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Musk was born on June 28, 1971, in Pretoria,Transvaal, South Africa.
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At the age of 12, he earned $500 by selling a computer game Blastar (a shooter similar to Space Invaders), which he had created by himself.
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Elon Musk has been studying in Ontario for two years and then, finally, his dream came true – in 1992, he relocated to the United States.
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He created his first IT company Zip2. In 1999, the biggest search engine of that time AltaVista bought Zip2 for $307 million in cash and $34 million in securities. In 2002, eBay bought PayPal for $1.5 billion. Elon Musk received $180 million for his share from PayPal and had enough funds to pursue his other interests: space engineering and alternative energy sources.
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SpaceX was founded in 2002 and is headquartered in Hawthorne, California, USA. Elon Musk was fascinated by the opportunity of colonizing Mars and created Mars Oasis.
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In 2003, engineers Martin Eberhard and Marc Tarpenning founded Tesla Motors. Elon Musk came into the project in 2004, leading an investment round in the startup with a personal contribution of $70 million. Musk participated in designing of their first electric car, which was a Tesla Roadster sports car based on the British Lotus Elise.
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SolarCity Corporation is a provider of energy services headquartered in San Mateo, California, USA. The co-founders of SolarCity are two cousins Lyndon and Peter Rive. Elon Musk is a shareholder of the company. In 2003, he invested $10 million in it, after selling his 11 percent of PayPal stock.
