Space Exploration Technologies Corporation, commonly referred to as SpaceX, is an American spacecraft manufacturer, launch service provider and satellite communications company headquartered at the SpaceX Starbase near Brownsville, Texas after first being established in 2002 in Southern California, where it still has significant operations. The company was founded by Elon Musk with the goal of reducing space transportation costs by designing for reusability and ultimately developing a sustainable colony on Mars. SpaceX currently produces and operates the Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy rockets along with the Dragon spacecraft.
Elon Reeve Musk is a businessman and investor known for his key roles in the space company SpaceX and the automotive company Tesla, Inc. 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. He is one of the wealthiest individuals in the world; as of August 2024 Forbes estimates his net worth to be US$247 billion.
Tesla, Inc. is an American multinational automotive and clean energy company. Headquartered in Austin, Texas, it designs, manufactures and sells battery electric vehicles (BEVs), stationary battery energy storage devices from home to grid-scale, solar panels and solar shingles, and related products and services.
Ashlee Vance is an American reporter, writer and filmmaker. He wrote a biography of Elon Musk, titled Elon Musk: Tesla, SpaceX, and the Quest for a Fantastic Future, that was released on May 19, 2015.
Founded in 1878 by Simon Seward, the Petersburg, Virginia-based Seward Trunk Co. was once the nation's largest manufacturer of steamers, trunks, footlockers, and other luggage. In 1967, Seward was purchased by the Dayco Corporation, the former Dayton Rubber Company, of Dayton, Ohio. The company is now a unit of Advantus, Corp. of Jacksonville, Florida which purchased the former owner, Mercury Luggage(also of Jacksonville) in 2016. Seward trunks are sold by fine retailers throughout the USA.
Samuel Harris Altman is an American entrepreneur and investor best known as the CEO of OpenAI since 2019. He is also the chairman of clean energy companies Oklo Inc. and Helion Energy. Altman is considered to be one of the leading figures of the AI boom. He dropped out of Stanford University after two years and founded Loopt, a mobile social networking service, raising more than $30 million in venture capital. In 2011, Altman joined Y Combinator, a startup accelerator, and was its president from 2014 to 2019.
The Tesla Fremont Factory is an automobile manufacturing plant in Fremont, California, United States, operated by Tesla, Inc. The factory originally opened as General Motors' Fremont Assembly in 1962, and then was operated by New United Motor Manufacturing, Inc. (NUMMI), a joint venture of GM and Toyota from 1984. The joint venture ended when GM entered bankruptcy in 2009. In 2010, Toyota agreed to sell the plant to Tesla at a significant discount. The plant is the only production site for the Model S and Model X and also produces the Model 3, and Model Y.
Hyperloop is a proposed high-speed transportation system for both passengers and freight. The concept was published by Elon Musk in a 2013 white paper, where the hyperloop was described as a transportation system using capsules supported by an air-bearing surface within a low-pressure tube. Hyperloop systems have three essential elements: tubes, pods, and terminals. The tube is a large, sealed low-pressure system. The pod is a coach at atmospheric pressure that experiences low air resistance or friction inside the tube using magnetic propulsion. The terminal handles pod arrivals and departures. The hyperloop, in the form proposed by Musk, differs from traditional vactrains by relying on residual air pressure inside the tube to provide lift from aerofoils and propulsion by fans; however, many subsequent variants using the name "hyperloop" have remained relatively close to the core principles of vactrains.
Belber is a heritage American leather goods company founded in Philadelphia in 1891.
The Future of Life Institute (FLI) is a nonprofit organization which aims to steer transformative technology towards benefiting life and away from large-scale risks, with a focus on existential risk from advanced artificial intelligence (AI). FLI's work includes grantmaking, educational outreach, and advocacy within the United Nations, United States government, and European Union institutions.
OpenAI is an American artificial intelligence (AI) research organization founded in December 2015 and headquartered in San Francisco, California. Its mission is to develop "safe and beneficial" artificial general intelligence (AGI), which it defines as "highly autonomous systems that outperform humans at most economically valuable work". As a leading organization in the ongoing AI boom, OpenAI is known for the GPT family of large language models, the DALL-E series of text-to-image models, and a text-to-video model named Sora. Its release of ChatGPT in November 2022 has been credited with catalyzing widespread interest in generative AI.
The Boring Company (TBC) is an American infrastructure, tunnel construction services, and equipment company founded by Elon Musk. TBC was founded as a subsidiary of SpaceX in 2017, and was spun off as a separate corporation in 2018. TBC has completed one tunneling project that is open to the public, as well as multiple test tunnels.
Neuralink Corp. is an American neurotechnology company that has developed, as of 2024, implantable brain–computer interfaces (BCIs). It was founded by Elon Musk and a team of seven scientists and engineers. Neuralink was launched in 2016 and was first publicly reported in March 2017. The company is based in Fremont, California with plans to build a three-story building with office and manufacturing space near Austin, Texas in Del Valle, located about 10 miles east of Tesla's headquarters and manufacturing plant that opened in 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.
Tesla, Inc. has been criticized for its cars, workplace culture, business practices, and occupational safety. Many of the criticisms are also directed toward Elon Musk, the company's CEO and Product Architect. Critics have also accused Tesla of deceptive marketing, unfulfilled promises, and fraud. The company is currently facing criminal and civil investigations into its self-driving claims. Critics have highlighted Tesla's downplaying of issues, and Tesla's alleged retaliation against several whistleblowers.
Optimus, also known as Tesla Bot, is a general-purpose robotic humanoid under development by Tesla, Inc. It was announced at the company's Artificial Intelligence (AI) Day event on August 19, 2021, and a prototype was shown in 2022. CEO Elon Musk stated in 2022 that he thinks Optimus "has the potential to be more significant than [Tesla's] vehicle business over time." Media and expert opinions based on corporate showcases have been mixed.
Boxabl is an American housing construction technology company located in Las Vegas, Nevada. It aims to supply accessory dwelling units (ADUs).
X Corp. is an American technology company headquartered in Bastrop, Texas. Established by Elon Musk in 2023 as the successor to Twitter, Inc. It is a wholly owned subsidiary of X Holdings Corp., which is itself mostly owned by Musk. The company owns the social networking service X, and has announced plans to use it as a base for other offerings. While the official name of the company and social network is now X, many users and media outlets continue to refer to it as Twitter.
X.AI Corp., doing business as xAI, is an American startup company working in the area of artificial intelligence (AI). Founded by Elon Musk in March 2023, its stated goal is "to understand the true nature of the universe".
