Elon Musk, the billionaire got Twitter to save free speech

Elon Musk’s latest passion project is a $44 billion acquisition of the microblogging site

But he says he’s buying it to safeguard free expression.

According to him, “free expression is the backbone of a functional democracy, and Twitter is the digital town square where questions crucial to humanity’s future are debated.”

“I also want to improve Twitter by adding new features, opening up the algorithms to increase trust, combating spambots, and authenticating all humans.”

Elon Musk’s, 50, CEO of Tesla and SpaceX, surpassed Amazon’s Jeff Bezos as the world’s richest man in 2021.

Musk has a net worth of $239.2 billion, according to Forbes.

From OpenAI to The Boring Company and Neuralink, the billionaire has his fingers in almost every pie while focusing on his long-term goal: colonizing Mars to preserve humanity.

…and how did Elon Musk become so wealthy?

TheCable profiles the world’s richest man, now the owner of Twitter Inc.

ORN RICH BUT SCHOOLED

Musk was born in 1971 in Pretoria, South Africa’s third capital. In addition to his father’s engineering background, his mother was a model and dietician.

His parents divorced in 1980, and he became interested in computer programming. At 12, he sold a magazine the code for his BASIC-based video game Blastar for $500.

Despite his talent and money, he was bullied as a child.

“They enticed me out of concealment to beat me up. “That hurt,” Musk said.

“They decided I was it, and they were going to pursue me endlessly. That was difficult growing up. There was no relief for years. At school, gangs tried to beat the (expletive) out of me, and then I went home, and it was just as bad.”

NON-MILITARY SERVICE IN SOUTH AFRICA

Elon Musk left South Africa at 17 to evade compulsory military service and received a Canadian passport (his mother was Canadian).

“Suppressing Black people just didn’t seem like a good idea,” Musk remarked.

He studied physics and economics at the University of Pennsylvania, where he graduated in 1995 with a bachelor’s degree in physics and economics.

DROPPED FROM STANFORD PH.D. PROGRAM

Musk traveled to California at the age of 24 to earn a Ph.D. in applied physics and materials science at Stanford. But he quit Stanford after two days to join the internet boom and establish a company.

ENTREPRENEUR

Musk established Zip2 in 1995, a startup that provides maps and business directories to online newspapers, before SpaceX & Tesla. Compaq bought Zip2 for $307 million in 1999.

The billionaire subsequently co-founded X.com, which merged with software startup Confinity Inc. in 2000 to become PayPal.

MAKE HUMAN MULTI-PLANETARY

Musk aims to send humans to Mars using SpaceX’s recyclable rockets.

Musk stated that humanity should be a “multi-planet species” and not confined to Earth.

“If something awful happens on Earth, either human-made or natural, we want to have life insurance for everyone,” Musk declared in 2020 during a virtual Mars meeting.

SYNDROME ASPERGER

Musk has Asperger’s syndrome.

Asperger’s syndrome is a mild variant of autism. People with Asperger’s syndrome have trouble socializing but are intelligent.

The syndrome affects an estimated 40 million people.

DIVORCED 3 TIMES, 7 KIDS

Triple divorced billionaire (twice to the same woman). He has 7 kids.