Daimler buys stake, $550 million valuation
German automaker Daimler buys a 9% stake in Tesla Motors for $50 million. The company’s post-money valuation is now $550 million. Daimler also expands its partnership with the company to put electric batteries into Mercedes-Benz vehicles. In a press release, Daimler says:
Tesla is the only production automaker selling a highway capable electric vehicle in North America and Europe.
PayPal founded
PayPal is formed after online point-of-sale payments company X.com buys payments company Confinity. X.com stops its internet banking operations, and a Confinity system that focuses on payments transactions on personal digital assistants becomes the email-based PayPal system. The joint company is renamed PayPal and Elon Musk is its biggest shareholder.
X.com
0 CommentsMusk founds X.com as an internet financial services company. He is company chair while Bill Harris, the former CEO of tax and accounting software creator Intuit.com, is president and CEO. Investment banker John Story also joins the company.
The site goes online in December 1999, and a marketing campaign offering $20 to new customers and $10 for new referrals attracts 100,000 customers in its first two months of operation.
Elon Musk born in Pretoria, South Africa
Elon Musk is born in Pretoria, the eldest child of South African engineer Errol and Maye, nee Haldeman, a Canadian fashion model. He spends part of his childhood in the suburb of Waterkloof and graduates from Pretoria Boys High School.
He reads for many hours a day during childhood and enjoys comic books and J.R.R. Tolkien’s writing. He discusses science and computers with his brother Kimbal, and sister, Tosca, and debates computers with his father, who divorces from his mother. Instead of hiring domestic help, the children do chores, unlike many other wealthy South African families at the time.
I guess I was a bit of an autocratic father – do this, do that…I was a single parent, and they simply had to help out.
He develops the ambition to migrate to the U.S. during childhood, to escape a South African society that he views as oppressive under apartheid.