New Twitter owner: Who is Elon Musk?

Big changes may be coming to Twitter as billionaire Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk acquires the social media giant in a $44 billion deal that would cap a bid that began in early April to exert official influence over policies designed to combat abuse on the platform, which Musk has cast as anti-free speech.

On April 4, Musk became the company’s largest shareholder and backed out at the last minute from an agreement to join Twitter’s board of directors. 

Now, on the verge of taking over the company, Musk is promising to bring “free speech” to Twitter. 

But who exactly is Musk? Here is what to know the richest man on Earth.

Musk is a South-Africa-born billionaire entrepreneur who serves as CEO of Tesla, the popular electric vehicle manufacturer, and SpaceX. Musk made an early fortune founding PayPal in 1999. EBay bought the company in 2002 for $1.5 billion and Musk reportedly made $180 million from the deal, Time Magazine reported.

Soon after, Musk founded SpaceX, which partners with NASA on space missions. Musk’s admirers herald him as a visionary thrusting the world into the future. His ultimate goal with SpaceX is to make humanity a “multi-planet” species by colonizing Mars and another of his projects seeks to integrate a computer into the human brain.