{"id":464,"date":"2026-09-05T23:21:45","date_gmt":"2026-09-06T02:21:45","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.linuxpro.com.br\/2026\/09\/a-historia-de-elon-musk-do-abismo-ao-imperio\/"},"modified":"2026-09-06T17:54:36","modified_gmt":"2026-09-06T20:54:36","slug":"a-historia-de-elon-musk-do-abismo-ao-imperio","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.linuxpro.com.br\/en\/2026\/09\/a-historia-de-elon-musk-do-abismo-ao-imperio\/","title":{"rendered":"The history of Elon Musk: from the abyss to an empire"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img decoding=\"async\" alt=\"Elon Musk em HQ diante dos logos da Tesla, SpaceX, PayPal, OpenAI, X, Neuralink e Starlink\" src=\"https:\/\/www.linuxpro.com.br\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/elon-hq2.webp\" \/><\/p>\n<p>Few technology figures polarize as much as <strong>Elon Reeve Musk<\/strong> (Pretoria, 28 June 1971). A visionary of reusable rockets and electric cars to some; a volatile manager and owner-operator of a conglomerate (Tesla, SpaceX\/SpaceXAI, Neuralink, X) to others. Before that he slept on an office floor, lost the PayPal CEO job on a plane and came within <strong>two days of bankruptcy<\/strong> at Christmas 2008. This text starts from the documentary <a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=vai3Vh234EE\"><em>The Story of Elon Musk<\/em><\/a> (SunnyV2) and fills in what the video cannot fit: Tesla was not founded by him, the Falcon 9 that returns, the brain chip, Grok, the US$ 1,77 trillion IPO in 2026 \u2014 and Linux in the middle of the fight.<\/p>\n<p><!-- more --><\/p>\n<div style=\"position:relative;padding-bottom:56.25%;height:0;overflow:hidden;margin:1.5em 0\">\n<iframe src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/vai3Vh234EE\" title=\"The Story of Elon Musk \u2014 SunnyV2\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" allowfullscreen style=\"position:absolute;top:0;left:0;width:100%;height:100%;border:0\"><\/iframe>\n<\/div>\n<h2>Pretoria, 1971: books, beatings and Blastar<\/h2>\n<p>Son of Maye (a Canadian model and dietitian) and Errol (a South African electromechanical engineer). An introspective child: up to ten hours a day with encyclopedias and science fiction \u2014 Asimov (<em>Foundation<\/em>), Adams (<em>The Hitchhiker\u2019s Guide to the Galaxy<\/em>). The phrase \u201cthe answer is 42\u201d and the idea of a multiplanetary civilization did not originate in a SpaceX pitch deck; they came from the bookshelf.<\/p>\n<p>At school he was subjected to severe violence. In one episode, he was pushed down a flight of stairs and beaten until unconscious \u2014 weeks in the hospital. At 10 he got a Commodore VIC-20, learned BASIC from the manual and at 12 sold the space game <strong>Blastar<\/strong> for US$ 500 to the South African magazine <em>PC and Office Technology<\/em>. Citizenship: South Africa, Canada (through his mother) and, later, the United States.<\/p>\n<h2>America: Zip2 and the office couch<\/h2>\n<p>At 17 he left South Africa \u2014 conscription under apartheid and the pull of the Valley. Queen\u2019s University in Ontario, then the University of Pennsylvania: physics and economics. Stanford accepted him into a PhD in applied physics and materials science; on the second day he dropped out to avoid missing the commercial web (1995).<\/p>\n<p>Netscape did not hire him. With his brother Kimbal he started <strong>Zip2<\/strong>: online guides and maps for newspapers (<em>New York Times<\/em>, <em>Chicago Tribune<\/em>). Without money for both a home and an office, he rented the office, slept on the couch, showered at the YMCA and programmed the server late at night. In February 1999 Compaq bought Zip2 for <strong>US$ 307 million<\/strong> in cash. Musk, 27, walked away with about <strong>US$ 22 million<\/strong>.<\/p>\n<h2>X.com, the coup on the plane and the PayPal mafia<\/h2>\n<p>He reinvested US$ 12 million in <strong>X.com<\/strong> \u2014 digital banking and payment by email. In 2000 it merged with Confinity (Peter Thiel, Max Levchin), owner of the PayPal product. The technical fight was Linux versus Windows NT: Musk wanted to migrate the Unix\/Linux infrastructure to NT; Levchin\u2019s team revolted. Linux won that one \u2014 PayPal stayed on Unix. (The name <code data-no-translation=\"\">X.com<\/code> he buys back two decades later, for Twitter.)<\/p>\n<pre data-no-translation=\"\"><code class=\"language-text\" data-no-translation=\"\">X.com (Musk)  \u2500\u2500fus\u00e3o 2000\u2500\u2500  Confinity (Thiel \/ Levchin)\n                         \u2502\n                         \u25bc\n                    PayPal Inc. (2001)\n                         \u2502\n              eBay, 2002 \u2014 US$ 1,5 bilh\u00e3o\n<\/code><\/pre>\n<p>In October 2000, on a honeymoon flight, the board removed him as CEO and installed Thiel. Musk remained the largest individual shareholder. In 2002 eBay paid <strong>US$ 1,5 billion<\/strong>; after taxes, about <strong>US$ 180 million<\/strong>. The \u201cPayPal Mafia\u201d that emerged \u2014 Thiel, Levchin, Reid Hoffman, Keith Rabois, David Sacks \u2014 founded or funded LinkedIn, YouTube, Yelp, Palantir, Affirm. Musk was the one who bet the entire check on rockets and cars.<\/p>\n<h2>2008: three rockets, a Roadster and Christmas Eve<\/h2>\n<p>The money went into two capital-hungry sectors: <strong>US$ 100 million<\/strong> in SpaceX (2002) and <strong>US$ 70 million<\/strong> in Tesla (2004). Christmas 2008 almost closed both:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li class=\"translation-block\">The first three Falcon 1 rockets failed. There was cash for <em>one<\/em> fourth flight.<\/li>\n<li>Tesla\u2019s Roadster went over budget in the middle of the credit crisis.<\/li>\n<li>His marriage to Justine Wilson ended in the tabloids.<\/li>\n<li>Without personal liquidity, he asked friends for money for everyday bills and had to close US$ 20 million on Christmas Eve for Tesla payroll.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<pre data-no-translation=\"\"><code class=\"language-text\" data-no-translation=\"\">28 set 2008  Falcon 1 voo 4 alcan\u00e7a \u00f3rbita\n23 dez 2008  NASA assina CRS \u2014 US$ 1,6 bi com a SpaceX\nv\u00e9spera Natal  rodada de emerg\u00eancia da Tesla fecha a horas do colapso\n<\/code><\/pre>\n<h2>Tesla: he did not found it \u2014 and still became CEO<\/h2>\n<p>Tesla Motors was born in 2003 with <strong>Martin Eberhard<\/strong> and <strong>Marc Tarpenning<\/strong>. Musk led the Series A in 2004, became chairman and, in October 2008, CEO \u2014 in the worst possible month. The 2009 legal fight over who is a \u201cfounder\u201d ended with all four (including JB Straubel and Ian Wright) recognized on the site; in practice the name of the brand is his.<\/p>\n<p>The Model S (2012) broke the skepticism of Detroit and Germany. Model 3 and Model Y became global volume sellers. The Supercharger network is the moat gas stations did not copy in time. FSD (Full Self-Driving) runs on Linux in the car, with custom chips (HW3\/HW4) and a fleet collecting video \u2014 the same kind of data that trains large models. Optimus is the humanoid robot; Cybertruck, the stainless-steel pickup the press hated and a slice of fans bought. SolarCity became Tesla Energy: Megapack stabilizes grids (and, in 2024\u20132025, SpaceX itself and xAI bought hundreds of millions in Tesla batteries).<\/p>\n<p>Tesla\u2019s internal \u201calgorithm\u201d, which Musk repeats in interviews: question every requirement; delete whatever part you can; simplify; accelerate the cycle; <em>only then<\/em> automate. Automating the wrong process is the most expensive way to fail.<\/p>\n<h2>SpaceX: the rocket that returns<\/h2>\n<p>The trick was not \u201cgoing to Mars in PowerPoint\u201d. It was rejecting disposable rockets. On <strong>21 December 2015<\/strong> the Falcon 9 first stage landed upright at Cape Canaveral. In 2018 Falcon Heavy debuted with a red Tesla Roadster in heliocentric orbit and the Starman mannequin at the wheel. In 2020 Crew Dragon (Demo-2) took NASA astronauts to the ISS \u2014 the first private company to do so.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Starlink<\/strong> became the cash engine: thousands of satellites in low orbit, Internet where cables do not reach, and a wartime product (Ukraine, 2022) that Musk began treating as geopolitical leverage. <strong>Starship<\/strong>, stainless steel, two stages, is the bet on full reusability for satellites, the Moon (Artemis) and Mars. Test flights (IFT) explode in public \u2014 the method is the same as in 2008: fail cheaply, iterate, do not hide the fire.<\/p>\n<p>Vertical integration: ~85% in-house. The same first principle of the rocket with 2% in raw materials.<\/p>\n<h2>Neuralink: 1.024 electrodes and patient P1<\/h2>\n<p>Founded in 2016. The N1 (\u201cLink\u201d) implant is coin-sized, wireless, 64 threads, 1.024 electrodes in the motor cortex, implanted by a robot. In January 2024 the first human, <strong>Noland Arbaugh<\/strong> (quadriplegic after a diving accident), received the chip in Phoenix. Weeks later he was moving the cursor and playing chess through the intention to move. About 85% of the threads retracted from the tissue \u2014 the signal dropped, then stabilized. Other patients followed; Musk\u2019s rhetoric ranges from \u201crestoring autonomy to people with paralysis\u201d to \u201can interface with AI so the species does not fall behind\u201d. BCI did not originate at Neuralink (BrainGate has existed for years); what it sold was the wireless + robot + stage package.<\/p>\n<h2>OpenAI, Grok and the US$ 1,77 trillion IPO<\/h2>\n<p>Musk cofounded <strong>OpenAI<\/strong> in 2015 as a nonprofit lab. He left the board in 2018 after disagreeing with its direction (and later suing). In July 2023 he opened <strong>xAI<\/strong>. The chatbot is <strong>Grok<\/strong>; the cluster is <strong>Colossus<\/strong> in Memphis (hundreds of thousands of NVIDIA GPUs). Weights for some models were released for research \u2014 the same territory as <a href=\"\/en\/2026\/09\/rodando-ia-local-no-linux-com-ollama\/\">Ollama on Linux<\/a> and the fight <a href=\"\/en\/2026\/09\/gpu-vs-tpu-como-funcionam-chips-ia\/\">GPU vs TPU<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>February 2026: SpaceX absorbs xAI (and with it X). Brand <strong>SpaceXAI<\/strong>. June 2026: IPO on Nasdaq, ticker <strong>SPCX<\/strong>, about US$ 75 billion raised, valuation around <strong>US$ 1,77 trillion<\/strong> \u2014 the largest IPO in history. The S-1 made explicit what the rocket now finances: compute, including talk of data centers in orbit. Tesla had US$ 2 billion in xAI; the merger turned that into SpaceX stock. The conglomerate is one balance sheet with three engines: launches, satellites and language models.<\/p>\n<h2>X, Hyperloop and the rest of the shelf<\/h2>\n<p>In 2022 Musk bought Twitter for <strong>US$ 44 billion<\/strong>, laid off staff en masse, renamed it <strong>X<\/strong> and tried the \u201ceverything app\u201d. In 2013 he published the white paper for <strong>Hyperloop<\/strong> \u2014 vacuum tube, levitating capsule \u2014 and left the world to copy it; he did not build the line. The Boring Company (2016) became a Las Vegas tunnel, not Hyperloop. That is the shelf: a core (SpaceX + Tesla + xAI) and satellites that sometimes pay the rent on attention.<\/p>\n<h2>First principles, not analogy<\/h2>\n<p>Inherited from physics: break things down to physical truth, not to \u201cit has always been this way\u201d. Expensive rocket? Raw material cost. Electric car \u201cdoes not scale\u201d? Battery and production physics. Tesla\u2019s algorithm is the operational version: question, delete, simplify, accelerate, automate last. It is the same refusal to accept industry pricing that the <a href=\"\/en\/2026\/09\/linux-35-anos\/\">hobby kernel<\/a> brought to proprietary UNIX \u2014 different ground, same stubbornness.<\/p>\n<h2>The map, updated in 2026<\/h2>\n<ul>\n<li><strong>Zip2<\/strong> (1995) \u2014 web maps. Compaq, US$ 307 million.<\/li>\n<li><strong>X.com \/ PayPal<\/strong> (1999) \u2014 payments. eBay, US$ 1,5 billion. Linux won the stack fight.<\/li>\n<li><strong>SpaceX<\/strong> (2002) \u2014 landing Falcon, Crew Dragon, Starlink, Starship. SPCX IPO, 2026.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Tesla<\/strong> (joined 2004; CEO 2008) \u2014 S\/3\/Y, FSD on Linux in the car, Energy, Optimus.<\/li>\n<li><strong>OpenAI<\/strong> (2015, cofounder) \u2014 left in 2018.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Neuralink<\/strong> (2016) \u2014 N1; first human in 2024 (Noland Arbaugh).<\/li>\n<li><strong>The Boring Company<\/strong> (2016) \u2014 tunnel in Las Vegas.<\/li>\n<li><strong>X<\/strong> (Twitter, 2022) \u2014 US$ 44 billion, cuts, rebrand.<\/li>\n<li><strong>xAI \u2192 SpaceXAI<\/strong> (2023 \/ Feb 2026) \u2014 Grok, Colossus; absorbed by SpaceX.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<h2>Timeline<\/h2>\n<ul>\n<li><strong>28\/Jun\/1971<\/strong> \u2014 Born in Pretoria, South Africa<\/li>\n<li><strong>1983<\/strong> \u2014 At 12, sells the game Blastar for US$ 500<\/li>\n<li><strong>1995<\/strong> \u2014 Drops out of the Stanford PhD; founds Zip2 with his brother Kimbal<\/li>\n<li><strong>Feb\/1999<\/strong> \u2014 Compaq buys Zip2 (US$ 307 million); founds X.com<\/li>\n<li><strong>2000<\/strong> \u2014 Merger with Confinity (PayPal); removed as CEO<\/li>\n<li><strong>2002<\/strong> \u2014 eBay buys PayPal (US$ 1,5 billion); founds SpaceX<\/li>\n<li><strong>2004<\/strong> \u2014 Leads Tesla\u2019s Series A and becomes chairman<\/li>\n<li><strong>Oct\/2008<\/strong> \u2014 Takes over as Tesla CEO; Falcon 1 reaches orbit<\/li>\n<li><strong>2012<\/strong> \u2014 Tesla Model S breaks industry skepticism<\/li>\n<li><strong>2015<\/strong> \u2014 Cofounds OpenAI; first Falcon 9 landing (21\/Dec)<\/li>\n<li><strong>2016<\/strong> \u2014 Founds Neuralink and The Boring Company<\/li>\n<li><strong>2018<\/strong> \u2014 Leaves OpenAI; Falcon Heavy debut<\/li>\n<li><strong>2020<\/strong> \u2014 Crew Dragon takes NASA astronauts to the ISS<\/li>\n<li><strong>2022<\/strong> \u2014 Buys Twitter (US$ 44 billion) and renames it X<\/li>\n<li><strong>2023<\/strong> \u2014 Founds xAI (Grok chatbot)<\/li>\n<li><strong>Jan\/2024<\/strong> \u2014 First human receives the Neuralink implant<\/li>\n<li><strong>Feb\/2026<\/strong> \u2014 SpaceX absorbs xAI and X (SpaceXAI brand)<\/li>\n<li><strong>Jun\/2026<\/strong> \u2014 Nasdaq IPO (SPCX): ~US$ 1,77 trillion, the largest in history<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<h2>Light and shadow<\/h2>\n<p>The biography does not fit into a slogan. Impossible schedules and betting his own payroll forced aerospace and automotive industries to advance decades in a few years. Management under pressure, mass layoffs, lawsuits, public jokes and a year in Washington (DOGE, 2025) generate the other side of the headline. PayPal on Linux, Autopilot on Linux, Grok that you can try locally \u2014 that is what remains useful in the terminal, regardless of whether you like the owner.<\/p>\n<p>The impact did not come from a safe path. It came from refusing failure as a final option \u2014 and surviving Christmas 2008 with a rocket that finally reached orbit.<\/p>\n<p>Starting documentary: <a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=vai3Vh234EE\">SunnyV2 \u2014 The Story of Elon Musk<\/a>.<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Few technology figures are as polarizing as Elon Reeve Musk (Pretoria, June 28, 1971). A visionary of reusable rockets and electric cars to some; a volatile manager and owner-operator of a conglomerate (Tesla, SpaceX\/SpaceXAI, Neuralink, X) to others. Before that, he slept on an office floor, lost the PayPal CEO role while on a plane, and was \u2026 <a title=\"The history of Elon Musk: from the abyss to an empire\" class=\"read-more\" href=\"https:\/\/www.linuxpro.com.br\/en\/2026\/09\/a-historia-de-elon-musk-do-abismo-ao-imperio\/\" aria-label=\"Read more about A hist\u00f3ria de Elon Musk: do abismo ao imp\u00e9rio\">Read more<\/a><\/p>","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[115,25,111],"tags":[177,182,116,183,181,178,184,179,180],"class_list":["post-464","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-ia","category-noticias","category-opensource","tag-elon-musk","tag-grok","tag-ia","tag-neuralink","tag-paypal","tag-spacex","tag-starlink","tag-tesla","tag-xai"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.linuxpro.com.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/464","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.linuxpro.com.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.linuxpro.com.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.linuxpro.com.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=464"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/www.linuxpro.com.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/464\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":746,"href":"https:\/\/www.linuxpro.com.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/464\/revisions\/746"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.linuxpro.com.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=464"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.linuxpro.com.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=464"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.linuxpro.com.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=464"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}