Elon Musk is an engineer and entrepreneur who has been linked with bringing the future. He first became a millionaire when he sold his first company, Zip2, to Compaq for $340 million in 1999.
Since then, he has founded companies that cover almost all major industries. Here are five of Elon Musk's companies and what they're currently up to:
Neuralink
This mysterious neurotechnology company Neuralink, founded in July 2016, has potential applications in the fields of prosthetics, robotics, medicine, and even military purposes. It mainly develops implantable brain-machine interfaces, once announcing that they are working on "threads," 4 to 6 micron devices that is supposedly the first step towards connecting the human brain to the Internet.
On August 28, 2020, Neuralink had the attention of the world as it conducted a livestream demonstration of its neural interface. They demonstrated the ability of their neural link to pick up brain signals from pigs installed with the miniature devices. One of the reasons Musk has in this endeavor is to keep humans keep up with artificial intelligence that continues to grow in complexity.
OpenAI
OpenAI is made up of a for-profit arm OpenAI LP, and a non-profit arm OpenAI Inc. It was founded in December 2015 and focuses on artificial intelligence research. The industry considers this Elon Musk company as a competitor to the Google subsidiary DeepMind.
RELATED: Can A Robot Write A Theater Play? The Unusual Collaboration Between AI, Robotics and Theater
Since it was founded, OpenAI has engaged in a number of AI and robotics-related applications. In 2018, it launched its Debate Game, which uses machine learning to teach robots to debate problems in front of a human judge.
Last month we released an API for developers to build on top of our latest technology: https://t.co/4BaTBWzRtQ. There's been a lot of enthusiasm, but a great deal needs to be figured out as we scale up access. Here's how we're thinking about it. 1/8 — OpenAI (@OpenAI) July 23, 2020
Its latest breakthrough, the Generative Pretrained Transformer 3 (GPT3), an unsupervised deep learning language model. It recently made headlines around the world when a college student, Liam Porr, created a fake blog using GPT3, and drew 26 thousand visitors in two weeks.
The Boring Company
Aside from the witty company name, The Boring Company was a former SpaceX subsidiary that aims to solve the difficult traffic conditions by "boring" tunnels and underground transport infrastructures for the people to use. Elon Musk cited his own experiences with Los Angeles traffic as the inspiration for the company.
HAWTHORNE, CA - DECEMBER 18: The Boring Company signage is displayed at the tunnel entrance before an unveiling event for The Boring Company Hawthorne test tunnel December 18, 2018 in Hawthorne, California.
Its founder and CEO Elon Musk has recently updated people via Twitter, claiming that it is only a "few months from being operational." He was referring to a Las Vegas, Nevada project where The Boring Company placed a $52.5 million bid for an "underground people mover" that will ease the traffic on The Strip, one of Las Vegas' busiest streets.
Tesla, Inc.
After a year it was founded in 2003, Elon Musk joined the former Tesla Motors and is now its CEO. As an automotive company, Tesla has been known globally for its electric cars which are commercially available at prices competitive with other, conventional cars. Seventeen years after it was founded, Tesla Inc is now responsible for 81 percent of battery electric vehicles sold in the United States for the first six months of 2020.
RELATED: Hackers TRICKED a Tesla: The Race to Fooling Artificial Intelligence
RIEDEN, GERMANY - JUNE 11: A Tesla electric-powered sedan stands at a Tesla charging staiton at a highway reststop along the A7 highway on June 11, 2015 near Rieden, Germany.
Also, to cater to its growing electric vehicle market, Tesla Inc has created a supercharger network that acts as the fuel refilling stations for Tesla cars. By the end of 2019, there have been 15,000 superchargers installed across more than 1,700 spots around the world.
SpaceX
SpaceX is the aerospace company founded by Elon Musk months before he sold his revolutionary online payment method PayPal to eBay for $1.5 billion. The aerospace manufacturer and space transportation company is a partner to NASA through its Commercial Crew Program. In this endeavor, SpaceX has developed a number of launch vehicles, some of them used by NASA for its space missions, including the Starlink and Crew Dragon projects.
RELATED: Upcoming SpaceX Starlink Satellite Launch to Set New Milestones
GULF OF MEXICO - AUGUST 2: In this handout image provided by NASA, the SpaceX Crew Dragon capsule spacecraft, with NASA astronauts Robert Behnken and Douglas Hurley onboard, is lifted onto the SpaceX GO Navigator recovery ship after landing in the Gulf of Mexico on August 2, 2020 off the coast of Pensacola, Florida.
NASA and SpaceX have recently completed their Crew Dragon Demo 2, which carried astronauts Doug Hurley and Bob Behnken to the ISS and back to Earth, making a successful splashdown in the ocean.
Neuralink this month & Tesla next month, SpaceX probably October. We will have made a lot of progress by then. Might have a prototype booster hop done by then. — Elon Musk (@elonmusk) August 28, 2020
Check out more news information about Elon Musk only on Science Times.
