Elon Musk's decade was a non-stop charge from taking Tesla public to weathering controversies and hitting major milestones

Mary Meisenzahl

Jan 1, 2020, 01:04 IST

Elon Musk's decade was a non-stop charge from taking Tesla public to weathering controversies and hitting major milestones

Elon Musk is a member of the "PayPal Mafia," and CEO and founder of both Tesla and SpaceX. In 2016, he also founded The Boring Company.
In October, Tesla surpassed GM to become the most valuable car company in the US. It currently has a market cap of $76 billion compared to GM's $52 billion and Ford's $37 billion.
Beyond his work with Tesla and SpaceX, Musk has gained attention over the last decade for his Twitter presence, controversies like smoking pot during a podcast interview, and his romantic relationships with celebrities.
Here, we gathered some of the highs and lows of his decade.
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Elon Musk has had a busy decade. He led 2 companies, took Tesla public, feuded on Twitter, married and re-married, founded a third company, and had a few other high-profile relationships.

He ended the decade on a high note: Tesla's stock price hit an all-time high, resulting in Tesla dethroning GM as the most valuable US car manufacturer, and Musk successfully defended himself in a defamation lawsuit that gained national attention.

To catch up on everything he got up to in the last 10 years, keep scrolling.

Elon Musk started his popular and controversial Twitter account in the summer of 2010.

Please ignore prior tweets, as that was someone pretending to be me :) This is actually me.

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) June 4, 2010

That summer, Tesla also went public, and was valued at $2.2 billion by the end of the first day of trading, initially trading at $17 per share.

Justine Musk, ex-wife of Elon, wrote a September 10 article for Marie Claire about her marriage and divorce, titled "'I Was a Starter Wife': Inside America's Messiest Divorce."

In 2010, Elon Musk married actress Talulah Riley.

In 2012, the couple divorced. Musk tweeted "It was an amazing four years. I will love you forever. You will make someone very happy one day."

That year, Tesla released the Model S, an electric vehicle that received positive reviews and was named MotorTrend's "Ultimate Car of the Year."

In 2013, Musk revealed his plans for a $7.5 billion hyperloop, a high-speed transportation system that would be faster than a plane.

Musk and Riley's relationship was back on in 2013. That year, they remarried. Musk filed for divorce, then withdrew it, all within the same year.

In 2015, Elon Musk tweeted that he was looking for "hardcore software engineers" for autonomous vehicles at Tesla.

That year, he also got into a Twitter fight with Jeff Bezos about rockets after Bezos' Blue Origin rocket successfully made it back from space.

In December of 2015, Musk got back at Bezos with a successful SpaceX rocket upright landing after an orbit around the earth.

In 2015, Tesla released the Model X, the company's first crossover SUV, with its signature falcon wing doors. The release was pushed back nearly three years after the prototype was first revealed.

Things got busier than ever for Musk in the latter half of the decade. On a 2016 earnings call, Musk revealed that he was sleeping in a Tesla factory ahead of production deadlines.

Musk and Riley divorced for the second time in 2016. The relationship reportedly ended on good terms, and she told People "We still see each other all the time and take care of each other."

In 2016, Musk also started The Boring Company, an infrastructure and tunneling company, which he says "started out as a joke."

That year, Musk started dating another actress, Amber Heard. He confirmed their breakup in 2017 in a comment on her Instagram.

In the summer of 2017, Musk left his role on 2 White House councils, tweeting "Am departing presidential councils. Climate change is real. Leaving Paris is not good for America or the world," after the US pulled out of the Paris climate accord.

At a speech in September 2017, Musk said that he hopes to land a spaceship on Mars by 2022, and his new spaceship, "Mars City," will take passengers from New York to LA in 25 minutes.

That year, Tesla also released the Model 3 sedan, which later became the company's best-selling electric vehicle.

At a November 2017 event, Tesla unveiled prototypes of both the new Roadster, which Musk said would have a battery range of 620 miles, and the Semi electric truck.

In 2018, Tesla reported its biggest quarterly loss ever.

A fatal Tesla crash led to an investigation and concerns about safety, and share prices dropped.

Elon Musk and the pop artist Grimes (Claire Boucher) attended the 2018 Met Gala together, and confirmed that they were dating. Musk reportedly reached out the singer after discovering she had already made the same joke about an AI theory on Twitter.

Grimes defended Musk several times throughout the spring and summer on Twitter, at one point saying that he didn't prevent employees from unionizing.

In July, Elon Musk proposed a submarine to rescue the Thai soccer team trapped in a cave. After one of the divers involved in the rescue called Musk's submarine a PR stunt, Musk called him a "pedo guy" in a tweet that would later land him in court.

In August, rapper Azealia Banks claimed that she spent the weekend at Musk's house, where she saw him "scrounging for investors."

In August, Musk tweeted that he was considering taking Tesla private.

Am considering taking Tesla private at $420. Funding secured.

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) August 7, 2018

At the end of an eventful summer, Musk smoked marijuana on "The Joe Rogan Experience," podcast, which went viral.

Musk has since been in trouble with the SEC for his tweet about taking Tesla private. They landed on a settlement that placed constraints on his Twitter use going forward, which the SEC says he violated in February.

He also faced a defamation lawsuit for his comments about the rescue diver. It went to trial in 2019, and Musk successfully defended himself against the charge.

In 2019, Tesla finally unveiled the Model Y, which it first announced in 2015. The car is set to go on sale in 2021, and sits on the Model X frame.

In October, Tesla surpassed GM as the most valuable US car manufacturer, worth $53 billion to GM's $51 billion.

In November, Tesla announced the Cybertruck, which quickly gained hundreds of thousands of preorders, according to Musk, despite its controversial design and a flubbed demo where the windows broke.

This fall, Musk also said that he's financially illiquid.

In the fall of 2019, Musk promised to donate 1 million trees to a campaign started by YouTuber Jimmy Donaldson.

On the last day of the decade, Tesla stock was trading at nearly $419 per share. Tesla is currently worth $76 billion compared to GM's $52 billion and Ford's $37 billion.

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