Elon Reeve Musk is a businessman known for his key roles in the space company SpaceX and the automotive company Tesla, Inc. His other involvements include ownership of X Corp., the company that operates the social media platform X, and his role in the founding of the Boring Company, xAI, Neuralink, and OpenAI. In November 2024, United States president-elect Donald Trump appointed Musk as the co-chair of the proposed Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) in the second Trump administration. Musk is the wealthiest individual in the world; as of November 2024, Forbes estimates his net worth to be US$304 billion.
Gary S. Gensler is an American government official and former investment banker served as the chair of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). Gensler previously worked for Goldman Sachs and has led the Biden–Harris transition's Federal Reserve, Banking, and Securities Regulators agency review team. Prior to his appointment, he was professor of Practice of Global Economics and Management at the MIT Sloan School of Management.
Dogecoin is a cryptocurrency created by software engineers Billy Markus and Jackson Palmer, who decided to create a payment system as a joke, making fun of the wild speculation in cryptocurrencies at the time. It is considered both the first "meme coin", and more specifically the first "dog coin". Despite its satirical nature, some consider it a legitimate investment prospect. Dogecoin features the face of Kabosu from the "doge" meme as its logo and namesake. It was introduced on December 6, 2013, and quickly developed its own online community, reaching a peak market capitalization of over US$85 billion on May 5, 2021. As of 2021, it is the sleeve sponsor of Watford Football Club.
An autonomous spaceport drone ship (ASDS) is a modified ocean-going barge equipped with propulsion systems to maintain precise position and a large landing platform. SpaceX developed these vessels to recover the first stage of its launch vehicles. By recovering and reusing these boosters, SpaceX has significantly reduced the cost of space launch.
Starlink is a satellite internet constellation operated by Starlink Services, LLC, an international telecommunications provider that is a wholly owned subsidiary of American aerospace company SpaceX, providing coverage to over 100 countries and territories. It also aims to provide global mobile broadband. Starlink has been instrumental to SpaceX's growth.
Maye Musk is a model and dietitian. She has been a model for 50 years, appearing on the covers of magazines, including a Time magazine health edition, Women's Day, international editions of Vogue, and Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Issue. She is the mother of Elon Musk, Kimbal Musk and Tosca Musk. She holds Canadian, South African, and American citizenship. She is a registered dietitian and earned two masters degrees in diet and nutrition.
The Tesla Roadster is an upcoming battery electric four-seater sports car to be built by Tesla, Inc. The company said it will be capable of accelerating from 0 to 60 mph in 1.9 seconds, which would be quicker than any street legal production car to date at its announcement in November 2017. The Roadster is the successor to Tesla's first production car, the 2008 Roadster.
Elon Musk's Tesla Roadster is an electric sports car that served as the dummy payload for the February 2018 Falcon Heavy test flight and became an artificial satellite of the Sun. A mannequin in a spacesuit, dubbed "Starman", occupies the driver's seat. The car and rocket are products of Tesla and SpaceX, respectively, both companies headed by Elon Musk. The 2010 Roadster is personally owned by and previously used by Musk for commuting to work. It is the first production car launched into space.
The Falcon Heavy test flight was the first attempt by SpaceX to launch a Falcon Heavy rocket on February 6, 2018, at 20:45 UTC. The successful test introduced the Falcon Heavy as the most powerful rocket in operation at the time, producing five million pounds-force (22 MN) of thrust and having more than twice the payload capacity of the next most powerful rocket, United Launch Alliance's Delta IV Heavy.
TSLAQ is a loose, international collective of largely anonymous short-sellers, skeptics, and researchers who openly criticize Tesla, Inc. and its CEO Elon Musk. The group primarily organizes on social media, often using the $TSLAQ cashtag, and on Reddit to coordinate efforts and share news, opinions, and analysis about the company and its stock. Edward Niedermeyer, in his book Ludicrous: The Unvarnished Story of Tesla Motors (2019), pinpoints the July 2018 doxxing of Twitter user Lawrence Fossi, a Seeking Alpha writer and Tesla short seller operating under the pseudonym Montana Skeptic, as the catalyst for the formation of TSLAQ.
r/wallstreetbets, also known as WallStreetBets or WSB, is a subreddit where participants discuss stock and option trading. It has become notable for its colorful jargon, aggressive trading strategies, stories of extreme gains and losses acquired in the stock market, and for playing a major role in the GameStop short squeeze that caused significant losses for a number of US hedge funds and short sellers for a duration of time in early 2021.
Gigafactory Texas is a Tesla, Inc. automotive manufacturing facility in unincorporated Travis County, Texas, just outside of Austin. Construction began in July 2020, limited production of Model Y began before the end of 2021, and initial deliveries of vehicles built at the factory took place at an opening party called "Cyber Rodeo" on April 7, 2022.
Elon Musk is the CEO or owner of multiple companies including Tesla, SpaceX, and X Corp, and has expressed many views on a wide variety of subjects, ranging from politics to science.
Power Play: Tesla, Elon Musk, and the Bet of the Century is Tim Higgins's book about Tesla, Inc., published in 2021, that focuses on the company while under the management of Elon Musk. The book does not contain any interviews with Musk himself, but many anonymous current and former executives from Tesla. In response to the book in general, Musk tweeted "Higgins managed to make his book both false *and* boring".
Lex Fridman is a Russian-American computer scientist and podcaster. Since 2018 he has hosted the Lex Fridman Podcast, where he interviews notable figures from various fields such as science, technology, sports, and politics.
ElonJet is a service that uses social media accounts to track the real-time usage of Elon Musk's private airplane. The service, created and provided by Jack Sweeney using public data, has accounts on Facebook, Instagram, Telegram, Truth Social, Mastodon, Threads, and formerly on Twitter, where the Twitter account once had about 530,000 followers, before being suspended. Several of the social media accounts use the handle @elonjet.
On December 15, 2022, Twitter suspended the accounts of ten journalists who have covered the company and its owner, Elon Musk. They included reporters Keith Olbermann, Steven L. Herman, and Donie O'Sullivan, as well as journalists from The New York Times, The Washington Post, CNN, and The Intercept. Musk cited an incident between "a crazy stalker" and a car with his child as a justification for the suspensions. Posters on behalf of the owners of the accounts said that the suspensions were permanent. On December 16, 2022, Musk stated that account access would only be restricted for seven days and on December 17, 2022, some accounts were reportedly restored with Musk citing Twitter community polls as the reason for the reversal.
Elon Musk is one of the wealthiest people in the world, with an estimated net worth of US $314 billion as of November 2024, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index, and $300.3 billion according to Forbes, primarily from his ownership stakes in Tesla, Inc. and SpaceX. In November 2021, he became the first person in the world to have a net worth above $300 billion.
