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  Elon Musk Elon Musk is a South African-born living in American entrepreneur and businessman who founded X.com in 1999 which later became PayPal SpaceX in 2002 and Tesla Motors in 2003. Musk became a multimillionaire in his late 20s when he sold his start-up company, Zip2 to a division of Compaq Computers. He was also one of the first significant investors in, as well as chief executive officer of, the  electric car  manufacturer Tesla.   Musk was born on June 28, 1971, in Pretoria, South Africa. As a child, Musk was so lost in his daydreams about inventions that his parents and doctors ordered a test to check his hearing. At age 17, in 1989, Musk moved to Canada to attend Queen’s University and avoid mandatory service in the South African military. Musk obtained his Canadian citizenship that year, in part because he felt it would be easier to obtain American citizenship via that path. In 1992, Musk left Canada to study business and physics at the University of Pennsylvania.