Elon Musk's political awakening during the 2024 presidential election paved the way to his position leading the Department of Government Efficiency. Matt McClain/The Washington Post via Getty Images Elon Musk runs X, SpaceX, The Boring Company, Tesla, and the Department of Government Efficiency.Musk is also the world's richest person with a net worth of about $412 billion.Musk grew close to President Donald Trump during the 2024 election, and now leads DOGE.Tesla CEO Elon Musk doesn't just run various major companies. He's also become a titan of American culture and politics, using his immense wealth and influence to get involved with everything from space travel, to AI, to electric vehicles, to the White House.Musk runs SpaceX, Tesla, X, xAI, and the Boring Company. He cofounded all of them, along with Neuralink, which he's still involved with and partially owns. Earlier in his career, Musk founded PayPal, OpenAI, and Zip2, but is no longer involved. Thanks to his entrepreneurial successes, Musk's net worth is $412 billion, making him the world's richest person, according to the Bloomberg Billionaire's Index. That puts him well ahead of the runner-up, Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, whose net worth is $257 billion.Throughout the 2024 presidential election, Musk became increasingly close to President Donald Trump. He's now the brain behind the Department of Government Efficiency, which is seeking to reform the federal government's budget, regulation, and structure.DOGEThough Musk donated to both Democrats and Republicans in his early career, he became a staunch and public ally of Trump during the 2024 presidential election, even coining himself "First Buddy." He spent at least $277 million backing Trump and Republicans, and political operatives told Business Insider that Musk's "war room" in Pennsylvania may have ultimately helped Trump win the crucial swing state.Trump tapped Musk to lead DOGE and formally incorporated the group into the White House via executive order on his very first day back in office. In that executive order, however, Trump appeared to scale back the group's mission from cutting trillions from the federal budget to "modernizing Federal technology and software."Despite that, Musk and DOGE rapidly began remaking the federal workforce, going well beyond simple IT changes, like announcing the cancellation of a slew of government contracts, pushing for the shutdown of USAID, and advocating getting rid of the US penny. Musk also exercised significant political power before Trump officially formed DOGE; he tanked a Congressional spending bill, which nearly sent the government into a shutdown. Musk ingratiated himself within the Trump campaign, and has remained close with the president ever since. Tom Brenner for The Washington Post via Getty Images Musk and Trump's relationshipremained close in the months after the election, spending time together at Mar-a-Lago and in DC. The Tesla CEO was among the tech leaders and billionaires who attended Trump's inauguration and has seemed to have his hand in some of the president's earliest actions regarding the federal workforce.X/TwitterElon Musk started buying shares in Twitter, now called X, in January 2022 and initiated an acquisition three months later. In the years since, he has reframed the platform as a replacement for legacy media. The app has also served as a personal megaphone for Musk, who has more than 215 million followers the most of any user. Musk posts frequently; sometimes more than 100 times per day.By the time Musk bought Twitter for $44 billion in October 2022, he had actually spent months trying to back out of the agreement. Earlier in 2022, he sent a letter to Twitter purporting to terminate the acquisition. Twitter promptly sued him.When the sale went through, Musk immediately ousted a number of Twitter executives, including its CEO, CFO, and chief legal officer. Shortly after, Musk issued an ultimatum to employees: work at an "extremely hardcore" rate or accept a three-month severance package. He would go on to lay off about 80% of Twitter's staff. Elon Musk has overhauled Twitter, ever since he first strolled into headquarters toting a sink in October 2022. Getty Images In May 2023, Musk named Linda Yaccarino as Twitter's new CEO. "Looking forward to working with Linda to transform this platform into X, the everything app," Musk said in a tweet. Come July 2023, Twitter was rebranded to X. The Securities and Exchange Commission is currently investigating Musk's acquisitionof the company.Musk has rebranded more than just the name of the company. A self-described "free speech absolutist," Musk fired many of Twitter's content moderators and opted instead for a community notes system. He reinstated previously suspended accounts, including Trump's, but a transparency report from 2024 revealed that X has suspended more accountson average than Twitter did.Musk launched a Twitter Blue subscription, which lets anyone paid to be verified and led to some users impersonating public figures. In 2023, he got rid of the social media site's blue-tick verification for accounts of "public interest," like those belonging to politicians, journalists, and celebrities.On various occasions, Musk has used his account on X to shape global political discourse. He posted about and tanked a government funding bill, ignited a raging immigration debate about the H-1B visa program for skilled workers, and demanded the British prime minister resignover his handling of the UK's rape-gang scandal.SpaceXSpaceX is a national and global leader in space exploration, and Musk's ultimate goal is to bring humans to Mars. Throughout the last 20 years, the company has broken record after record, including the most number of launches of a single rocket in one year.Beyond its rockets, SpaceX has built a wide satellite network and its global internet trafficmore than tripled in 2024. The Starlink satellite internet system operates in Earth's lower orbit, with a constellation of up to 42,000 planned.Starlink has become a key part of SpaceX's business, but has ensnared Musk in geopolitical conflict. Musk has said Starlink has been crucial for Ukraine in its war with Russia, though some Ukrainian military intelligence officials have said that Russia is using the satellites an allegation Musk has denied.Musk has said SpaceX wants to send five of its flagship Starship rockets to Mars in 2026, followed by crewed missions a few years later, though some experts have told BI the timeline will be challenging to achieve. During the 2024 presidential campaign, he took to the stage at a Trump rally wearing his signature "Occupy Mars" shirt.Yet SpaceX's more than two-decade long history hasn't always been smooth sailing. Musk founded the company in 2002, investing $100 million he made from the sale of PayPal.The company nearly failed. After three unsuccessful launches between 2006 and 2008, funding was running out. Then, on September 28, 2008, SpaceX became the first private company to achieve a successful orbital launch. That same year, SpaceX received a $1.5 billion NASA contract. SpaceX was founded in 2002, and nearly failed as a company. Today, it is a global leader in space exploration. Yichuan Cao/Getty Images SpaceX launches now happen on a regular basis. The company publishes a SpaceX launch schedule on its website. Launches typically take place at Cape Canaveral Space Force Base or the Kennedy Space Center in Florida.The SpaceX Falcon 9, a partially reusable two-stage rocket, is often used for launches. The Falcon 9 family of rockets is a key asset for NASA in servicing the International Space Station since the retirement of the Space Shuttle program in 2011.SpaceX was valued at about $350 billion under Musk's unique leadership style as of December 2024.The company remains private and Musk has said that SpaceX won't file for an IPO until the "Mars Colonial Transporter" is flying regularly. SpaceX's long-term goal is to make colonizing Mars affordable.The Boring CompanyMusk's The Boring Companywas created as a subsidiary of SpaceX and later became its own entity. Inspired by LA traffic gridlock, the tunneling venture has several ongoing projects on the West Coast.In April 2022, the company raised $675 million at a valuation of almost $5.7 billion, according to a Boring Company news release. Boring Company stock is not publicly traded.In 2018, Musk sold 20,000 Boring Company flamethrowers in just five days. The product, called "Not-A-Flamethrower," has been off the market for years. However, it's acquired something of a cult status among the tech mogul's fans, and some people have been paying hundreds of dollars to buy them on eBay.Among Musk's other innovative products is a 5'8" humanoid Tesla robot named Optimus, announced in 2021. The robot is designed to help reduce the labor shortage, according to Musk, and keep workers safer.Musk said in June 2024 he thinks people will think of their personal Optimus robot as "sort of a friend," andremained optimistic they will start shipping next year.NeuralinkMusk's brain-chip company Neuralink has begun implanting its devices in human skulls and like many of Musk's ventures, the new technology has been met with both fanfare and skepticism.Neuralink aims to treat patients with neurological conditions, such as paralysis and blindness. Initially, in the first human trial, Neuralink's goal is to help patients with paralyzed limbs control devices like a computer mouse or keyboard with only their thoughts.Noland Arbaugh became the first person to receive Neuralink's brain-chip implant in January 2024. The 29-year-old quadriplegic told Business Insider it had helped him regain independence and reconnect socially.Musk has said he wants Neuralink to ultimately help humans achieve "symbiosis" with artificial intelligence so that they don't get "left behind" as AI evolves over time.xAIMusk founded startup xAI in March 2023, which has since launched a chatbot called Grok. As of November 2024, xAI was valued at $50 billion, and the company raised at least $11 billion that year. Grok, which can generate images and summarize conversations, is now free for anyone to use. The chatbot has been trained on X user data, giving it a crucial boost as it competes against rivals like OpenAI.The billionaire wants xAI to multiply the size of the supercomputer it uses to train its AI models, powered by Nvidia chips.Elon Musk's family, personal life, and early careerMusk was born in South Africa to parents Maye and Errol Musk, who divorced in 1979. He moved to Canada with his mom and two siblings after graduating high school, spending two years studying there before transferring to the University of Pennsylvania. After graduating, he enrolled in Stanford University, but deferred admission after just two days in California to pursue entrepreneurship and never went back to the school. Musk dropped out of Stanford to pursue entrepreneurship. Paul Harris/Getty Images In the 1990s, he founded his first startup, Zip2, with his brother, Kimbal, and began a decades-long career in tech. A group of Silicon Valley investors funded the project.Musk further entrenched himself in the Silicon Valley network with his second venture, online banking company X.com. The company merged with a startup of Peter Thiel's to form PayPal. When PayPal sold to eBay in 2002, Musk made $165 million; he's considered a member of the "PayPal Mafia" and has a complicated relationship with Thiel. Also in 2002, Musk obtained his American citizenship.Musk's former spouses include Justine Musk, whom he met at Queen's University in Ontario, Canada, and Talulah Riley, whom he married in 2010. He met Riley at a bar in London, and the couple divorced and remarried before splitting again.It is unclear if Musk is currently dating. Musk reportedly split in 2022 with actor Natasha Bassett, who is believed to be his last public girlfriend.Before that, Musk briefly dated actor Amber Heard in 2017 amid her divorce from actor Johnny Depp. The two first connected on the red carpet of the 2016 Met Gala, which Depp was expected to attend but did not.He and the musician Grimes started dating in 2018. Since then, they've broken up and gotten back together a few times. They appear to be on reasonable terms again after a contentious legal battle over the three children they share.Musk has 11 living children and fathered one child who died in infancy with his ex-wife, Justine. Together, the couple had six kids. Another one of their children, Vivian, is transgender and has publicly rejected Musk in light of his criticism of transgender laws for children under 18. She has said she no longer wants "to be related to my biological father in any way."The billionaire has brought one of the children he shares with Grimes, X A-12, to meetings at the Capitol.Musk quietly had twins in November 2021 with one of his top executives, Shivon Zilis. In 2024 he confirmed he'd had another child with Zilis. He frequently laments America's declining birthrate, a theme that garnered attention during the 2024 presidential election.