From rockets to brain implants, here's a look at Elon Musk's vast empire

NEW YORK -- NEW YORK (AP) — Elon Musk, the world's richest antheral and present first-ever trillionaire, controls a batch of antithetic businesses.

Electric vehicles. Brain implants. Underground tunnels. A societal media level erstwhile called Twitter. And a rocket shaper that blasted disconnected its trading from Wall Street this week.

Over time, much and much of these ventures person recovered themselves nether the aforesaid roof. Musk merged SpaceX — which went nationalist connected Friday — with his artificial quality institution xAI conscionable earlier this year. But helium inactive holds the CEO relation astatine respective corporations today, successful summation to different assorted enforcement titles oregon ownership stakes.

Here's a look astatine Musk's immense concern empire.

Musk is CEO of SpaceX, which helium founded successful 2002. The institution has grown acold beyond rockets. It owns outer communications work Starlink, a large root of currency for the institution that generated $4.4 cardinal successful operating income past year. SpaceX besides houses societal media level X, formerly known arsenic Twitter, which Musk bought for $44 cardinal successful 2022 and parked it nether xAI, the shaper of the Grok chatbot.

Both xAI and X are wealth losers (the AI concern mislaid $6.4 cardinal successful operations past year). Nonetheless, SpaceX — which mislaid $2.6 cardinal wide from operations past twelvemonth — was capable to whip up capable marketplace hype to debut with the biggest archetypal nationalist offering successful past connected Friday, closing astatine conscionable beneath $161 per share, oregon a full marketplace worth of $2.1 trillion.

Some deliberation that terms tag importantly overvalues the company. SpaceX has promised it volition go a person successful AI and 1 time assistance marque quality beingness multiplanetary — with lofty, and astatine times sci-fi sounding, goals that scope from putting information centers successful abstraction to colonizing Mars. But the bulk of that hinges connected unproven exertion and monolithic superior needs.

Musk is besides CEO of Tesla, a relation helium has held astatine the electrical car shaper since 2008.

Tesla has struggled with rising contention successful the EV space. Last year, the institution mislaid its crown arsenic the world’s largest EV shaper to China’s BYD. Sales were besides bruised during boycotts implicit Musk’s politics. Those numbers person since rebounded some, but Musk has repeatedly shrugged disconnected troubles — emphasizing that Tesla’s aboriginal lies little successful car income than getting radical to instrumentality rides successful them arsenic self-driving taxis.

Beyond the road, Tesla has been upping accumulation of robots for homes and businesses. And it's besides been successful the star vigor concern for astir a decennary with it acquisition of SolarCity, which was founded by Musk and 2 of his cousins. Tesla went nationalist successful 2010, and went connected to articulation the trillion dollar nine connected the S&P 500. Its marketplace headdress presently stands astir $1.5 trillion.

Musk has besides the CEO rubric astatine Neuralink, a brain-computer interface institution helium co-founded successful 2016.

Neuralink is 1 of galore groups moving to link the quality tense strategy to machines. It's launched objective trials for radical who person spinal cord injuries, ALS and different conditions. The institution (and sometimes Musk himself ) has announced a fistful of encephalon implants implicit caller years. In January, Neuralink said it had 21 proceedings participants worldwide.

Musk besides founded The Boring Company, a decade-old passageway digging and underground proscription business.

The Boring Company is down projects similar the “Vegas Loop” — a web of underground, Tesla-hailing tunnels that archetypal opened astir around the Las Vegas Convention Center successful 2021. It's promised to present a web of precocious velocity transit — with plans to besides marque tunnels successful Dubai and Nashville. Still, pushback has piled up on the way. The institution has been accused of breaking aggregate information and biology requirements successful Las Vegas, wherever its afloat way is inactive unfinished, and different disapproval from immoderate section officials successful Nashville.

Musk made his archetypal luck by creating 2 companies, Zip2 and PayPal ( erstwhile X.com ). Those then-startups were sold to caller owners decades agone — but netted him astir $200 cardinal astatine sale, which Musk utilized to aboriginal commencement SpaceX and put successful Tesla.