates was born in Seattle, Washington on October 28, 1955.[3] He is the son of William H. Gates Sr.[b] (1925–2020) and Mary Maxwell Gates (1929–1994).[22] His ancestry includes English, German, and Irish/Scots-Irish.[23] His father was a prominent lawyer, and his mother served on the board of directors for First Interstate BancSystem and the United Way of America. Gates's maternal grandfather was J. W. Maxwell, a national bank president. Gates has an older sister Kristi (Kristianne) and a younger sister Libby. He is the fourth of his name in his family but is known as William Gates III or "Trey" (i.e., three) because his father had the "II" suffix.[24][25] The family lived in the Sand Point area of Seattle in a home that was damaged by a rare tornado when Gates was seven years old.[26] Early in his life, Gates observed that his parents wanted him to pursue a law career.[27] When he was young, his family regularly attended a church of the Congregational Christian Churches, a Protestant Reformed denomination.[28][29][30] Gates was small for his age and was bullied as a child.[25] The family encouraged competition; one visitor reported that "it didn't matter whether it was hearts or pickleball or swimming to the dock; there was always a reward for winning and there was always a penalty for losing".[31] Gates (right) with Paul Allen seated at Teletype Model 33 ASR terminals in Lakeside School, 1970 At 13, he enrolled in the private Lakeside prep school,[32][33] where he wrote his first software program.[34] When he was in the eighth grade, the Mothers' Club at the school used proceeds from Lakeside School's rummage sale to buy a Teletype Model 33 ASR terminal and a block of computer time on a General Electric (GE) computer for the students.[35] Gates took an interest in programming the GE system in BASIC, and he was excused from math classes to pursue his interest. He wrote his first computer program on this machine, an implementation of tic-tac-toe that allowed users to play games against the computer. Gates was fascinated by the machine and how it would always execute software code perfectly.[36] After the Mothers Club donation was exhausted, Gates and other students sought time on systems including DEC PDP minicomputers. One of these systems was a PDP-10 belonging to Computer Center Corporation (CCC) which banned Gates, Paul Allen, Ric Weiland, and Gates's best friend and first business partner Kent Evans, for the summer after it caught them exploiting bugs in the operating system to obtain free computer time.[37][25] The four students formed the Lakeside Programmers Club to make money.[25] At the end of the ban, they offered to find bugs in CCC's software in exchange for extra computer time. Rather than using the system remotely via Teletype, Gates went to CCC's offices and studied source code for various programs that ran on the system, including Fortran, Lisp, and machine language. The arrangement with CCC continued until 1970 when the company went out of business. The following year, a Lakeside teacher enlisted Gates and Evans to automate the school's class-scheduling system, providing them computer time and royalties in return. The duo worked diligently in order to have the program ready for their senior year. Towards the end of their junior year, Evans was killed in a mountain climbing accident, which Gates has described as one of the saddest days of his life. Gates then turned to Allen who helped him finish the system for Lakeside.[25] At 17, Gates formed a venture with Allen called Traf-O-Data to make traffic counters based on the Intel 8008 processor.[38] In 1972, he served as a congressional page in the House of Representatives.[39][40] He was a National Merit Scholar when he graduated from Lakeside School in 1973.[41] He scored 1590 out of 1600 on the Scholastic Aptitude Tests (SAT) and enrolled at Harvard College in the autumn of 1973.[42][43] He chose a pre-law major but took mathematics (including Math 55) and graduate level computer science courses.[44] While at Harvard, he met fellow student Steve Ballmer. Gates left Harvard after two years while Ballmer stayed and graduated magna cum laude. Years later, Ballmer succeeded Gates as Microsoft's CEO and maintained that position from 2000 until his resignation in 2014.[45][46] Gates devised an algorithm for pancake sorting as a solution to one of a series of unsolved problems[47] presented in a combinatorics class by professor Harry Lewis. His solution held the record as the fastest version for over 30 years, and its successor is faster by only 2%.[47][48] His solution was formalized and published in collaboration with Harvard computer scientist Christos Papadimitriou.[49] Gates remained in contact with Paul Allen and joined him at Honeywell during the summer of 1974.[50] In 1975, the MITS Altair 8800 was released based on the Intel 8080 CPU, and Gates and Allen saw the opportunity to start their own computer software company.[51] Gates dropped out of Harvard that same year. His parents were supportive of him after seeing how much he wanted to start his own company.[52] He explained his decision to leave Harvard: "if things hadn't worked out, I could always go back to school. I was officially on leave."[53] Microsoft Main articles: History of Microsoft and Microsoft § History BASIC MITS Altair 8800 Computer with 8-inch (200 mm) floppy disk system whose first programming language was Microsoft's founding product, Altair BASIC Gates read the January 1975 issue of Popular Electronics which demonstrated the Altair 8800, and he contacted Micro Instrumentation and Telemetry Systems (MITS) to inform them that he and others were working on a BASIC interpreter for the platform.[54] In reality, Gates and Allen did not have an Altair and had not written code for it; they merely wanted to gauge MITS's interest. MITS president Ed Roberts agreed to meet them for a demonstration, and over the course of a few weeks they developed an Altair emulator that ran on a minicomputer, and then the BASIC interpreter. The demonstration was held at MITS's offices in Albuquerque, New Mexico; it was a success and resulted in a deal with MITS to distribute the interpreter as Altair BASIC. MITS hired Allen,[55] and Gates took a leave of absence from Harvard to work with him at MITS in November 1975. Allen named their partnership "Micro-Soft", a combination of "microcomputer" and "software", and their first office was in Albuquerque. The first employee Gates and Allen hired was their high school collaborator Ric Weiland.[55] They dropped the hyphen within a year and officially registered the trade name "Microsoft" with the Secretary of the State of New Mexico on November 26, 1976.[55] Gates never returned to Harvard to complete his studies. Microsoft's Altair BASIC was popular with computer hobbyists, but Gates discovered that a pre-market copy had leaked out and was being widely copied and distributed. In February 1976, he wrote an Open Letter to Hobbyists in the MITS newsletter in which he asserted that more than 90% of the users of Microsoft Altair BASIC had not paid Microsoft for it and the Altair "hobby market" was in danger of eliminating the incentive for any professional developers to produce, distribute, and maintain high-quality software.[56] This letter was unpopular with many computer hobbyists, but Gates persisted in his belief that software developers should be able to demand payment. Microsoft became independent of MITS in late 1976, and it continued to develop programming language software for various systems.[55] The company moved from Albuquerque to Bellevue, Washington on January 1, 1979.[54] Gates said he personally reviewed and often rewrote every line of code that the company produced in its first five years. As the company grew, he transitioned into a manager role, then an executive.[57] DONKEY.BAS, is a computer game written in 1981 and included with early versions of the PC DOS operating system distributed with the original IBM PC. It is a driving game in which the player must avoid hitting donkeys. The game was written by Gates and Neil Konzen.[58][59] IBM partnership IBM, the leading supplier of computer equipment to commercial enterprises at the time, approached Microsoft in July 1980 concerning software for its upcoming personal computer, the IBM PC,[60] after Bill Gates's mother, Mary Maxwell Gates, mentioned Microsoft to John Opel, IBM's CEO.[61] IBM first proposed that Microsoft write the BASIC interpreter. IBM's representatives also mentioned that they needed an operating system, and Gates referred them to Digital Research (DRI), makers of the widely used CP/M operating system.[62] IBM's discussions with Digital Research went poorly, however, and they did not reach a licensing agreement. IBM representative Jack Sams mentioned the licensing difficulties during a subsequent meeting with Gates and asked if Microsoft could provide an operating system. A few weeks later, Gates and Allen proposed using 86-DOS, an operating system similar to CP/M, that Tim Paterson of Seattle Computer Products (SCP) had made for hardware similar to the PC.[63] Microsoft made a deal with SCP to be the exclusive licensing agent of 86-DOS, and later the full owner. Microsoft employed Paterson to adapt the operating system for the PC[64] and delivered it to IBM as PC DOS for a one-time fee of $50,000.[65] The contract itself only earned Microsoft a relatively small fee. It was the prestige brought to Microsoft by IBM's adoption of their operating system that would be the origin of Microsoft's transformation from a small business to the leading software company in the world. Gates had not offered to transfer the copyright on the operating system to IBM because he believed that other personal computer makers would clone IBM's PC hardware.[65] They did, making the IBM-compatible PC, running DOS, a de facto standard. The sales of MS-DOS (the version of DOS sold to customers other than IBM) made Microsoft a major player in the industry.[66] The press quickly identified Microsoft as being very influential on the IBM PC. PC Magazine asked if Gates was "the man behind the machine?".[60] Gates oversaw Microsoft's company restructuring on June 25, 1981, which re-incorporated the company in Washington state and made Gates the president and chairman of the board, with Paul Allen as vice president and vice chairman. In early 1983, Allen left the company after receiving a Hodgkin lymphoma diagnosis, effectively ending the formal business partnership between Gates and Allen, which had been strained months prior due to a contentious dispute over Microsoft equity.[54][67] Later in the decade, Gates repaired his relationship with Allen and together the two donated millions to their childhood school Lakeside.[25] They remained friends until Allen's death in October 2018.[68] Windows Microsoft and Gates launched their first retail version of Microsoft Windows on November 20, 1985, in an attempt to fend off competition from Apple's Macintosh GUI, which had captivated consumers with its simplicity and ease of use.[69] In August of the following year, the company struck a deal with IBM to develop a separate operating system called OS/2. Although the two companies successfully developed the first version of the new system, the partnership deteriorated due to mounting creative differences.[70] The operating system grew out of DOS in an organic fashion over a decade until Windows 95, which hid the DOS prompt by default. Windows XP, released one year after Gates stepped down as Microsoft CEO, was the first to not be based on DOS.[71] Windows 8.1 was the last version of the OS released before Gates left the chair of the firm to John W. Thompson on February 5, 2014.[72] Management style Gates delivers a speech at the World Economic Forum in Switzerland, January 2008 During Microsoft's early years, Gates was an active software developer, particularly in the company's programming language products, but his primary role in most of the company's history was as a manager and executive. He has not officially been on a development team since working on the TRS-80 Model 100,[73] but he wrote code that shipped with the company's products as late as 1989.[74] Jerry Pournelle wrote in 1985 when Gates announced Microsoft Excel: "Bill Gates likes the program, not because it's going to make him a lot of money (although I'm sure it will do that), but because it's a neat hack."[75] On June 15, 2006, Gates announced that he would transition out of his role at Microsoft to dedicate more time to philanthropy. He gradually divided his responsibilities between two successors when he placed Ray Ozzie in charge of management and Craig Mundie in charge of long-term product strategy.[76] The process took two years to fully transfer his duties to Ozzie and Mundie, and was completed on June 27, 2008.[77] Post-Microsoft Since leaving day-to-day operations at Microsoft, Gates has continued his philanthropy and works on other projects. According to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index, Gates was the world's highest-earning billionaire in 2013, as his net worth increased by US$15.8 billion to US$78.5 billion. As of January 2014, most of Gates's assets are held in Cascade Investment LLC, an entity through which he owns stakes in numerous businesses, including Four Seasons Hotels and Resorts, and Corbis Corp.[78] On February 4, 2014, Gates stepped down as chairman of Microsoft to become "technology advisor" at the firm, alongside CEO Satya Nadella.[11][79] Gates provided his perspective on a range of issues in a substantial interview that was published in the March 27, 2014, issue of Rolling Stone magazine. In the interview, Gates provided his perspective on climate change, his charitable activities, various tech companies and people involved in them, and the state of America. In response to a question about his greatest fear when he looks 50 years into the future, Gates stated: "there'll be some really bad things that'll happen in the next 50 or 100 years, but hopefully none of them on the scale of, say, a million people that you didn't expect to die from a pandemic, or nuclear or bioterrorism." Gates also identified innovation as the "real driver of progress" and pronounced that "America's way better today than it's ever been."[80] Gates has expressed concern about the potential harms of superintelligence; in a Reddit "ask me anything", he stated that: First the machines will do a lot of jobs for us and not be super intelligent. That should be positive if we manage it well. A few decades after that though the intelligence is strong enough to be a concern. I agree with Elon Musk and some others on this and don't understand why some people are not concerned.[81][82][83][84] In an interview that was held at the TED conference in March 2015, with Baidu's CEO, Robin Li, Gates said he would "highly recommend" Nick Bostrom's recent work, Superintelligence: Paths, Dangers, Strategies.[85] During the conference, Gates warned that the world was not prepared for the next pandemic, a situation that would come to pass in late 2019 when the COVID-19 pandemic began.[86] In March 2018, Gates met at his home in Seattle with Mohammed bin Salman, the reformist crown prince and de facto ruler of Saudi Arabia to discuss investment opportunities for Saudi Vision 2030.[87][88] In June 2019, Gates admitted that losing the mobile operating system race to Android was his biggest mistake. He stated that it was within their skill set of being the dominant player, but partially blames the antitrust litigation during the time.[89] That same year, Gates became an advisory board member of the Bloomberg New Economy Forum.[90] On March 13, 2020, Microsoft announced Gates would be leaving his board positions at Berkshire Hathaway and Microsoft to dedicate his efforts in philanthropic endeavors such as climate change, global health and development, and education.[12] During the COVID-19 pandemic, Gates has widely been looked at by media outlets as an expert on the issue, despite him not being a public official or having any prior medical training.[91] His foundation did, however, establish the COVID-19 Therapeutics Accelerator in 2020 to hasten the development and evaluation of new and repurposed drugs and biologics to treat patients for COVID-19,[92] and, as of February 2021, Gates expressed that he and Anthony Fauci frequently talk and collaborate on matters including vaccines and other medical innovations to fight the pandemic.[93] Business ventures and investments (partial list) Gates has a multi-billion dollar investment portfolio with stake in various sectors[94] and has participated in several entrepreneurial ventures beyond Microsoft, including: AutoNation, automotive retailer that Gates has a 16% stake in trading on the NYSE.[95] bgC3 LLC, a think-tank and research company founded by Gates.[96] Canadian National Railway (CN), a Canadian Class I freight railway. As of 2019, Gates is the largest single shareholder of CN stock.[97] Cascade Investment LLC, a private investment and holding company incorporated in the United States, founded and controlled by Gates and headquartered in Kirkland, Washington.[98] Gates is the top private owner of farmland in the United States with landholdings owned via Cascade Investment totalling 242,000 acres across 19 states.[99][100] He is the 49th largest private owner of land in the US.[101] Carbon Engineering, a for-profit venture founded by David Keith, which Gates helped fund.[102][103][104] It is also supported by Chevron Corporation and Occidental Petroleum.[105] SCoPEx, Keith's academic venture in "sun-dimming" geoengineering, which Gates provided most of the $12 million for.[106] Corbis (originally named Interactive Home Systems and now known as Branded Entertainment Network), a digital image licensing and rights services company founded and chaired by Gates.[107] EarthNow, Seattle-based startup company aiming to blanket the Earth with live satellite video coverage. Gates is a large financial backer.[108] Eclipse Aviation, a defunct manufacturer of very light jets. Gates was a major stake-holder early on in the project.[109] Impossible Foods, a company that develops plant-based substitutes for meat products. Some of the $396 million Patrick O. Brown collected for his business came from Gates around 2014 to 2017.[110][111][112] Ecolab, global provider of water, hygiene and energy technologies and services to the food, energy, healthcare, industrial and hospitality markets. Combined with the shares owned by the Foundation, Gates owns 11.6% of the company. A shareholder agreement in 2012 allowed him to own up to 25% of the company, but this agreement was removed.[113] ResearchGate, a social networking site for scientists. Gates participated in a $35 million round of financing along with other investors.[114] TerraPower, a nuclear reactor design company co-founded and chaired by Gates, which is developing next generation traveling-wave reactor nuclear power plants in an effort to tackle climate change.[115][116][117][118][119] Breakthrough Energy Ventures, a closed fund for wealthy individuals who seek ROI on a 20-year horizon (see next section), which "is funding green start-ups and a host of other low-carbon entrepreneurial projects, including everything from advanced nuclear technology to synthetic breast milk." It was founded by Gates in 2015.[120] Ginkgo Bioworks, a biotech startup that received $350 million in venture funding in 2019, in part from Gates's investment firm Cascade Investment.[121] Luminous Computing, a company that develops neuromorphic photonic integrated circuits for AI acceleration. Mologic, British diagnostic technology company that Gates purchased, along with the Soros Economic Development Fund, "which has developed 10-minute Covid lateral flow tests that it aims to make for as little as $1."[122] Climate change and energy Gates and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi at the COP26 climate summit in Glasgow in November 2021 Gates considers climate change and global access to energy to be critical, interrelated issues. He has urged governments and the private sector to invest in research and development to make clean, reliable energy cheaper. Gates envisions that a breakthrough innovation in sustainable energy technology could drive down both greenhouse gas emissions and poverty, and bring economic benefits by stabilizing energy prices.[123] In 2011, he said: "If you gave me the choice between picking the next 10 presidents or ensuring that energy is environmentally friendly and a quarter as costly, I'd pick the energy thing."[124] In 2015, he wrote about the challenge of transitioning the world's energy system from one based primarily on fossil fuels to one based on sustainable energy sources. Global energy transitions have historically taken decades. He wrote, "I believe we can make this transition faster, both because the pace of innovation is accelerating, and because we have never had such an urgent reason to move from one source of energy to another."[125] This rapid transition, according to Gates, would depend on increased government funding for basic research and financially risky private-sector investment, to enable innovation in diverse areas such as nuclear energy, grid energy storage to facilitate greater use of solar and wind energy, and solar fuels.[126] The European Commission, European Investment Bank and Gates' Breakthrough Energy Catalyst agreed at the 2021 UN Climate Change conference to work together to bring green technologies to market. Gates spearheaded two initiatives that he announced at the 2015 United Nations Climate Change Conference in Paris. One was Mission Innovation, in which 20 national governments pledged to double their spending on research and development for carbon-free energy in over five years' time.[123] Another initiative was Breakthrough Energy, a group of investors who agreed to fund high-risk startups in clean energy technologies. Gates, who had already invested $1 billion of his own money in innovative energy startups, committed a further $1 billion to Breakthrough Energy.[126] In December 2020, he called for the U.S. federal government to create institutes for clean energy research, analogous to the National Institutes of Health.[127] Gates has also urged rich nations to shift to 100% synthetic beef industries to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from food production.[128] Gates has been criticised for holding a large stake in Signature Aviation, a company that services emissions-intensive private jets.[129] In 2019, he began to divest from fossil fuels. He does not expect divestment itself to have much practical impact, but says that if his efforts to provide alternatives were to fail, he would not want to personally benefit from an increase in fossil fuel stock prices.[130] After he published his book How to Avoid a Climate Disaster, parts of the climate activist community criticized Gate's approach as technological solutionism.[131] In June 2021, Gates's company TerraPower and Warren Buffett's PacifiCorp announced the first sodium nuclear reactor in Wyoming. Wyoming Governor Mike Gordon hailed the project as a step toward carbon-negative nuclear power. Wyoming Senator John Barrasso also said that it could boost the state's once-active uranium mining industry.[132] Gates spent many efforts to make pass the Inflation Reduction Act of 2022 because of his importance to climate. He tried to convince Joe Manchin to support a climate bill from the year 2019 and especially in the months before the adoption of the bill. The bill should cut the global greenhouse gas emissions in a level similar to "eliminating the annual planet-warming pollution of France and Germany combined" and may help to limit the warming of the planet to 1.5 degrees - the target of the Paris Agreement.[133] He thanked both Joe Manchin and Chuck Schumer for their efforts in a guest essay in The New York Times, where he said "Inflation Reduction Act of 2022 may be the single most important piece of climate legislation in American history" given its potential to spur development of new technologies.[134] Political positions Regulation of the software industry See also: Bill Gates § Antitrust litigation, and United States v. Microsoft Corp. In 1998, Gates rejected the need for regulation of the software industry in testimony before the United States Senate.[135] During the Federal Trade Commission's (FTC) investigation of Microsoft in the 1990s, Gates was reportedly upset at Commissioner Dennis Yao for "float[ing] a line of hypothetical questions suggesting possible curbs on Microsoft's growing monopoly power". According to one source: Gates was vexed. "He started by calling Yao's ideas socialistic," recalls a source familiar with the July 15 meeting, "and as he got angrier and angrier and louder and louder, he got into calling them Communistic.[136] Donald Trump Facebook ban On February 18, 2021, after Facebook and Twitter had banned Donald Trump from their platforms as a result of the 2020 United States presidential election which led to the January 6 United States Capitol attack, Gates said a permanent ban of Trump "would be a shame" and would be an "extreme measure". He warned that it would cause "polarization" if users with different political views divide up among various social networks, and said: "I don't think banning somebody who actually did get a fair number of votes (in the presidential election) – well less than a majority – but I don't think having him off forever would be that good."[135] Patents for COVID-19 vaccines Main article: Waiver from certain provisions of the TRIPS Agreement for the Prevention, Containment and Treatment of COVID-19 In April 2021, during the COVID-19 pandemic, Gates was criticized for suggesting that pharmaceutical companies should hold onto patents for COVID-19 vaccines. The criticism came due to the possibility of this preventing poorer nations from obtaining adequate vaccines. Tara Van Ho of the University of Essex stated, "Gates speaks as if all the lives being lost in India are inevitable but eventually the West will help when in reality the US & UK are holding their feet on the neck of developing states by refusing to break [intellectual property rights] protections. It's disgusting."[137] Gates is opposed to the TRIPS waiver.[138][139][140] Bloomberg News reported him as saying he argued that Oxford University should not give away the rights to its COVID-19 information, as it had announced, but instead sell it to a single industry partner, as it did.[141] His views on the value of legal monopolies in medicine have been linked to his views on legal monopolies in software.[139][140] Cryptocurrencies Gates is critical of cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin. According to Gates, cryptocurrencies provide no "valuable output", contribute nothing to society, and pose a danger especially for smaller investors who couldn't survive the potentially high losses. Gates also doesn't own any cryptocurrencies himself.[142] Philanthropy Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation Main article: Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation Gates with Bono, Queen Rania of Jordan, former British Prime Minister Gordon Brown, President Umaru Yar'Adua of Nigeria and others during the Annual Meeting 2008 of the World Economic Forum Gates studied the work of Andrew Carnegie and John D. Rockefeller, and donated some of his Microsoft stock in 1994 to create the "William H. Gates Foundation". In 2000, Gates and his wife combined three family foundations and Gates donated stock valued at $5 billion to create the charitable Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, which was identified by the Funds for NGOs company in 2013, as the world's wealthiest charitable foundation, with assets reportedly valued at more than $34.6 billion.[143][144] The foundation allows benefactors to access information that shows how its money is being spent, unlike other major charitable organizations such as the Wellcome Trust.[145][146] Gates, through his foundation, also donated $20 million to Carnegie Mellon University for a new building to be named Gates Center for Computer Science which opened in 2009.[147][148] Gates has credited the generosity and extensive philanthropy of David Rockefeller as a major influence. Gates and his father met with Rockefeller several times, and their charity work is partly modeled on the Rockefeller family's philanthropic focus, whereby they are interested in tackling the global problems that are ignored by governments and other organizations.[149] As of 2007, Bill and Melinda Gates were the second-most generous philanthropists in America, having given over $28 billion to charity;[150] the couple plan to eventually donate 95% of their wealth to charity.[151] The foundation is organized into five program areas: Global Development Division, Global Health Division, United States Division, and Global Policy & Advocacy Division. Among others, it supports a wide range of public health projects, granting aid to fight transmissible diseases such AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria, as well as widespread vaccine programs to eradicate polio. It grants funds to learning institutes and libraries and supports scholarships at universities. The foundation established a water, sanitation and hygiene program to provide sustainable sanitation services in poor countries.[152] Its agriculture division supports the International Rice Research Institute in developing Golden Rice, a genetically modified rice variant used to combat vitamin A deficiency.[153] The goal of the foundation is to provide 120 million women and girls, in the poorest countries, with high-quality contraceptive information and services, with the longer-term goal of universal access to voluntary family planning.[154] In 2007, the Los Angeles Times criticized the foundation for investing its assets in companies that have been accused of worsening poverty, pollution and pharmaceutical firms that do not sell to developing countries.[155] Although the foundation announced a review of its investments to assess social responsibility,[156] it was subsequently canceled and upheld its policy of investing for maximum return, while using voting rights to influence company practices.[157] Gates in a fireside chat moderated by Shereen Bhan virtually at the Singapore FinTech Festival 2020 Gates delivered his thoughts in a fireside chat moderated by journalist and news anchor Shereen Bhan virtually at the Singapore FinTech Festival on December 8, 2020, on the topic, "Building Infrastructure for Resilience: What the COVID-19 Response Can Teach Us About How to Scale Financial Inclusion".[158] Governments are there to think ahead to bad things that might happen. In the case of (the Covid-19) pandemic, not enough was done. We can't forget that another pandemic will come and we'll need to invest in being ready in that, ... while not forgetting that we were not prepared and we're going to have to invest – just like having a fire department – some money in an intelligent way and actually simulate what might happen and make sure that we're ready for it.[158] Gates favours the normalization of COVID-19 masks. In a November 2020 interview, he said: "What are these, like, nudists? I mean, you know, we ask you to wear pants, and no American says, or very few Americans say, that that's, like, some terrible thing."[159] Personal donations Melinda Gates suggested that people should emulate the philanthropic efforts of the Salwen family, who sold their home and gave away half of its value, as detailed in their book, The Power of Half.[160] Gates and his wife invited Joan Salwen to Seattle to speak about what the family had done, and on December 9, 2010, Bill and Melinda Gates and investor Warren Buffett each signed a commitment they called the "Giving Pledge", which is a commitment by all three to donate at least half of their wealth, over the course of time, to charity.[161][162][163] Gates has also provided personal donations to educational institutions. In 1999, Gates donated $20 million to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology for the construction of a computer laboratory named the "William H. Gates Building" that was designed by architect Frank Gehry. While Microsoft had previously given financial support to the institution, this was the first personal donation received from Gates.[164] The Maxwell Dworkin Laboratory of the Harvard John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences is named after the mothers of both Gates and Microsoft President Steven A. Ballmer, both of whom were students (Ballmer was a member of the school's graduating class of 1977, while Gates left his studies for Microsoft), and donated funds for the laboratory's construction.[165] Gates also donated $6 million to the construction of the Gates Computer Science Building, completed in January 1996, on the campus of Stanford University. The building contains the Computer Science Department and the Computer Systems Laboratory (CSL) of Stanford's Engineering department.[166] Since 2005, Gates and his foundation have taken an interest in solving global sanitation problems. For example, they announced the "Reinvent the Toilet Challenge", which has received considerable media interest.[167] To raise awareness for the topic of sanitation and possible solutions, Gates drank water that was "produced from human feces" in 2014 – it was produced from a sewage sludge treatment process called the Omni Processor.[168][169] In early 2015, he also appeared with Jimmy Fallon on The Tonight Show and challenged him to see if he could taste the difference between this reclaimed water or bottled water.[170] In November 2017, Gates said he would give $50 million to the Dementia Discovery Fund, a venture capital fund that seeks treatment for Alzheimer's disease. He also pledged an additional $50 million to start-up ventures working in Alzheimer's research.[171] Bill and Melinda Gates have said that they intend to leave their three children $10 million each as their inheritance. With only $30 million kept in the family, they are expected to give away about 99.96% of their wealth.[172] On August 25, 2018, Gates distributed $600,000 through his foundation via UNICEF which is helping flood affected victims in Kerala, India.[173] In June 2018, Bill Gates offered free ebooks, to all new graduates of U.S. colleges and universities,[174] and in 2021, offered free ebooks, to all college and university students around the world.[175][176] The Bill And Melinda Gates Foundation partially funds OpenStax, which creates and provides free digital textbooks.[177] Charity sports events On April 29, 2017, Gates partnered with Swiss tennis legend Roger Federer in playing in the Match for Africa 4, a noncompetitive tennis match at a sold-out Key Arena in Seattle. The event was in support of the Roger Federer Foundation's charity efforts in Africa.[178] Federer and Gates played against John Isner, the top-ranked American player for much of this decade, and Mike McCready, the lead guitarist for Pearl Jam. The pair won the match 6 games to 4. Overall, they raised $2 million for children in Africa.[179] The following year, Gates and Federer returned to play in the Match for Africa 5 on March 5, 2018, at San Jose's SAP Center. Their opponents were Jack Sock, one of the top American players and a grand slam winner in doubles, and Savannah Guthrie, a co-anchor for NBC's Today show. Gates and Federer recorded their second match victory together by a score of 6–3 and the event raised over $2.5 million.[180] Books Gates has written four books: The Road Ahead, written with Microsoft executive Nathan Myhrvold and journalist Peter Rinearson, was published in November 1995. It summarized the implications of the personal computing revolution and described a future profoundly changed by the arrival of a global information superhighway. Business @ the Speed of Thought was published in 1999, and discusses how business and technology are integrated, and shows how digital infrastructures and information networks can help to get an edge on the competition. How to Avoid a Climate Disaster (February 2021) presents what Gates learned in over a decade of studying climate change and investing in innovations to address climate problems.[181] How to Prevent the Next Pandemic (April 2022) details the COVID-19 pandemic and proposes a "Global Epidemic Response and Mobilization" (GERM) team with annual funding of $1 billion,[182] under the auspices of the WHO.[183] Personal life Gates is an avid reader,[184] and the ceiling of his large home library is engraved with a quotation from The Great Gatsby.[185] He also enjoys bridge, tennis and golf.[186][187] His days are planned for him on a minute-by-minute basis, similarly to the U.S. president's schedule.[188] Despite his wealth and extensive business travel, Gates flew coach (economy class) in commercial aircraft until 1997, when he bought a private jet.[189] Gates purchased the Codex Leicester, a collection of scientific writings by Leonardo da Vinci, for US$30.8 million at an auction in 1994.[190] In 1998, he reportedly paid $30 million for the original 1885 maritime painting Lost on the Grand Banks, at the time a record price for an American painting.[191] In 2016, he revealed that he was color-blind.[192] On May 10, 2022, Gates said that he tested positive for COVID-19 and was experiencing mild symptoms.[193] Gates has received three doses of the COVID-19 vaccine.[193] Marriage and divorce Gates and Melinda, 2009 Gates married Melinda French on the Hawaiian Island of Lanai on January 1, 1994.[194] They met in 1987 after Melinda began working at Microsoft.[195] At the time of their marriage, Gates was given permission by Melinda to spend limited time with his ex-girlfriend, businesswoman Ann Winblad.[196] Bill and Melinda have three children: Jennifer, Rory and Phoebe.[197] The family's residence is an earth-sheltered mansion in the side of a hill overlooking Lake Washington in Medina, Washington. In 2009, property taxes on the mansion were reported to be US$1.063 million, on a total assessed value of US$147.5 million.[198] The 66,000-square-foot (6,100 m2) estate has a 60-foot (18 m) swimming pool with an underwater music system, as well as a 2,500-square-foot (230 m2) gym and a 1,000-square-foot (93 m2) dining room.[199] On May 3, 2021, the Gateses announced they had decided to divorce after 27 years of marriage and 34 years as a couple.[200] They said they would keep working together on charitable efforts.[200][201] The Wall Street Journal reported that Melinda had been meeting with divorce attorneys since 2019, citing interviews that suggested Bill's ties with Jeffrey Epstein was at least one of her concerns.[202] The divorce was finalized on August 2, 2021.[203] Public image Gates meets with U.S. Secretary of Defense Jim Mattis, February 2017 Gates's public image has changed over the years. At first he was perceived as a brilliant but ruthless "robber baron", a "nerd-turned-tycoon".[204] Starting in 2000 with the foundation of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, and particularly after he stepped down as head of Microsoft, he turned his attention to philanthropy, spending more than $50 billion on causes like health, poverty, and education. His image morphed from "tyrannical technocrat to saintly savior" to a "huggable billionaire techno-philanthropist", celebrated on magazine covers and sought after for his opinions on major issues like global health and climate change.[204] Still another shift in public opinion came in 2021 with the announcement that he and Melinda were divorcing. Coverage of that proceeding brought out information about romantic pursuits of women who worked for him, a long-term extra-marital affair, and a friendship with convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.[205] This information and his response to the COVID-19 pandemic resulted in some deterioration of his public image, going from "a lovable nerd who was out to save the world" to "a tech supervillain who wants to protect profits over public health."[206] Investigative journalist Tim Schwab has accused Gates of using his contributions to the media to shape their coverage of him in order to protect his public image.[91][207] In September 2022, Politico published an expose' critical of NGO leadership at the helm of the world-wide COVID-19 pandemic response, written in cooperation with the German newspaper Welt. Criticisms included the interconnectivity of the non-profits with Gates, as well as his personal lack of formal credentials in medicine.[208] Gates and the projects of his foundation have been the subject of many conspiracy theories that proliferate on Facebook and elsewhere. He has been implausibly accused of attempting to depopulate the world, distributing harmful or unethical vaccines, and implanting people with privacy-violating microchips. These largely unfounded theories reached a new level of influence during the COVID-19 pandemic when, according to New York Times journalist Rory Smith, the uncertainties of pandemic life drove people to seek explanations from the internet.[209][210] When asked about the theories, Gates has remarked that some people are tempted by the "simple explanation" that an evil person rather than biological factors are to blame, and that he does not know for what purpose anyone believes he would want to track them with microchips.[211][212] Religion In an interview with Rolling Stone, Gates said in regard to his faith: "The moral systems of religion, I think, are super important. We've raised our kids in a religious way; they've gone to the Catholic church that Melinda goes to and I participate in. I've been very lucky, and therefore I owe it to try and reduce the inequity in the world. And that's kind of a religious belief. I mean, it's at least a moral belief."[213] In the same 2014 interview he also said: "I agree with people like Richard Dawkins that mankind felt the need for creation myths. Before we really began to understand disease and the weather and things like that, we sought false explanations for them. Now science has filled in some of the realm – not all – that religion used to fill. But the mystery and the beauty of the world is overwhelmingly amazing, and there's no scientific explanation of how it came about. To say that it was generated by random numbers, that does seem, you know, sort of an uncharitable view [laughs]. I think it makes sense to believe in God, but exactly what decision in your life you make differently because of it, I don't know."[213] Wealth tallies In 1999, his wealth briefly surpassed US$101 billion.[214][189] Since 2000, the nominal value of his Microsoft holdings has declined due to a fall in Microsoft's stock price after the dot-com bubble burst and the multi-billion dollar donations he has made to his charitable foundations. In May 2006, Gates remarked that he wished that he were not the richest man in the world because he disliked the attention it brought.[215] In March 2010, Gates was the second wealthiest person after Carlos Slim, but regained the top position in 2013, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires List.[216][217] Slim retook the position again in June 2014[218][219] (but then lost the top position back to Gates). Between 2009 and 2014, his wealth doubled from US$40 billion to more than US$82 billion.[220] In October 2017, Gates was surpassed by Amazon founder Jeff Bezos as the richest person in the world.[16] On November 15, 2019, he once again became the richest person in the world after a 48% increase in Microsoft shares, surpassing Bezos.[221] Gates told the BBC, "I've paid more tax than any individual ever, and gladly so ... I've paid over $6 billion in taxes."[222] He is a proponent of higher taxes, particularly for the rich.[223] By 2017, Gates had held the top spot on the list of The World's Billionaires for 18 out of the previous 23 years.[224] Gates has several investments outside Microsoft, which in 2006 paid him a salary of US$616,667 and US$350,000 bonus totalling US$966,667.[225] In 1989, he founded Corbis, a digital imaging company. In 2004, he became a director of Berkshire Hathaway, the investment company headed by long-time friend Warren Buffett.[226] In 1987, Gates was listed as a billionaire in Forbes magazine's 400 Richest People in America issue, worth $1.25 billion at the time, and was the world's youngest self-made billionaire.[14] Since 1987, Gates has been included in the Forbes The World's Billionaires list and was the wealthiest person from 1995 to 1996,[227] 1998 to 2007, 2009, and held the spot until 2018 before being overtaken by Jeff Bezos.[15] Gates was number one on the Forbes 400 list from 1993 through to 2007, 2009, and 2014 through 2017.[228][229] Controversies Antitrust litigation Further information: United States Microsoft antitrust case and European Union Microsoft competition case Gates giving his deposition at Microsoft on August 27, 1998 Gates approved of many decisions that led to antitrust litigation over Microsoft's business practices. In the 1998 United States v. Microsoft case, Gates gave deposition testimony that several journalists characterized as evasive. He argued with examiner David Boies over the contextual meaning of words such as "compete", "concerned", and "we". Later in the year, when portions of the videotaped deposition were played back in court, the judge was seen laughing and shaking his head.[230] BusinessWeek reported: Early rounds of his deposition show him offering obfuscatory answers and saying "I don't recall" so many times that even the presiding judge had to chuckle. Worse, many of the technology chief's denials and pleas of ignorance were directly refuted by prosecutors with snippets of e-mail that Gates both sent and received.[231] Gates later said that he had simply resisted attempts by Boies to mischaracterize his words and actions. "Did I fence with Boies? ... I plead guilty ... rudeness to Boies in the first degree."[232] Despite Gates's denials, the judge ruled that Microsoft had committed monopolization, tying and blocking competition, each in violation of the Sherman Antitrust Act.[232] Treatment of colleagues and employees Gates had primary responsibility for Microsoft's product strategy from the company's founding from 1975 until 2006. He gained a reputation for being distant from others; an industry executive complained in 1981 that "Gates is notorious for not being reachable by phone and for not returning phone calls."[233] An Atari executive recalled that he showed Gates a game and defeated him 35 of 37 times. When they met again a month later, Gates "won or tied every game. He had studied the game until he solved it. That is a competitor".[234] In the early 1980s, while business partner Paul Allen was undergoing treatments for cancer, Gates — according to Allen — conspired to reduce Allen's share in Microsoft by issuing himself stock options.[235][236][237] In his autobiography, Allen would later recall that Gates was "scheming to rip me off. It was mercenary opportunism plain and simple".[235] Gates says he remembers the episode differently.[236] Allen would also recall that Gates was prone to shouting episodes.[237] Gates met regularly with Microsoft's senior managers and program managers, and the managers described him as being verbally combative. He also berated them for perceived holes in their business strategies or proposals that placed the company's long-term interests at risk.[238][239] Gates saw competition in personal terms; when Borland's Turbo Pascal performed better than Microsoft's own tools, he yelled at programming director Greg Whitten "for half an hour" because, Gates believed, Borland's Philippe Kahn had surpassed Gates.[240] Gates interrupted presentations with such comments as "that's the stupidest thing I've ever heard"[241] and "why don't you just give up your options and join the Peace Corps?"[242] The target of his outburst would then have to defend the proposal in detail until Gates was fully convinced.[241] Not all harsh language was criticism; a manager recalled that "You’re full of shit. That’s the stupidest fucking thing I’ve ever heard" meant that Gates was amazed. "In the lore of Microsoft, if Bill says that to you, you’re made".[243] When subordinates appeared to be procrastinating, he was known to remark sarcastically, "I'll do it over the weekend".[244][74][245] Gates has been accused of bullying Microsoft employees.[246] Relationship with Jeffrey Epstein A 2019 New York Times article reported that Gates's relationship with financier Jeffrey Epstein started in 2011, just a few years after Epstein's conviction for procuring a child for prostitution, and continued for some years, including a visit to Epstein's house with Melinda in the fall of 2013, despite her declared discomfort.[247] Gates said in 2011 about Epstein: "His lifestyle is very different and kind of intriguing although it would not work for me".[205] The depth of the friendship between Gates and Epstein is unclear. Gates generally commented about his relationship with Epstein that "I met him. I didn't have any business relationship or friendship with him".[248] However, Gates visited Epstein "many times, despite [Epstein's] past".[247] It was reported that Epstein and Gates "discussed the Gates Foundation and philanthropy".[247] However, in an interview in 2019 Gates completely denied any connection between Epstein and the Gates Foundation or his philanthropy generally.[248] In August 2021, Gates said the reason he had meetings with Epstein was because Gates hoped Epstein could provide money for philanthropic work, though nothing came of the idea. Gates added, "It was a huge mistake to spend time with him, to give him the credibility of being there."[246] It has also been reported that Epstein and Gates met with Nobel Committee chair Thorbjørn Jagland at his residence in Strasbourg, France in March 2013 to discuss the Nobel Prize.[249] Also in attendance were representatives of the International Peace Institute which has received millions in grants from the Gates Foundation, including a $2.5 million "community engagement" grant in October 2013.[250] Recognition Bill and Melinda Gates being awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by President Barack Obama in 2016 Time magazine named Gates one of the 100 people who most influenced the 20th century, as well as one of the 100 most influential people of 2004, 2005, and 2006.[251] Time also collectively named Gates, his wife Melinda and U2's lead singer Bono as the 2005 Persons of the Year for their humanitarian efforts.[252] In 2006, he was voted eighth in the list of "Heroes of our time".[253] Gates was listed in the London Sunday Times power list in 1999, named CEO of the year by Chief Executive Officers magazine in 1994, ranked number one in the "Top 50 Cyber Elite" by Time in 1998, ranked number two in the Upside Elite 100 in 1999, and was included in The Guardian as one of the "Top 100 influential people in media" in 2001.[254] Gates was elected Member of the US National Academy of Engineering in 1996 "for contributions to the founding and development of personal computing".[255] He was named Honorary Member of the American Library Association in 1998.[256] He was elected a foreign member of the Chinese Academy of Engineering in 2017.[257] According to Forbes, Gates was ranked as the fourth most powerful person in the world in 2012,[258] up from fifth in 2011.[259] In 1994, he was honored as the 20th Distinguished Fellow of the British Computer Society (DFBCS). In 1999, Gates received New York Institute of Technology's President's Medal.[260] Gates has received honorary doctorates from Nyenrode Business Universiteit (1996),[261] KTH Royal Institute of Technology (2002),[262] Waseda University (2005),[263] Tsinghua University (2007),[264] Harvard University (2007),[265] the Karolinska Institute (2007),[266] and Cambridge University (2009).[267] He was also made an honorary trustee of Peking University in 2007.[268] Gates was made an Honorary Knight Commander of the Order of the British Empire (KBE) by Queen Elizabeth II in 2005.[269] In January 2006, he was awarded the Grand Cross of the Order of Prince Henry by the President of Portugal Jorge Sampaio In November 2006, he was awarded the Placard of the Order of the Aztec Eagle, together with his wife Melinda who was awarded the Insignia of the same order, both for their philanthropic work around the world in the areas of health and education, particularly in Mexico, and specifically in the program "Un país de lectores".[270] Gates received the 2010 Bower Award for Business Leadership from The Franklin Institute for his achievements at Microsoft and his philanthropic work.[271] Also in 2010, he was honored with the Silver Buffalo Award by the Boy Scouts of America, its highest award for adults, for his service to youth.[272] In 2002, Bill and Melinda Gates received the Jefferson Award for Greatest Public Service Benefiting the Disadvantaged.[273] He was given the 2006 James C. Morgan Global Humanitarian Award from the Tech Awards.[274] In 2015, Gates and his wife Melinda received the Padma Bhushan, India's third-highest civilian award for their social work in the country.[275][276] In 2016, Barack Obama honored Bill and Melinda Gates with the Presidential Medal of Freedom for their philanthropic efforts.[277] In 2017, François Hollande awarded Bill and Melinda Gates with France's highest national order, as Commanders in the Legion of Honour, for their charity efforts.[278] Entomologists named Bill Gates' flower fly, Eristalis gatesi, in his honor in 1997.[279] In 2020, Gates received the Grand Cordon of the Order of the Rising Sun for his contributions to Japan and the world in regards to worldwide technological transformation and advancement of global health.[280] In 2021, Gates was nominated at the 11th annual Streamy Awards for the crossover for his personal YouTube channel.[281] In 2022, Gates received the Hilal-e-Pakistan Second-highest civilian award for their social work in the country. Depiction in media Documentary films about Gates External video video icon The Machine That Changed The World; Interview with Bill Gates, 1990 (raw video), 44:03, Open Vault WGBH[282] The Machine That Changed the World (1990) Triumph of the Nerds (1996) Nerds 2.0.1 (1998) Waiting for "Superman" (2010)[283] The Virtual Revolution (2010) Inside Bill's Brain: Decoding Bill Gates (2019) Feature films 1999: Pirates of Silicon Valley, a film that chronicles the rise of Apple and Microsoft from the early 1970s to 1997. Gates is portrayed by Anthony Michael Hall. 2002: Nothing So Strange, a mockumentary featuring Gates as the subject of a modern assassination. Gates briefly appears at the start, played by Steve Sires. 2010: The Social Network, a film that chronicles the development of Facebook. Gates is portrayed by Steve Sires.[284] 2015: Steve Jobs vs. Bill Gates: The Competition to Control the Personal Computer, 1974–1999: Original film from the National Geographic Channel for the American Genius series.[285] Video and film clips Steve Jobs and Gates at D: All Things Digital in 2007 1983: Steve Jobs hosts Gates and others in the "Macintosh dating game" at the Macintosh pre-launch event (a parody of the television game show The Dating Game)[286] 1991: Gates spoke to the Berkeley Macintosh Users Group lively weekly Thursday night meeting with questions and answers in PSL Hall (renamed Pimentel Hall in 1994)[287] at University of California, Berkeley[288][289][290] 2007: Steve Jobs and Bill Gates Together at the D5 Conference on YouTube, All Things Digital 2009− : Gates has given numerous TED talks on current concerns such as innovation, education and fighting global diseases[291] Radio Gates was the guest on BBC Radio 4's Desert Island Discs on January 31, 2016, in which he talked about his relationships with his father and Steve Jobs, meeting Melinda Ann French, the start of Microsoft and some of his habits (for example reading The Economist "from cover to cover every week"). His choice of things to take on a desert island were, for music: "Blue Skies" by Willie Nelson; a book: The Better Angels of Our Nature by Steven Pinker; and luxury item: a DVD Collection of Lectures from The Teaching Company.[292] Television Gates made a guest appearance as himself on the TV show The Big Bang Theory. The episode on which he appeared was appropriately titled "The Gates Excitation".[293] He also appeared in a cameo role in 2019 on the series finale of Silicon Valley.[294] Gates was parodied in The Simpsons episode "Das Bus". In 2023, Gates was the interviewee in an episode of the Amol Rajan Interviews series on BBC Two,[295] and was the subject of an episode of the The Billionaires Who Made Our World UK Channel 4 series.[296] See also Big History Project List of richest Americans in history List of wealthiest historical figures

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