TIME100 AI 2026 · Leaders
Elon Musk
CEO, SpaceX
At 12, he sold Blastar, a game he had written in BASIC, to PC and Office Technology magazine for about $500.
- Born
- 1971-06-28, Pretoria, South Africa
- Now
- CEO and CTO, SpaceX
- Studied
- University of Pennsylvania, Stanford University
Interesting facts
- Detour
Enrolled in Stanford's applied physics PhD program in 1995 and quit after two days to start an internet company.
en.wikipedia.org - Early start
Taught himself to code as a boy and at 12 sold a space shooter game he wrote, Blastar, to a South African computer magazine.
en.wikipedia.org - Turning point
Folded his AI company xAI into SpaceX in February 2026 at a $250 billion valuation; the unit was later renamed SpaceX Super Intelligence.
en.wikipedia.org - Numbers
SpaceX ended its first trading day on June 12, 2026 at a $2.1 trillion valuation, the world's sixth-biggest company.
reuters.com - In their words
Told biographer Walter Isaacson that "AI and robots" will need to fix the US deficit.
axios.com
Career
- SpaceXCEO and CTO2002 to now
- TeslaCEO
- US governmentAdvisor to the President, de facto head of DOGE, DOGE2025
- PayPalCo-founder
- Zip2Co-founder
Education
- BA, Physics, University of Pennsylvania
- BS, Economics (Wharton), University of Pennsylvania
- Attended, left without a degree, Applied physics and materials science (PhD), Stanford University, 1995
