Week 4 Final Paper

ELON THE BOLD Brilliant? Unquestionably. Belligerent? Occasionally. Resilient? Remarkably. Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk is redefining what it means to be a successful business leader. For better or worse.

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F O R T U N E D E C E M B E R 2 0 2 0 / J A N U A R Y 2 0 2 1 1 3 5

BY ANDREW NUSCA AND MICHAL LEV-RAM

T HINGS GET SERIOUS inside the

45-minute mark. That is a rela-

tive term, of course, because there

is nothing unserious about placing

a $62 million, 208-foot-tall rocket

on a launchpad with plans to send

it beyond Earth’s atmosphere. It is a

balmy Sunday in November. NASA’s

Kennedy Space Center in Florida

teems with technicians nervously

running through checklists. Nightfall

has come and gone, and the disap-

pearance of the sun’s warm hues lend the proceedings a clinical cast.

Four astronauts—three from NASA; one from JAXA, the Japanese

space agency—serenely sit in a row inside a Dragon spacecraft,

which is in turn perched atop a Falcon 9 rocket that will carry it.

Both are manufactured by Space Exploration Technologies Corp.,

otherwise known as SpaceX, the L.A.-area aerospace company led

by Elon Musk.

SpaceX and NASA have partnered on this launch, which is

not unusual—over the past decade SpaceX has completed more

than 100 launches with its Falcon rockets, and SpaceX regularly

transports government payloads. What is unusual, however, is that

SpaceX, a private company, would be allowed to ferry American

astronauts to and from orbit. NASA certification for that capability

came less than a week before the planned mission. Launchpad 39A,

where this SpaceX launch will take place, is the same spot where

Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin, and Michael Collins left Earth on the

Apollo 11 spaceflight. A successful mission today will take the astro-

nauts to the International Space Station for six months of science

experiments. It will also offer further evidence demonstrating that

commercial spaceflight is viable.

At T-minus 44:55, a male voice breaks the silence. “The team is

ready for crew access, arm retract, propellant loading, and launch,”

the launch director says.

T-minus 1:47. Fueling is complete. With a roaring hiss, the

rocket and capsule are consumed by a gigantic white cloud, the

result of gaseous oxygen colliding with the coastal air.

T-minus 0:42. A voice crackles over the intercom: “Go for

launch.” Another, from inside the capsule: “This is Resilience,” the

name of the Dragon capsule. “Roger ‘Go.’ ”

Three. Two. One. The rocket’s rear ignites with the unholy scream

of burning chemicals. Its deafening blast drowns out the radio.

“And Resilience rises!” a ground observer excitedly proclaims as the

thundering column of light races toward the stars. “Not even gravity

contains humanity when we explore as one for all.”

At 8:09 p.m. Eastern, as the four astronauts hurtle toward low-

earth orbit at 17,000 miles per hour and become the first opera-

tional flight of SpaceX’s Crew Dragon spacecraft, Musk— unusually

out of sight, owing to a possible COVID-19 infection—publishes a

new tweet:

Just another day in the life of Elon Musk. Some executives play

golf in their spare time; others read, meditate, or go for a hike.

Musk catapults people into space—and that’s only his night gig. At

SpaceX, where he is founder and CEO, the

49-year-old Musk has built a private company

currently valued at $46 billion—and projected

to be worth much more—that is hell-bent on

colonizing Mars. (Rekindling the storied U.S.

space program? Just a side effect.)

Then there’s Tesla, which, with a recent

market capitalization of north of $520 billion,

is now one of the world’s most valuable compa-

nies, worth more than quintuple the combined

value of U.S. auto icons General Motors and

Ford. Through sheer force of will and a healthy

dose of operating genius, Musk has built an

electric-auto maker and battery manufacturer

that is seemingly dragging an entire industry

into the 21st century—and captivated investors

around the world. Over the past three years,

B U S I N E S S P E R S O N O F T H E Y E A R • 1. ELO N M U S K

Tesla has averaged revenue growth of 52% and

it recently reported its fifth straight quarterly

profit. In November, it was announced that

Tesla would be added to the S&P 500 index

as of Dec. 1—giving the stock a further boost.

That rocketed Musk’s personal net worth even

higher to nearly $128 billion, according to

Bloomberg—making him the world’s second

wealthiest person behind Amazon’s Jeff Bezos,

and slightly ahead of Bill Gates.

Elsewhere, Musk’s Boring Co. aims to dig

tunnels to relieve urban traffic congestion. His

Neuralink Corp. is working to realize implant-

able brain-machine interfaces. OpenAI, which

he cofounded and funds but no longer holds

a board seat at—owing to possibly competing

work at Tesla—is trying to develop “friendly”

artificial intelligence that won’t threaten

society. And Hyperloop? Just a sci-fi transpor-

tation idea he decided to open-source to the

greater technology community.

Elon Musk, it’s worth stating, has the same

number of hours in the day as the rest of us.

If Musk had accomplished any one of these

feats, he would have a strong case to be For-

tune’s Businessperson of the Year. (And indeed

he was once before, in 2013, when we dubbed

him a “triple threat.”) But this five-tool player—

yes, even Elon Musk can get an upgrade—has

managed to achieve it all in the face of some

long odds. And he’s far from finished. Ask chief

executives in any industry which CEO most in-

spires them, and far and away it is Musk’s name

that most often crosses their lips. They say Elon

F O R T U N E D E C E M B E R 2 0 2 0 / J A N U A R Y 2 0 2 1 1 3 7

FUTURE MAN Musk introducing Tesla’s all-electric Cybertruck on Nov. 21, 2019. The design is partly inspired by the sci-fi film Blade Runner.

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Musk is the rocket man, the iron man, the savior of the sins of a fos-

silized auto industry. He is an ambition-emitting entrepreneur who

has enough executive aptitude to make the impossible possible. He is

a designer, a technologist, and a Renaissance man without peer. He

is a turnaround artist with astonishing verve and little apparent fear.

Yet ask executives which CEO vexes them the most, and Musk’s

name is first again. To some he is a con, a bully, a toxic male mes-

siah who can’t take criticism. To others he is a hypocrite, a fake,

a reckless distraction unfit to lead us into the future. Musk is a

taskmaster who plays fast and loose with the rules. He’s a homeless

billionaire who takes us all as fools.

But those who know the man best say the reality is somewhere

in between. Elon Musk is complicated. Human, even. (Perish the

thought.) And that truth, paired with Musk’s audacious successes

this year, tells us more about the state of business in 2020 than

anything else.

ELON THE BRAIN.

T HE SEDANS ARE LINED UP in tidy rows at socially

distant intervals, 12 deep and two dozen wide, mid-

day sun gleaming off hoods of silver, white, blue,

and red. Every single vehicle is a brand-new Tesla

Model S.

A 21st-century drive-in movie for the Silicon Valley

set? Not quite. It is Battery Day here at Tesla’s factory in Fremont,

Calif., and the drivers assembled on this warm September after-

noon have come to hear Elon Musk review the company’s annual

performance and offer a glimpse into what’s in store for the future—

including, they’ll soon discover, a racetrack-ready version of the

Model S called Plaid, named not for its sartorial treatment but after

the top speed of the spacecraft in the 1987 spoof movie Spaceballs.

(No one said Musk didn’t have a sense of humor.)

Cheers and triumphant fists appear from rolled-down windows

as Musk, in a black graphic T-shirt, takes the stage. Car horns

blare in greeting. The CEO responds with a delighted chuckle. “Hi

everyone,” he says, grinning, as he surveys the scene before him.

“It’s a little hard to read the room with everyone being in cars,

but it’s the only way we could do it.” Musk laughs at the apparent

absurdity. This year’s event in the age of COVID is a far cry from

last year’s traditional slide-deck session held indoors.

And Musk is in far better spirits than he was a year ago—for

good reason. In September 2019, Tesla’s stock price had slumped

by one-third in nine months, depressed by sluggish sales of its

pricier models, a Walmart lawsuit (since settled) over fires involv-

ing solar panels made by Tesla subsidiary SolarCity, and escalating

trade tension between the U.S. and China that threatened to affect

the company’s soon-to-be-opened manufacturing plant outside

Shanghai. When Musk took the stage then, his remarks were

muted and aimed to reframe the conversation: “It’s been a hell of a

year, but a lot of good things are happening.”

That, it turns out, was an understatement. As Elon addresses the

car-bound crowd on this day, Tesla’s stock price has shot up eight-

TESLA STOCK GROWTH

SOURCE: S&P GLOBAL

2017 2018 2019 2020

NOV. 20, 2020 1028.2%

0

200

400

600

800

1,000%

TESLA QUARTERLY LOSS/PROFIT

–800

–600

–400

–200

0

200

$400 MILLION

SOURCE: S&P GLOBAL

2017 2018 2019 2020

Q3 2020 $331.0 MILLION

2013 ’16 ’17’14 ’15 ’18 ’19 2020

TESLA VEHICLES SOLD GLOBALLY, QUARTERLY

0

50,000

100,000

150,000 UNITS

Q3 2020 139,593

CHARGING UP

Tesla’s rapidly rising vehicle production numbers and recent profitability have contributed to its electric market returns.

B U S I N E S S P E R S O N O F T H E Y E A R • 1. ELO N M U S K

0

10

20

30

40

$50 BILLION

2008 201420122010 2016 2018 2020

SPACEX VALUATION

AUGUST 2020 $46.0 BILLION

SOURCE: PITCHBOOK

fold in 12 months, in part owing to an August

stock split that whipped investors into a frenzy.

And there is plenty more good news. Reports

suggest that partner Panasonic will increase

its investment in Tesla’s Gigafactory 1, outside

Reno, by $100 million. With its Shanghai plant

online, the company is on track to produce and

deliver a record number of vehicles. Construc-

tion of a Berlin factory—boosting the com-

pany’s capacity and further insulating it from

global trade tensions—is well underway.

In other words, things are going according

to plan—a plan that has led to Tesla controlling

roughly a third of the nearly $200 billion global

F O R T U N E D E C E M B E R 2 0 2 0 / J A N U A R Y 2 0 2 1 1 3 9

WHAT A BLAST The SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket launches from Kennedy Space Center in Florida on Nov. 15, 2020, carrying a crew of four to the International Space Station.

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disclosure agreement, declined to be named. If

you didn’t properly prepare, he will know. And

he will remember—to your detriment.

“He really is, most of the time, the smartest

guy in the room,” the executive says. “He will

think through decision trees quickly and thor-

oughly—10 to 15 chess moves in advance. He

will close his eyes, flip his head back, and you

can see his eyes darting. It can last for a while.”

That dynamic can go awry, too.

“Elon sees himself as the smartest guy

in the room,” the executive adds. “Most of

the time he is—but not all of the time. His

mistakes come from this. He doesn’t defer to

others with more expertise.”

ELON THE EMBATTLED.

M USK MAY be brilliant

and shrewd. But his

personality can some-

times be a liability to his

success, just as easily as

it can be a boon. “Part

of maintaining innovation over time is that

your tenacity doesn’t become pigheadedness,

and that your optimism doesn’t disconnect

you too far from reality,” says Gregory Shea,

an adjunct professor of management at the

Wharton School.

Like everything else Musk does, his flubs—

whether internal or public-facing—are larger-

than-life. Some people shrug these off as the

eccentricities often associated with brilliance.

Others aren’t so quick to dismiss his behavior

as an example of “geniuses will be geniuses.”

Sometimes, Musk gets taken to task. And when

it happens, the world gets a front-row seat.

In mid-November, as COVID numbers

broke all sorts of horrifying records in the

U.S.—1 million cases were counted in just

the first 10 days of the month—Musk took

to Twitter to tell the world that he, too, has

COVID. Or not.

“Something extremely bogus is going on,”

tweeted the CEO, who had publicly downplayed

the virus for months. “Was tested for Covid

four times today. Two tests came back negative,

two came back positive. Same machine, same

test, same nurse. Rapid antigen test from BD [a

leading provider of diagnostic tools].”

Musk did have a point: So-called rapid

antigen tests have been found to be inaccurate

electric-vehicle market, which itself is slowly

but steadily gaining ground in the broader,

multitrillion-dollar automotive market.

This is no small feat. Tesla’s vertical inte-

gration, software orientation, and product

differentiation—the result of years of loss-

inducing investment in automation, battery

science, and other proprietary technologies—

are starkly different from that of its more

conventional automotive peers. Tesla has

navigated the trickiest of financial tracks as it

has worked to secure the tremendous capital

necessary to start and scale a new automo-

tive manufacturer. Along the way Musk has

fought a prolonged war against short-sellers

and survived a near-brush with bankruptcy

between 2017 and 2019 as his company scaled

up to begin producing its least expensive ve-

hicle, the Model 3. The skeptics are persistent:

According to financial data firm S3 Partners,

nearly 6% of Tesla’s tradable shares are sold

short—a massive $22 billion bet against Tesla

that has not paid off so far.

There are plenty of Silicon Valley technology

startups that craft a business plan, raise money,

and fail. With Tesla, SpaceX, the Boring Co.,

and so many others, the scale, timelines, and

stakes are exponentially greater. Though Musk

will bend over backward to insist that the

tens of thousands of people in his employ are

responsible for the innovations he is credited

with—and for the most part, they are—it is his

executive aptitude that has kept such big bets

on track through so many challenges. (Musk

declined to comment on this story, stating: “I

don’t wish to receive awards or recognition.”)

Matt Desch, chief executive of the McLean,

Va., satellite company Iridium Communica-

tions, says he first met Musk 12 or 13 years

ago, years before SpaceX logged its first suc-

cessful launch. Today Iridium is SpaceX’s larg-

est commercial customer, having launched 75

of its satellites on eight SpaceX rockets.

“No matter who we talked with or what

issue was being discussed, Elon’s fingerprints

were clear on the matter at hand,” Desch says.

“Even as he was building Tesla and other

ventures, he was still behind every critical

strategic decision.”

And when you find yourself working directly

with the man himself ? You have to have all

your ideas buttoned up—because Musk will po-

litely interrogate you, says a former executive of

one of Musk’s companies who, bound by a non-

TH E RI S E O F E LO N — A CAR E E R TI M E LI N E

B U S I N E S S P E R S O N O F T H E Y E A R • 1. ELO N M U S K

1995

Brothers Kimbal and Elon Musk start Zip2, a company that sells city guide software to newspapers, in Palo Alto. It sells to Compaq for about $300 million in 1999.

1999

Musk starts X.com, an early online bank. The following year, it merges with PayPal parent Confinity, founded by Peter Thiel, Max Levchin, and Luke Nosek.

2002

Musk starts SpaceX. Later that year, eBay buys PayPal for $1.5 billion. Musk’s payout is about $180 million.

2004

Musk invests $6.5 million in electric-auto maker Tesla Motors and becomes chairman of its board.

2006

Peter and Lyndon Rive start solar panel installer SolarCity with a $10 million investment led by cousin Musk. FR

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if a person isn’t oozing with the virus. That,

albeit with a slightly more scientific choice

of words, is what the Food and Drug Admin-

istration said in a letter to health providers

dated Nov. 3. That’s also what Emma Bell,

a bioinformatics scientist in Canada who

responded to Musk’s tweet, clarified in her

own public post, which mocked the CEO’s

seeming ignorance of how these rapid tests

work—and don’t work. “What’s bogus is that

‘Space Karen’ didn’t read up on the test before

complaining to his millions of followers,” Bell

wrote in a tweet that quickly went viral. (A

“Karen,” for those who don’t know, is a pejora-

tive term for entitled white women.)

“Space Karen” became a meme, spawning

images on the Internet of Musk with a blonde

bob. But it was just the latest piece of work in

Musk’s larger oeuvre of public relations ker-

fuffles, many of them also hatched on Twitter.

Like President Donald Trump, Musk has

used the social media site as his own personal

megaphone to the world, with mixed results.

He is both prolific and unfiltered with his

more than 40 million followers, subjecting

them to his bold and often bizarre musings,

his spats with competitors and Tesla skeptics,

and his declarations of often unrealistic and

unmet timelines for product deliveries. “It’s

interesting, as an engineer, to find out about a

new deadline via a late-night tweet,” says one

former Tesla executive.

Musk has had to pay a heavy price—in

some cases literally—for his social media

rants. In May of this year, he took to Twitter

to proclaim that Tesla’s stock price was “too

high imo [an acronym for “in my opinion”].”

This short string of words managed to shave

an impressive $14 billion off Tesla’s market

cap, including $3 billion from Musk’s own

stake in the company. And who can forget his

debacle with the U.S. Securities and Exchange

Commission? In August 2018, Musk tweeted

that he was considering taking Tesla private.

“Funding secured,” he wrote. The SEC moved

quickly, charging the CEO with securities

fraud for his “misleading tweets.” The two sides

HOW TO LEAD LIKE ELON:

4 KEY LESSONS

We asked business experts, Musk- watchers, and former colleagues what makes him such an effective, if unconventional, executive.

1

NEVER INNOVATE FROM THE STATUS QUO. 

To solve the biggest problems, don’t start with existing infra- structure—throw ev- erything out the door and begin anew. True moonshots rethink the problem, not the solu- tion. Everything else follows.

2

HIRE BRILLIANT PEOPLE—THEN CHALLENGE THEM TO SHINE. 

When you work for Musk, you embrace the notion that cre- ative engineers can solve anything and nothing is impos- sible. The executive has been known to give young engineers tremendous responsi- bility to solve prob- lems, leaving them overnight in airplane hangars, for example, to tackle a complex technical challenge on a rocket.

3

UNDERSTAND YOUR CUSTOMERS’ PROBLEMS. 

Musk’s candid, quippy tweets often trigger news headlines for all the wrong reasons—

“Area Executive Says Impolitic Thing”—but closer inspection of his communications reveals a rambling, unfiltered conversa- tion between a CEO and his customers. That two-way street drives both Musk’s popular appeal and his occasionally unortho- dox solutions.

4

MANNERS MATTER.

Despite the brash repu- tation he has on the Internet, people who know Musk best say he is extraordinarily polite and well-mannered, even under great pres- sure—“a credit to his parents,” one longtime colleague says—and an unheralded super- power when it comes to negotiating deals.

Elon sees himself as the smartest guy in the room. Most of the time he is—but not all of the time. His mistakes come from this.”

F O R T U N E D E C E M B E R 2 0 2 0 / J A N U A R Y 2 0 2 1 1 4 1

reached a settlement, which included a $20 million fine, and forced

Musk to step down from his position as the chairman of Tesla’s

board, at least for three years.

It’s not clear whether there is a method to Musk’s tweet storms—

or if he just can’t help himself. “I think he probably does care about

his brand and reputation,” says Judy Smith, the renowned crisis

management expert and CEO of Smith & Co. “But what one person

wants to be known for and the way they want to be portrayed is dif-

ferent for the next person.”

Whatever his intentions may be, it’s clear that Musk’s public per-

sona is uncensored to a level very few public-company CEOs allow

themselves to reach. Internally, within his com-

panies, he is also known for his candor—for

better or worse. That brutal honesty, coupled

with a demanding and fast-paced atmosphere

that former employees say they have yet to

experience anywhere else, has made it hard for

many execs to stick around for too long.

Especially at Tesla, Musk has cycled

through an alarming number of executives.

The departures aren’t always voluntary.

“There was a culture of fear,” says one former

human resources staffer from Tesla who did

not want to be named. “Anyone could get fired

at any point. He [Musk] is ultimately the man

at top. He is the king. He can fire, behead any-

one he wants. He holds all the cards.” Musk

owns some 20% of Tesla’s shares, and the

company’s board is stacked with loyalists.

Of the five men who made up the original

executive team at Tesla, only Musk remains.

(JB Straubel, Tesla’s former chief technology

officer, departed in July 2019 after 15 years

with the automaker.) Many other key people

have left, too—from George Blankenship,

the VP of worldwide retail, to Greg Reichow,

the former VP of operations and production.

With every departure, there is presumably a

loss of institutional knowledge. And perhaps

there is also a ding to the company’s abil-

ity to attract yet another round of seasoned

executives. One of Tesla’s most recent general

counsels (three departed in a 12-month

period), Todd Maron, was previously also

Musk’s divorce attorney. That’s not to say

Maron wasn’t qualified. But it does raise

some questions about how wide a pool of

A-list candidates Musk is fishing from these

days as Tesla’s growth accelerates.

And yet: In interview after interview with

employees who used to work for Musk, not

one said they regretted having joined any of

his companies. “For me, it was like getting a

gig with Eddie Van Halen,” says Rik Avalos, a

former recruiter at Tesla and ex-head of talent

at Neuralink, the A.I. startup cofounded by

Musk (Avalos is also a longtime musician).

“But it takes a lot of mental toughness to be

part of an Elon Musk company.”

Shea, the Wharton professor, says that

Musk’s propensity to cycle through executives

may actually have some positive by-products.

He brings up a term called “creative abrasion,”

coined by Jerry Hirshberg, who, apropos

of Tesla, was an automotive designer. The

HE TWEETED WHAT?!

B U S I N E S S P E R S O N O F T H E Y E A R • 1. ELO N M U S K

Most CEOs don’t use Twitter as a brain-ma- chine interface for public relations because of fear of blowback. Most CEOs aren’t Elon Musk. Below, some recent tweets of note.

concept is that creativity flourishes when ideas

are constantly challenged and people clash,

albeit in a productive way. “One of the things

that characterizes people who are creative

over time is that they end up with a creative

network around them,” says the professor.

Perhaps Musk’s way of staying innovative is to

not just come up with new ideas but to intro-

duce new people into the mix—and exit some

of those who have been around for a while.

Whatever the strategy, or lack of one,

Musk’s drive for creative undertakings is

relentless, and he seems to approach virtually

everything in his life with the same level of

tenacity, whether he’s right or wrong. That has

certainly created detractors along the way. But

it’s also spawned loyal fanboys and fangirls.

The devotion to Musk is particularly strong

among some Tesla owners, who watch for any

signs of new product developments with Apple-

like fervor. (Even a line of Tesla-branded

tequila, which started out as a practical joke

on—where else?—Musk’s Twitter account,

sold out within hours in early November.)

Indeed, one of Tesla’s biggest challenges

to date has been for supply to meet demand;

the company has been plagued by production

delays for years. To that end, the automaker

has invested heavily in new manufacturing

plants, including in China and Europe, where

customers are waiting up to four months for

new vehicles to be delivered. “Moving beyond,

we believe that 2021 is shaping out to be a

pivotal year for Tesla as it begins production

at two new facilities and launches a number of

new products in the lineup,” a trio of Deutsche

Bank analysts wrote in a recent report.

Musk has said that he expects Tesla to hit

its production target for 2020, delivering

500,000 cars. And Wall Street analysts seem

to agree that it’s plausible. In the third quarter

of 2020, even as COVID-19 raged, Tesla

delivered 139,300 vehicles, an all-time record.

(True to form, Musk defied a California order

and restarted production at the company’s

Fremont plant before a stay-at-home order

was officially lifted. “If anyone is arrested, I

ask that it only be me,” he tweeted on May 11.

No one was arrested, but several workers later

tested positive for the virus.)

Tesla still has a lot to prove—not just its

capacity to significantly ramp up production,

but also its ability to deliver on promises of

fully self-driving vehicles, which have also

faced delays. And yet, these aspirations are ex-

actly why the 17-year-old company has quickly

surpassed traditional carmakers in the eyes

of investors. And that’s just the mark Musk is

leaving on terra firma.

ELON THE BUSINESSPERSON

OF THE YEAR.

I N 2012, MUSK APPEARED on 60 Min-

utes to talk about his vision for com-

mercial space travel. Correspondent

Scott Pelley asked the entrepreneur

how he felt about criticism from

astronauts Neil Armstrong and Gene

Cernan, who had gone before Congress to

protest the commercialization of space, argu-

ing that the American government’s reliance

on private space vehicles could threaten U.S.

space dominance.

“I was very sad to see that,” Musk responded

as his eyes teared up and his voice trembled.

“Those guys are heroes of mine, so it’s really

tough. I wish they would come and visit … see

the hard work that we’re doing here, and I

think that it would change their mind.”

Fast-forward to 2020 and it’s clear that

NASA’s launchpads are busier than ever,

in large part thanks to SpaceX. Musk may

not have had time to change the astronauts’

minds—Armstrong died later in 2012, and

Cernan, the last man to walk on the moon,

died in 2017—but it is clear that he success-

fully sold his vision to the space agency that

made them famous.

In a statement celebrating the Resilience

mission and the milestone that it represents

for SpaceX and NASA, Musk, perhaps expect-

edly, set his sights even higher: “This is a great

honor that inspires confidence in our endeavor

to return to the Moon, travel to Mars, and ulti-

mately help humanity become multi-planetary.”

Sound far-fetched? Undoubtedly. But a

controversial businessman who made electric

cars cool and turned reusable rockets into

reality is not to be underestimated. Even with

so many critics rooting for him to fail, it’s hard

to bet against Elon Musk and his out-of-this-

world ambition. And if Musk gets his way—as

he so often does—he will not only leave his

mark on earth. His legacy, warts and all, will

be multi-planetary.

F O R T U N E D E C E M B E R 2 0 2 0 / J A N U A R Y 2 0 2 1 1 4 3

2008

After investing millions more in Tesla, Musk becomes its CEO. Later that year, SpaceX achieves its first successful rocket launch.

2013

Musk shares plans for a high- speed urban transportation system called Hyperloop.

2016

Tesla acquires SolarCity for $2.6 billion. The same year, Musk cofounds brain-machine implant company Neuralink and starts tunnel construction outfit the Boring Co.

2018

Musk tweets that he seeks to take Tesla private at $420 per share; he eventually settles SEC fraud charges and steps down as chairman. A month later, Musk smokes marijuana during a podcast interview, shocking shareholders and board members.

2020

After posting five straight quarters of profits, Tesla joins the S&P 500 index.

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