Next, let's analyze Musk's business empire from the following nine areas and how they will subvert these industries and change the world:
1. payment finance: PayPal (the most popular payment method in America)
Peter teale, the founder of PayPal, asked the question, "Why did our scientific and technological progress only create a social network with 140 characters, but failed to create a flying car?" Silicon Valley is home to the smartest people in the world. These people use their intelligence to make people click on advertisements more. Musk is tired of these harmless "innovations". Musk was once the largest shareholder of PayPal. After selling PayPal, he realized the freedom of wealth. He was only 30 years old at that time, and then he really started his crazy adventure life. Let's see what he is doing really crazy!
2. Electric car: Tesla Tesla (the world's first electric car)
Founded in 2003, Tesla is Musk's second entrepreneurial project after PayPal and one of his most ambitious projects. At the beginning of Tesla's establishment, it envisioned the future of self-driving cars: most people will travel by self-driving Tesla, and car owners can rent their cars to make money. However, the problem of production capacity has been bothering it, and the resulting delay in delivery once worried many shareholders. Tesla's hype made it an attractive target in the eyes of short sellers, but at least in 2020, Tesla's performance made short sellers suffer heavy losses, and the total loss of short sellers exceeded $20 billion. Judging from the trend of national policies, it is reasonable to expect electric vehicles to become the mainstream. Britain and France decided to ban the sale of diesel and gasoline vehicles from 2040. As the largest automobile market, China also said that by 2025, 20% of vehicles should use some alternative fuels. Under the guidance of this policy, major traditional car companies are also promoting R&D to manufacture and sell electric vehicles. Developing at such a speed and occupying a leading position in the electric vehicle market seems to mean that it will eventually lead the entire automobile industry. (This is also an important reason for the Sino-US trade war, introducing Tesla and developing new energy sources. Because oil is pegged to the dollar)
3. Rocket Company: space x (the second unicorn company in the world, US$ 200 billion)
The most powerful thing about Space X is that its rocket is not disposable, but can be recycled many times, which greatly reduces the rocket launch cost. (This technology is currently owned by only four people: the United States, the Russian Federation, China and Musk. ) With the help of this rocket system of Space X, Musk did several things. The first is that it can be used to help other institutions launch satellites to make money. It has received $654.38 billion in orders from NASA and also helped other countries or commercial companies launch satellites. This is its business model. The second thing, Musk used his own space x rocket to launch satellites into the sky, forming a satellite chain system covering the whole world. This is his Star Alliance project (20 19 10). 1On October 22nd, Musk successfully sent a historic tweet through Starlink, and said that Starlink has been able to provide Internet services. Starlink's goal is to provide services in the northern United States and Canada by 2020, and to expand its service scope to nearly the whole world by 202 1. Space Exploration Technology Company plans to deploy nearly12,000 satellites in three orbits before the mid-2020s: at first, about 1600 satellites will be deployed in 550km orbit, then about 2,800 Ku-band and Ka-band satellites will be deployed in150 orbit, and finally about 340km orbit. The whole plan is estimated to cost about $654.38+000 billion. The third and greatest thing is that he wants to build a space station and send humans to live on Mars. This is his goal of evolving human beings from terrestrial creatures to interstellar creatures. Also using his rocket system, the time from new york to Shanghai can be shortened to less than one hour.
4. Telecom/Internet: Starlink star chain (satellite Internet)
The idea of deploying Internet services via satellite is not very "innovative". Since the early 1990s, Iridium, Teledesic, Globalstar and OneWeb have all set foot in it, but none of them can persist. Compared with them, Starlink has some important advantages: 1. Cost: As mentioned above, Space Exploration Technology Company has greatly reduced and continues to reduce the launch cost of satellites; 2. Speed: The upper limit speed of previous satellite internet access attempts is 25Mbps, while the target speed of Space Exploration Technology Company is about1Gbps; 3. Delay: The time required for a data packet to travel between the Earth and the satellite. At present, high-orbit operators provide a delay of about 600 milliseconds, while the goal of low-orbit satellites of Space Exploration Technology Company is less than 20 milliseconds. In 20 18, Space Exploration Technology Company was approved by FCC (Federal Communications Commission) to launch as many as 1 1943 broadband satellites. A few months later, space exploration technology company sent a second-hand rocket into space for the first time. After that, Space Exploration Technology Company reduced the launch cost of a satellite to about $62 million, while the price of competitors was as high as $65.438+65 million. Space exploration technology company's reusable rocket technology can be further improved, reducing the cost to less than 30 million US dollars. As of August 2020, Starlink has deployed nearly 600 satellites (it is estimated that 800 satellites are needed for Internet service to start working). The company plans to provide services in North America by the end of 2020 and expand to almost global coverage on 202 1.
5. New energy: solar energy (instead of fossil energy)
What many people don't know is that Tesla also owns a solar company called SolarCity, which was founded by Musk and his brother and later acquired by Tesla. What Musk wants to build is an ecosystem that uses solarcity's solar cells to generate electricity on the roof, while Tesla's battery is equivalent to an electric energy storage system. If you have extra electricity, you can sell it to others. This is the real clean energy, not what we are doing now, using electricity generated by coal-fired thermal power to drive electric vehicles. This is pseudo-clean energy. SolarCity Company was established in June 5438 +2008 10. Is an American company specializing in the development of household photovoltaic power generation projects, located in Foster City, California. Solarcity is actually a financial service provider, providing users with operating lease services for rooftop photovoltaic equipment. SolarCity's current market value is estimated to be about 654.38+0 billion US dollars, and its future fields will be broader, because the future resources will be more concerned, more and more clean energy will replace the current fossil energy, and the company's customers will be more and more.
6. Transportation: Hyperloop (faster and cheaper than airplanes)
The idea of transporting Hyperloop by vacuum pipeline was born a century ago, but it was not until 20 12 that people began to be influenced by Musk and changed their ideas. They imagined a "capsule cabin" container, which could travel 30 miles in two and a half minutes, shorten the journey from 6 hours to 30 minutes, and only need about 20 dollars to break even. This is the prototype of Hyperloop commercial transportation mode. It is faster than any traditional mode of transportation and twice as fast as Japan's new maglev train. Hyperloop may have a major impact on several different industries. The first to bear the brunt is the aviation industry with a market size of 760 billion US dollars. Besides not being able to cross the sea, Hyperloop can transport passengers faster and cheaper than airplanes, which may change people's life and lifestyle: a person can work in Manhattan, new york, but live in a village that takes six hours by car, because commuting with Hyperloop takes only 30 minutes.
7. Infrastructure/tunnel excavation: drilling company
On 20 16 12, Musk got stuck in a traffic jam, so Weibo said, "The traffic jam is driving me crazy! I want to build a tunnel excavator and start digging tunnels. " Less than 1 hour later, the project was officially named "The Boring Company". Two hours later, he tweeted again: "We really need to start digging tunnels." 2065438+In February 2007, Musk dug a "demonstration tunnel" in the parking lot of Space Exploration Technology Company. 2065438+March 2007, a photo appeared in Musk's Twitter account, a cap embroidered with "The Boring Company". The life of rich people is really boring. Setting up a boring company casually can also shock the world. Boring Company is building an underground tunnel network in Los Angeles. In the tunnel, the system will automatically transport cars through electric skateboards, with the fastest speed of 200 km/h. Musk once said that this underground tunnel network will have as many as 30 tunnels, which can transport cars and super trains. 2065438+In May 2009, the regulators in Las Vegas voted to approve a contract worth 48.6 million dollars, which was signed by the Boring company, an excavation company owned by Elon Musk, which will build a commercial tunnel in Las Vegas. This means that Musk's project has been officially recognized, just like NASA bought a rocket from Space Exploration Technologies. It is said that in July last year, Musk was still talking with the government of China about digging a tunnel.
8. artificial intelligence: OpenAI (the largest natural language processing)
The reason why Musk does artificial intelligence is quite strange. He was afraid that humans could not control artificial intelligence, so he went to be an artificial intelligence company. He is very worried about Google's artificial intelligence. He suggested that Google founder Larry Page give up the research on artificial intelligence, because he was very worried that artificial intelligence would get out of control and destroy mankind. But artificial intelligence is the core product of Google in the future, and it is impossible to give up. Therefore, Musk and other cattle people in Silicon Valley set up an artificial intelligence company, which is not profitable. Musk knows that if his Tesla car wants to develop driverless technology, it must rely on AI. He knows that space exploration technology company's Mars program will also need the assistance of AI, but he is also afraid that AI will get out of control. So the best way he can think of is to let everyone have the power of AI. He said: "I think the best way to prevent AI from being abused is to let as many people have AI as possible." "If everyone has AI, then no one or some people will have AI privileges."
9. Health care: Neuralink (brain-computer interface)
Neuralink is a neuroscience company, founded by Musk and eight other co-founders, responsible for developing implantable brain-computer interface technology. The company was founded on 20 17, and its headquarters is in San Francisco. Musk hopes that people can safely and painlessly implant brain-computer interface chips like minimally invasive eye surgery. The new "punch" uses a laser to drill holes in the skull to minimize damage. "Sewing machine" can implant a thread as thick as human hair 1/4 into the brain, while avoiding cerebral vessels. Neuralink said that it hopes to implant its system into the brains of paralyzed volunteers before the end of 2020. Musk has previously said that he hopes to test this "telepathic" device for healthy people within ten years. Simply put, Neuralink is to implant a chip in your brain, and you can control the machine through your mind. For example, I am typing and writing an article now. It is my mind that directs my hands to type. But if I embed this chip, I may think of something in my mind, so I don't need my hands to type on the keyboard. After the chip is connected to the computer, you can type directly on the computer as long as you think about the words to be input. They have done experiments on mice now, and the next step is to do human experiments.
Summary: This is Musk's business empire! It is undeniable that every company in Musk is of great significance to our future. As for how they will subvert the industry and change the world, only time can tell us the answer. There is often a thin line between a genius and a madman. Musk is an entrepreneur I admire abroad. Musk is leading mankind to a new world!