Not even. Musk had a company which had plans for an online bank (can you imagine?) but it wasn't working out so well. So his company merged with one that was in the process of creating PayPal (trademarked, prototype in place)...
Musk was the largest shareholder of the combined companies, so he was made CEO...
And promptly spent four months complaining that the working prototype needed to be thrown away, because it was written in Java on Solaris, and he didn't understand it, and he wanted it rewritten in Classic ASP on Windows.
Four months, because at that point, the board, lead by Peter Thiel had had enough of it and removed him as CEO.
definitely not the smartest at the heights of marie curie nor stephem hawking
but smart and rich enough to be worth more than all of us in this thread
shorters are literally betting against the guy that spearheaded reusable rockets in space, i'm not saying all his decisions and perspectives are agreeable, but seriously what do you all think is your leverage against the guy?
Another smart guy that is almost as rich is short tesla ie Bill Gates I don't know or care about who is right and who is wrong just saying your investment should not be purely based on Musk name. Personally I think Tesla might win the car race but as prices for electricity, batteries and pc chips keep going down. I am not so sure about self driving cars being worth that much as it will be race to the bottom in terms of price and cost.
Cheaper electricity is coming that is the bigger change than most people realise not electric cars. So far majority of electricity has been produced using fossil fuels a finite resource where as solar is practically an infinite resource price for harvesting it as well as storing it keeps dropping.
yes they make mistakes, but it has been a bloodbath out there for $TSLA shorters in the past 5 years