Original subtitles

[soft music]

There's so many things that make people sad

or depressed about the future,

but I think becoming a space-faring civilization is one

of those things that makes you excited about the future.

Space is one of those things that I think

almost everyone is inspired by and if you asked people

what was the most inspiring event in history,

it was probably landing on the moon.

[air whooshes]

[determined music]

You know, I think all transport,

with the exception of rockets, will go fully electric.

Owning a car that is not self-driving in the longterm

will be like owning a horse.

You would own it for,

and you would use it for sentimental reasons,

but not for, you know, not for daily use, really.

[Narrator] Our generation has seen incredible advancements

in technology.

For that we can thank one of the most successful,

influential and notorious entrepreneurs of the 21st century.

Elon Musk, the mind behind PayPal,

founder of Tesla and SpaceX,

the second richest man in the world

after Amazon founder, Jeff Bezos,

with an estimated net worth of 163 billion US dollars.

He is the ambitious genius, intellectual

and eccentric tech billionaire who shook the entire world

with groundbreaking inventions.

This man is an engineer, a charismatic leader,

a philanthropist.

Elon Musk is so many things.

Today he has a dream, one that many believe unreachable,

at least during his lifetime,

space colonization.

This is the story of an individual

whose inventions revolutionize the tech industry.

After creating space rockets, electric cars,

solar batteries, and robots,

his astounding success puts him on top of the rank

of the world's wealthiest men.

They are masterminds,

ambitious, competitive and ruthless, not afraid of failure,

dedicated to their mission of bettering the world.

Always reaching for excellence, they lead by example.

Unlike many industries,

the tech billionaires are mostly self-made.

It is through their genius

that they revolutionize the industry

and together they change the world.

Join us in this series as we take a look

at some of the wealthiest entrepreneurs in the modern world,

the tech billionaires, Bill Gates, Elon Musk,

Mark Zuckerberg and Jeff Bezos.

Together they're worth a collective

of more than 900 billion US dollars.

They will be remembered in history

as the most influential people of the 21st century.

[inspiring music]

[letters clinking]

[letters clinking]

[upbeat music]

Elon Reeve Musk was born on the 28th of June 1971,

in Pretoria, South Africa.

His father, Errol, was a wealthy,

successful South African engineer

and his mother, Maye Musk, was a Canadian model.

Elon was the oldest of three children

and he spent all of his childhood with his brother, Kimbal,

and his sister, Tosca, in South Africa.

They could be one beautiful, happy family,

everything looked amazing on the surface,

but the reality was much different.

Elon grew up in a tumultuous household

and had a difficult and lonely childhood.

His father was abusive towards his mother

and denied Elon any help to begin a career in business.

He wasn't interested in his children's happiness or success.

His parents would divorce when Elon was 10 years old.

Elon was different.

From the age of three,

he was already showing signs of ingenuity.

His mother called him a nerd.

In her autobiography published in 2019,

"A Woman Makes A Plan,"

she shared some humble photographs of his childhood

and wrote, "When Elon was young,

I noticed that he read everything."

She realized that he had something special.

Elon was bullied at school and he struggled

with having social life, unlike his sibling.

He was short and introverted.

He liked to read, which didn't make him popular

among the other children.

He said, "I was this little bookworm kid

and probably a bit of a smart aleck

so this is a recipe for disaster."

He described these years as lonely and brutal.

His only bright escape, technology.

He was so consumed in his daydreams of inventions

that his parents had a test done

to check his hearing abilities.

He soon developed an interest in computers

and electronic devices.

After finally getting his first computer,

he learned to code at only 10 years old.

He taught himself programming

after realizing the classes weren't helping

because he was ahead of his teachers.

He did not always get good grades, especially in subjects

where he couldn't see the point learning them,

like learning Afrikaans.

Rather he would spend his time playing video games,

reading books, or coding.

But for the subjects that were important to him,

such as physics and computers,

he would get the highest grade.

To this day, he still uses reading

to become an expert in a field that interests him.

Even comic books would eventually inspire him

to push humanity forward

as the stories in them were always about saving the world.

Elon quickly figured out

that if he could write and sell a better software,

than he could buy better computers.

So he created his first piece of space-gaming software,

called Blastar.

He sold it to a magazine for $500.

At 12 years old, he had sold his first commercial program.

In his college days, he would sell computer parts

out of his dorm room to earn some extra cash.

At this point, he had no plan of becoming a billionaire,

but it seems that he was born with a creative superpower.

Not afraid of experimenting and figuring things out,

he was already thinking like an entrepreneur

at a very young age and was born to innovate and create.

His childhood was tough, but it gave him an important asset,

the ability to adapt

and overcome the most difficult challenges.

[lively music]

In June 1989, the second part of his life began.

At 17 and against his father's wishes,

he decided to embark on a plane to Canada,

leaving South Africa and his childhood behind forever.

He had in mind the American dream.

Elon remembered thinking

that America's where great things are possible,

more than in any other country in the world.

He didn't have a concrete plan,

but he knew that staying in his home country

wouldn't get him where he wanted to go.

Growing up during apartheid,

he knew he had to make a decision

and joining the mandatory service in the army

was out of the question.

He described the apartheid as surreal

and he didn't believe in the government.

After arriving in Canada,

he went to Queens University in Ontario,

where he met his first wife, Justine Wilson.

They got married in 2000 and would have five children.

He then moved to the US

to attend the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia

where he graduated with BA degrees

in economics and physics in 1997.

He was 24 when he moved to the Bay Area, California

to pursue a degree in energy physics at Stanford,

but he dropped out after only two days

and went on to bigger things.

Musk is not the first big name in Silicon Valley

to have dropped out of college and gone on to find success.

Apple co-founder, Steve Jobs,

and two of the world's richest men,

Bill Gates and Mark Zuckerberg,

all dropped out of school to start their own company.

Since it was the dawn of the internet,

Musk wanted to work on new technology

and he decided to move to Silicon Valley in California,

the promise land for any entrepreneur in the tech world.

That is where he thought he would thrive the most.

It was soon revealed that Musk was a problem solver.

By the time he had moved to Silicon Valley

he had a grand vision, ensuring the future of humanity.

[hopeful piano music]

[soft music]

But first, he knew that he wanted

to make useful things happen on the internet.

In 1995, he created his first company, Zip2,

with his brother Kimbal,

which was an online version of the yellow pages,

however, he had no idea

how difficult the first years would end up being.

Having moved from South Africa

and having huge student college debt,

Musk was so poor that he was unable to afford both a home

and an office for his company.

He ended up having to sleep on the couch

of his small office space and showering at a local gym.

The first few months were a lot of excitement

but after several months,

it started to get really difficult.

Reality was kicking in.

With only just one computer

he was working seven days a week,

running the website during the day and coding at night.

He has declared that in order to have success

you have to have a high pain threshold.

Building a company from scratch is painful.

Eventually his company took off and grew.

In February 1999, tech company Compaq acquired Zip2

for $307 million in cash

and $34 million in stock options.

Musk was just 28 years old

when he joined the rank of Silicon Valley millionaires.

He had just gone

from a broke man sleeping on his office couch

to a multimillionaire overnight.

But he wanted more, he wanted to make a bigger impact.

How about transforming the banking industry?

After selling Zip2 his confidence had grown

and he was ready for a new challenge.

In 1999, only a month after selling Zip2,

Elon and Kimbal used the money from their sale

to found X.com,

now known as the incredibly popular PayPal.

Money transactions used to be very slow.

Musk noticed that there was an opportunity

to make a real profound change to the financial world.

He invented PayPal to make money transfers

and payments easier without having to deal with cash.

In the beginning, the company was small and unknown

but Musk was ahead of his time.

Thanks to his experience,

his second business was easier than the first.

It grew fast and by the end of year two,

it exploded with a million customers.

In 2002, eBay purchased PayPal for $1.5 billion.

After selling PayPal, Musk and his wife, Justine,

moved from Silicon Valley down to Los Angeles

to be closer to the space industry,

the next adventure that he wanted to tackle after PayPal.

But money can't buy happiness and that year, tragedy struck.

[plane engines roar]

By the time they had moved to LA,

their first child was born,

a boy they named Nevada Alexander.

That same week which catapulted Elon's net worth,

their baby boy suddenly stopped breathing.

He died from SIDS, Sudden Infant Death Syndrome.

He was just 10 weeks old. [somber music]

Elon had just earned his first billion dollars

but he had lost a child.

Afterwards, he refused to talk about Nevada's death

and he and his wife decided

that they wanted to have children again as soon as possible.

Within the next five years, and with the help of IVF,

Justine gave birth to twins, then triplets.

Five sons in total,

named Griffin, Xavier,

Damian, Saxon, and Kai.

He and his family were living a dream or so it seemed.

Justine declared feeling

that she had turned into a trophy wife

and that their relationship had become unhealthy

and unsustainable.

The tragic death of their first child

and Elon's priorities and obsession with work

led them to growing apart,

and ultimately to their divorce in 2008,

a year that would be full of challenges.

Not long after in 2010,

he met his second wife, the British actor, Talulah Riley.

He proposed after dating for only 10 days.

They divorced then remarried, first in 2013,

and then again, in 2016, their marriage ended.

Despite the troubles and obstacles,

Musk had finally reached the impact

that he'd been working for.

His new company created something

that we now all take for granted,

but it changed the way money is transferred,

how the world buys things.

In 2002, at 31, Musk had become a US citizen

and a billionaire.

At this point, he could have easily retired,

bought private tropical islands

and sipped on Mai Tais for the rest of his life,

but that was not something he has interest in.

Instead, he spends most of his time at the office

or in factories working 80 to 90 hours a week.

The entrepreneur is a busy man with a relentless work ethic.

One of his rules for success is work like hell.

He has said

that his children are his priority outside of work

and he is known to be a doting father,

but not everyone can handle his busy schedule.

After PayPal, Musk got interested

in a more inspiring future, like exploring outer space.

His new goal, enabling the human civilization

to become multiplanetary.

A little child with no big or clear vision,

evolved into a genius entrepreneur

who now holds a vision bigger

than what most can possibly imagine.

[wondrous music]

Support us and become VIP member to remove all ads from www.OpenSubtitles.org

[determined music]

In 2002, he founded the private interstellar travel company,

SpaceX, with the intention of reigniting the dream of Apollo

and building spacecraft for commercial space travel.

His goal was to improve the technology

of space transportation

by making cheaper and reusable rockets,

though space industry experts

believed reusable rockets were infeasible.

Presence on another heavenly body,

actually the kind of the Moon base and then,

yeah, and then getting people to Mars and beyond.

And, you know, it's sort of like the continuance

of the dream of Apollo that, like,

people are really looking for.

[Narrator] SpaceX would be established in 2008,

but not everyone was a fan of this idea of his.

Even moonwalkers and American heroes,

Neil Armstrong and Gene Cernan, criticized Musk's plans.

He said in an emotional interview

that it was painful to hear that

I was very sad to see that

because those guys are, yeah,

you know, that those guys are heroes of mine

so it's really tough.

You know, I wish they would come and visit

and see the hard work that we're doing here.

And I think that would change their mind.

They inspired you to do this didn't they?

Yes.

[Scott] And to see them casting stones in your direction.

It's difficult.

[determined music]

[Narrator] Back in the '90s, the original reason

Musk moved to Silicon Valley in the first place

was to work on electric cars.

At the time, he decided that it would be better

to become part of the internet as it was booming,

but his dream of building electric cars

stayed in the back of his mind all these years.

He recalled in an interview being passionate about it

very early on at college.

I actually met, I met a woman I dated briefly in college,

who now works at "Scientific American" as a writer

And she related the anecdote that we went on a date,

all I was talking about was electric cars.

[audience laughs]

That was not a winning conversation.

[interviewer and audience laughs]

So it was a bit of a monologue, was it?

Yeah, she said, the first question I asked her was,

"Do you ever think about electric cars?" [laughs]

[interviewer and audience laughs]

She says, "No, she never does."

[Narrator] Musk is not only a tech entrepreneur,

[dramatic music]

he is also a strong believer

in the future of renewable energy,

and he sees it as a key factor in humanity's future.

[determined music]

Having always been fascinated by rockets and fast cars,

Musk wanted to find a way to reduce global warming

and end the destructive use of fossil fuels.

[suspenseful music]

And we do have significant danger

with fracking technology, which is, I think,

really still

at an early stage,

because I think fracking

probably increases the accessible oil and gas in the world

by perhaps a factor of 10.

I mean, we didn't really know what the full extent of it is,

but it's probably something like an order of magnitude,

which means the potential harm to the climate

is really much, much greater than it was before.

[dramatic music]

And we can't rely on scarcity

to drive the price of oil and gas high

and have that be an adequate forcing function

to move electric.

So we have to figure out how to make electric cars

themselves compelling without that economic forcing function

of high gas prices.

[determined music]

[Narrator] Two years after founding SpaceX,

2004 was the year he got involved in a company

that he believed would change the course of humanity

and build a more sustainable future.

A company with revolutionary technology

dedicated to the environment,

to the best customer experience, to success,

the incredibly popular, Tesla Motors,

named after the electrical inventor pioneer, Nikola Tesla.

Tesla's plan was to produce a car that everyone would want,

affordable, environmentally friendly and fast.

Although Musk didn't start this company,

it was actually started by two less-known engineers

who simply had a vision for transport using energy

that was better for the environment.

In April 2004, he helped them launch Tesla

with $6.5 million of his own money

and was appointed as chairman of the company.

[inspiring music]

[Elon] There's a certain probability that is irreducible

that something may happen to earth,

despite our best intentions,

despite everything we try to do.

There's a probability at a certain point

that either an external force,

or some internal unforced error

causes civilization to be destroyed.

[Narrator] In 2006 at 32,

and in this continuing effort to advance sustainable energy,

he helped his cousins, Lyndon and Peter Rive,

start SolarCity, a company that develops

and sells solar panels and solar roof tiles.

Owned by Tesla, SolarCity is now the largest provider

of solar service in the US.

For him,

the sun is an indefinitely plentiful source of energy

which he believes could easily power

and benefit the entire world.

A big part of this mission

is how he plans to power the planet.

And it can even work in the UK,

despite the cloudy British weather.

You still get probably 80 to 90%

of the energy coming through the clouds.

It's just that you don't have that bright point source

of a sun.

And a way to appreciate this perhaps is to look at the fact

that plants are essentially

a solar-powered chemical reaction

and the UK is a very green country.

[wondrous music]

[Narrator] In 2008,

Tesla released the first Tesla Roadster,

a sports car capable of accelerating

from zero to 60 miles per hour in 3.7 seconds,

paving the way for its first affordable electric car,

the Model 3.

But Musk had underestimated the production cost

of such high-end cars.

Our goal is to get to cars

that everyone can afford as soon as possible,

but any technology has to go through a learning curve,

it has to go through economies of scale

and that kind of thing.

So for us being a little startup,

we had to start up with a car that was in low production

and necessarily expensive,

and of course it has only the first version of technology.

[Reporter] Tesla have only sold 1,300 Roadsters

so critics have argued that as such a small company,

they'll never have the scale

to revolutionized the automobile industry.

But they have sold their battery technology to Daimler,

who will build it into an electric smart car

and they hope that the Roadster

is a convincing enough replica of a regular car

that the public might just believe

that the future really is electric.

[determined music]

I think all transport, with the exception of rockets,

will go fully electric.

So that's why, I mean, I see the value of Tesla

as an accelerant, as a catalyst in that transition.

[solemn music]

[Narrator] By 2007, the company was running out of money.

They weren't able to predict

how difficult the following years would be.

Musk faced tough challenges

before the success of Tesla and SpaceX.

2008 would be the worst year of his life.

The global financial crisis shook the entire economy.

All three of Musk's companies appeared to be

in serious financial trouble.

By this time, SpaceX had failed its first three launches

and Tesla was burning through millions of dollars

- every month. - There's a friend of mine,

who's got a good phrase for doing a startup,

"It's like eating glass and staring at the abyss."

So it's, if you go into it expecting it's gonna be just fun,

you would be disappointed.

It's not.

It's quite painful.

It's much easier to get a job somewhere.

[group laughs]

Much, much easier and much less stressful.

You'll have more time for other things-

- But would you be happier?

It depends on who you are.

- You know- - Are you?

- Oh, would I be happier? - Yeah.

No, I wouldn't be happy, any happier.

[solemn music]

[Narrator] Just before Christmas in 2008,

Tesla was two days away from bankruptcy.

Both Tesla and SpaceX had about 10% chances of surviving.

The bank funding their leases also pulled out of the deal.

Musk was in the fight of his life.

This year was also the year his marriage with Justine ended.

He was going through a very difficult period

after having put on the line everything he owned

without any guarantee that it would make a difference.

However, as Tesla was on the verge of bankruptcy,

Musk saved the company in its darkest hour

with an act of heroism.

Fighting for it to the end and risking everything,

he invested all that he had left

from the sale of PayPal into Tesla.

In September of that year, Musk was finally successful

with the Falcon 9 rocket launch,

the last launch that they had money for.

[rocket engines roar]

And a few days before Christmas, a miracle happened.

NASA called and awarded SpaceX

with a $1.6 billion contract

to supply the International Space Station.

This human spaceflight is the reason

that SpaceX was created

and we're incredibly honored to partner with NASA

and to make this happen.

[hopeful music]

What the National Space Agency would like to do,

of course, is slowly hand over operation

of the entire International Space Station's

commercial companies.

We, as an agency, we want to go to Mars and even beyond.

And of course we're very excited

about the excitement that Elon is bringing to this,

that SpaceX is bringing to this idea

of humans expanding throughout the solar system.

[Narrator] In 2010, he took Tesla public

and his fortune skyrocketed.

Not everyone was as upbeat about the company's future.

In fact, it was voted by Wall Street

as the least likely to succeed,

but investors ignored the skeptics.

Even Musk started Tesla and SpaceX in mind

that the most likely outcome was failure,

but he was willing to take the risk.

Well, the reason that I'm doing it,

and so many, a lot of people at Tesla are doing it,

is because we think it actually is gonna make

a difference to the world

if we transition to sustainable transport sooner

rather than later.

We're not doing this because we thought it was, like,

a way to get rich or anything like that.

Like I said, we felt, I felt maybe 10% chance of success

at the beginning.

I thought I would just lose all my money.

It almost did, so it's not like it was,

that was, I came very close to losing everything.

[soft music] [photographers shout]

[Photographer] Come on down.

Come all the down over here

- Elon. - Elon, down here.

- Elon. - Elon. [whistles]

- Come on. - Come on.

[photographers shout]

[Photographer] Elon, stay here.

[Narrator] Tesla continues to thrive and grow

and it now has more than 12,000 superchargers

across North America, Europe and Asia.

By promoting clean driving and showing the world

that electric cars are in fact better than gasoline,

Musk is about to trigger an electric transport revolution.

I would encourage more participation

by whoever it is to create electric vehicles.

It's quite hard to do, but I think companies, like Apple,

will probably make a compelling electric car.

It seems like the obvious thing to do.

[Narrator] It had worked.

Elon was back.

However, Tesla continues to be controversial.

Throughout the years, critics have slammed the company

for its cars' quality issues,

and Musk himself admitted to the defects.

Recently, they also faced lawsuits,

investigations and layoffs.

Their reputation have taken many hits

and they have faced turbulent years.

Facebook was the only other company

to experience a larger decline than Tesla in the 2019 poll.

Musk said making mistakes is inevitable,

but he's dedicated to constantly improving, making progress.

He hasn't stopped innovating and taking risks.

He made history on May 22nd, 2012,

when after a flawless liftoff,

the Falcon 9 rocket thundered unmanned into space.

[Announcer] T-minus 10, nine, eight,

seven,

six,

five,

four,

three,

two,

one,

zero.

[rocket engines roar]

And launch of the SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket

as NASA turns to the private sector

to resupply the International Space Station.

[rocket engines roar] [dramatic music]

[Narrator] It would send the first commercial vehicle

to the International Space Station,

delivering a Dragon cargo capsule full

of groceries and supplies.

"Every bit of adrenaline in my body released

at that moment," said Elon Musk

about the moment the rocket lifted off the pad.

First of all, some people don't realize

we have a space station.

Like, "You cannot of be serious."

We have a gigantic space station, it's huge. [laughs]

It's really gigantic.

I mean, it's a pretty incredible structure

that we have orbiting the earth.

And I think just, I'd recommend like, man,

we've got to do something to educate the public

about the awesomeness of the space station

because it is pretty amazing.

[Narrator] SpaceX now regularly shoots satellites

into space.

[soft piano music] [engines roar]

[Operator] There's a solar telemetry link

and power systems are normal.

We are entering a new era of space exploration

which is extremely exciting.

And it's not just SpaceX,

but there's a number of other companies

that have developed new approaches

and NASA is taking new approaches to things,

which is really exciting.

The alternative is to become a space-faring civilization

and a multi-planet species,

which I hope you would agree that is the right way to go.

[hopeful music]

The thing that's happened in the last couple of years,

which I'm really excited about

and I think makes the difference for access to space,

is the landing

of the Falcon 9 rocket booster.

And in the,

[audience applauding] yeah.

[Narrator] In 2013,

the business side of things was booming for him.

The financial crisis became somewhat of a distant memory.

He came up with more inventions.

[suspenseful music]

In August 2013, Musk released the Hyperloop,

a form of transport that would allow commuting

between major cities in a very short amount of time

while severely reducing traffic.

Ideally powered by renewable energy,

the high-speed transit systems would repel riders

in pods through tubes

at speeds reaching more than 700 miles per hour.

[determined music]

In 2015, SpaceX began development of the Starlink

to provide satellite internet access.

On May 24th, 2019,

the first 60 operational satellites were launched.

The project costs about $10 billion.

[dramatic music]

[determined music]

For Musk, the future also means having to deal

with artificial intelligence.

So in 2015, he co-founded OpenAI,

a nonprofit research company

that aims to promote friendly artificial intelligence.

He also co-founded Neuralink in 2016,

a startup company focused

on developing brain-computer interfaces.

These advancements could improve memory

or help human beings merge with software.

In December 2016, determined to eliminate city traffic,

Musk created The Boring Company,

a tunnel and transport startup.

Musk saw limitations with the current transportation network

and the infamous Los Angeles traffic and he had a vision

of a futuristic underground public transport system.

Their first self-driving tunnel is almost complete

under Las Vegas.

He intends to use the tunnels for the Hyperloop vehicles.

That year he announced

that self-driving electric cars are the future.

My guess is in probably 10 years,

it will be very unusual for cars to be built

that are not fully autonomous.

Owning a car that is not self-driving in the long term

will be like owning a horse.

You would own it for

and you would use it for sentimental reasons,

but not for, you know, not for daily use, really.

[air whooshes]

[soft music]

[Narrator] He also announced that getting humans to Mars

was officially one of his main goals.

A cool goal that even has a set date, 2024.

It'll be cool to be born on earth and die on Mars, yeah.

You said before you want to retire on Mars,

is this more or less feasible?

Well, actually it was asked, do I,

it's more like if I were to retire,

it's not like I want to retire,

but if I were to retire on the verge of senility

I'd like it to be on Mars, that would be cool.

[soft music]

[Narrator] He hopes making space travel affordable,

around $100,000 per person, would hopefully entice humans

to permanently moved to the red planet.

In 2018, he announced the first private astronaut

to travel to the moon.

I'd like to introduce the first paying customer of BFR.

Yusaku Maezawa, please come forward.

Yeah. [audience cheers]

See what's up.

Thank you, Elon.

Thank you.

Thank you, everyone. [audience applauding]

Wow.

In 2023,

as the host,

I'd like to invite six to eight artists

from around the world to join me

on this mission to the moon.

A future where we are a space-faring civilization

and out there among the stars is infinitely more exciting

and inspiring than one where we are not.

You basically, I think, have to hate humanity

if you don't like that future.

[hopeful music]

[Narrator] We've come a long way

since the beginning of the space race.

In 1969, the first person set foot on the moon,

making history.

Today, SpaceX brings us one step closer

to the next giant leap for mankind.

In May 2018, Musk appeared at the Met Gala

with his new girlfriend on his arm,

the Canadian singer, Claire Boucher,

professionally known as Grimes.

They met online a few weeks before,

after Musk discovered a joke on Twitter

about artificial intelligence on Grime's account.

He reached out to her

and they started dating quietly since then.

Musk told "The Wall Street Journal"

that he loves her for her wild, artistic creativity

and intense work ethic.

Two years later, in May 2020, Elon announced the birth

of their first son on Twitter,

a son with the most unusual name.

The couple initially announced

that they had named their new baby X Ash A-12 Musk.

The baby's surname is simply Musk, or Little X.

I mean, it's just X, the letter X.

And then the AE is, like, pronounced Ash.

[Joe laughs]

Yeah.

And then A-12, A-12 is my contribution.

Oh, why A-12?

Archangel 12, the precursor to the SR-71,

the coolest plane ever.

[Reporter] I love how Rogan was laughing

because we were all like, "Ash, how did you get out of it?"

But look at this baby.

- How adorable is he? - Oh.

[Narrator] The name of Grimes and Musk's son

isn't the only thing controversial about him.

He's been known to be infamously controversial on Twitter.

In May 2020, he wiped off $14 billion of Tesla's value

with just one Tweet.

By writing, "Tesla stock price is too high,"

$3 billion were taken off his own stake

as investors bailed following his Tweet.

On May 1st, 2020, Musk decided that he was going to put

all of his seven homes on the market.

He Tweeted, "I'm selling almost all physical possessions.

Will own no house."

He was also seen smoking weed

in an interview with Joe Rogan.

- I mean, it's legal, right? - It's totally legal.

Okay.

[Joe] How does that work?

Do people get upset at you if you do certain things?

[Ruhle] Do you see this right here?

Elon Musk.

[Joe] There's tobacco and marijuana in there.

[Velshi] Is he inhaling?

Yeah, I'm not sure.

[Ruhle] Okay, whether or not he's inhaling,

he's in a state where it's legal.

[soft music]

[Narrator] After being married three times,

twice to the same woman, having six children

and costing his shareholders billions with his Tweets,

it is fair to say that his personal life has been

as vertiginous as his professional life.

His journey wasn't always made

of bright moments and successes,

but Elon Musk finally reached the heights

that he was aiming for.

His oversized personality gets him in trouble occasionally,

but he also has a vision and is driven by a purpose.

At the Emerging Technologies event in 2018,

he said that building the future is his goal.

The thing drives me is that

I want to be able to think about the future

and

you feel good about that

so

that, you know, we're doing what we can

to have the future be as good as possible,

to be inspired by what is likely to happen

and to look forward to the next day.

[Narrator] Recently, he has also become a proponent

of digital currencies

and Tesla invested $1.5 billion in Bitcoin.

After climbing to the top of American capitalism

at an incredible speed,

in January 2021, he briefly surpassed Jeff Bezos

as the richest person in the world

as his net worth increased to $209 billion.

In 2002, he founded the Musk Foundation

which supports renewable energy, space exploration,

science, pediatric and artificial intelligence research.

And he has donated

at least $257 million to the organization.

Musk doesn't do typical philanthropy

as we know it, like Bill Gates,

most of his money goes straight back into his companies.

But he works for a better planet.

and this is most definitely being philanthropic.

In 2012, Musk joined billionaires,

like Bill Gates and Mark Zuckerberg,

in signing The Giving Pledge,

a commitment to give away the majority of their wealth

either during their lifetimes or in their will.

[upbeat music]

Are there limitations

for where your imagination can take your reality?

Elon Musk doesn't seem to think so.

His visions for the future are beyond imagination

and inspiring.

He has come a long way from a South African immigrant

and a bullied boy to a self-made CEO billionaire,

taking on more than five industries.

He showed us all how to do something new

that we didn't think was possible before.

As we look at his accomplishments, there is no denying

that Elon Musk is a genuine Silicon Valley success story.

He was named one of "Time" magazine's"

most influential people in the world.

He was never short of confidence and optimism.

He has defied the critics.

He kept fighting on the hardest days and never gave up.

PayPal, SpaceX,

Tesla, SolarCity,

they all have had an important impact on the world.

The tech billionaires are an example.

We learn from them that even heroes go through tough times

to get where they are today.

It can all start with one individual

and their dreams and ambition,

with someone who wanted to make the world a better place.

It can all start with a small step.

It seems that for Elon Musk, not even the sky is the limit.

There are no limits.

[hopeful music]

Space is one of those things

that I think almost everyone is inspired by.

And if you asked people

what was the most inspiring event in history,

it was probably landing on the moon,

you know, if you ask people anywhere, I'd say.

[letters clinking]

[letters clinking]

[solemn music