Elon Musk Quiz
Zip2, PayPal, SpaceX, Tesla, Neuralink and X: 15 questions on the companies behind the headlines.
In which country was Elon Musk born?
Got a hunch? Pick the answer that feels right.
South Africa
Musk was born in Pretoria, South Africa, on 28 June 1971 and left at 17 for Canada, where his mother Maye was born, before moving on to the United States for university.
He holds citizenship of all three countries: South African by birth, Canadian through his mother and American since 2002.
Which rocket company did Musk found in 2002?
Got a hunch? Pick the answer that feels right.
SpaceX
Musk founded Space Exploration Technologies in El Segundo, California, in 2002 with money from the PayPal sale, aiming to slash launch costs with reusable rockets and eventually reach Mars.
SpaceX's first three Falcon 1 launches all failed, and Musk has said a fourth failure in 2008 would have bankrupted the company.
Musk completed his roughly $44 billion takeover of which social network in October 2022?
Got a hunch? Pick the answer that feels right.
After months of legal wrangling over his attempt to walk away from the deal, Musk closed the Twitter purchase on 27 October 2022 at the original price of $54.20 a share, about $44 billion in total.
He arrived at Twitter headquarters carrying a kitchen sink and posted the video with the caption let that sink in.
Which online bank did Musk co-found in 1999, which merged with Confinity to become PayPal?
Got a hunch? Pick the answer that feels right.
X.com
X.com merged with Peter Thiel's Confinity in March 2000, was renamed PayPal in 2001 and was sold to eBay for $1.5 billion in 2002, netting Musk roughly $175 million as the largest shareholder.
Musk bought the X.com domain back from PayPal in 2017, and it now serves as the address of the social network formerly known as Twitter.
Musk's first company, an online city guide sold to Compaq in 1999 for about $307 million, had which name?
Got a hunch? Pick the answer that feels right.
Zip2
Zip2, founded in 1995 with his brother Kimbal, provided maps and business directories to newspapers such as the New York Times and Chicago Tribune before Compaq bought it in February 1999.
Musk received about $22 million from the sale and reportedly spent $1 million of it on a McLaren F1 supercar.
In which year was Twitter rebranded as X?
Got a hunch? Pick the answer that feels right.
2023
The bird logo was replaced by a white X in July 2023, months after Musk merged Twitter Inc. into a new company called X Corp, reviving a brand name he had first used for his 1999 online bank.
The twitter.com web address kept redirecting to the service until the full switch to x.com in May 2024.
The maiden Falcon Heavy flight in February 2018 sent what into orbit around the Sun?
Got a hunch? Pick the answer that feels right.
A Tesla Roadster
Musk's own 2010 Tesla Roadster served as the dummy payload, with a spacesuit-clad mannequin named Starman at the wheel and David Bowie's Space Oddity looping on the stereo.
Falcon Heavy's two side boosters landed back at Cape Canaveral side by side, one of the most replayed images of the launch.
Which Musk company, founded in 2016, develops brain implants that let people control computers with their thoughts?
Got a hunch? Pick the answer that feels right.
Neuralink
Neuralink builds brain-computer interfaces, and in January 2024 it placed its first implant in a human patient, Noland Arbaugh, who later demonstrated playing chess and video games by thought alone.
The implant is fitted by a surgical robot that threads electrodes thinner than a human hair into the brain.
The Boring Company's first public tunnel system, the Loop, opened in 2021 beneath the convention centre of which city?
Got a hunch? Pick the answer that feels right.
Las Vegas
The Las Vegas Convention Center Loop opened in 2021, with Tesla cars driven by company employees shuttling convention attendees between halls through twin tunnels under the site.
The company began as a Musk joke about Los Angeles traffic, and it raised early money by selling 20,000 flamethrowers at $500 each.
In May 2020 SpaceX became the first private company to send astronauts to the International Space Station, using which spacecraft?
Got a hunch? Pick the answer that feels right.
Crew Dragon
NASA astronauts Bob Behnken and Doug Hurley flew to the ISS on Crew Dragon in the Demo-2 mission on 30 May 2020, the first crewed orbital launch from US soil since the Space Shuttle retired in 2011.
SpaceX had first landed a Falcon 9 booster upright in December 2015, the breakthrough that made its launches far cheaper than those of rivals.
In December 2021 Tesla moved its corporate headquarters from Palo Alto, California, to which Texas city?
Got a hunch? Pick the answer that feels right.
Austin
Tesla relocated its headquarters to Gigafactory Texas, the giant plant it built just outside Austin, where the Model Y and the Cybertruck are assembled, a move Musk announced at the company's annual shareholder meeting in October 2021.
Tesla also moved its legal incorporation from Delaware to Texas in June 2024, a change approved by shareholders at its annual meeting.
At the 2019 unveiling of which Tesla vehicle did its supposedly unbreakable windows crack when a metal ball was thrown at them?
Got a hunch? Pick the answer that feels right.
Cybertruck
Designer Franz von Holzhausen threw a steel ball at the Cybertruck's Armor Glass on 21 November 2019 and cracked two windows live on stage, a moment that went viral worldwide.
Deliveries of the stainless steel pickup finally began in November 2023, four years after the reveal.
Grok, the chatbot launched in November 2023, is made by which Musk company?
Got a hunch? Pick the answer that feels right.
xAI
xAI was founded by Musk in July 2023 and released Grok that November, initially to X Premium subscribers, pitching it as a chatbot with a rebellious streak and live access to posts on X.
Grok's name comes from Robert A. Heinlein's 1961 novel Stranger in a Strange Land, where it means to understand something completely.
In 2016 Tesla paid about $2.6 billion in stock for which solar company, founded by Musk's cousins?
Got a hunch? Pick the answer that feels right.
SolarCity
SolarCity was started in 2006 by Lyndon and Peter Rive, Musk's cousins, with Musk as chairman, and the Tesla deal closed in November 2016 despite shareholder lawsuits over the conflict of interest.
The merged business became Tesla Energy, which also sells the Powerwall home battery and the Megapack grid-scale storage units.
Musk published his white paper proposing the Hyperloop, a high-speed pod travelling through a low-pressure tube, in which year?
Got a hunch? Pick the answer that feels right.
2013
The Hyperloop Alpha paper of August 2013 proposed pods travelling at up to 760 mph (1,220 km/h) between Los Angeles and San Francisco, and Musk open-sourced the idea for others to build.
The most prominent attempt, Virgin Hyperloop, carried its first and only human passengers in a 2020 test and shut down in December 2023.
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All Technology quizzes →About the Elon Musk Quiz
Elon Musk sold his first company to Compaq for $307 million before he turned 28, co-founded the bank that became PayPal, and then bet nearly all of it on rockets and electric cars. SpaceX went on to become the first private company to fly astronauts to the space station, while Tesla launched a Roadster into orbit around the Sun.
This quiz sticks to the business story: 15 questions on dates, deals and milestones across Zip2, X.com, SpaceX, Tesla, SolarCity, The Boring Company, Neuralink, xAI and the $44 billion Twitter takeover. Casual news readers will get the early questions, while the later ones reward anyone who follows the launches and product reveals closely.
You will find 15 multiple choice questions here, each with four options. Difficulty: Medium. Most people finish in about 6 minutes, and every answer comes with a short explanation and one extra fact worth keeping.
How to play
Read the question and pick one of the four answers. The correct answer is revealed straight away with a short explanation, then press Next question to keep going. At the end you get your score out of 15 and a full review of your round. Play again any time and the questions arrive in a fresh order. There is no timer and no account.
Good to know before you play
Which companies has Elon Musk founded?
He co-founded Zip2 and X.com, which became PayPal, then founded SpaceX in 2002, joined Tesla as an early investor and later CEO, and went on to start Neuralink, The Boring Company and xAI.
Did Elon Musk found Tesla?
No. Tesla was incorporated in 2003 by Martin Eberhard and Marc Tarpenning. Musk led its 2004 funding round, became chairman and took over as CEO in 2008, and is legally recognised as a co-founder.
When did Elon Musk buy Twitter?
He completed the purchase on 27 October 2022 for about $44 billion, and the platform was rebranded as X in July 2023.
Answer key: all 15 questions with explanations
- In which country was Elon Musk born?
South Africa Musk was born in Pretoria, South Africa, on 28 June 1971 and left at 17 for Canada, where his mother Maye was born, before moving on to the United States for university. He holds citizenship of all three countries: South African by birth, Canadian through his mother and American since 2002. - Which rocket company did Musk found in 2002?
SpaceX Musk founded Space Exploration Technologies in El Segundo, California, in 2002 with money from the PayPal sale, aiming to slash launch costs with reusable rockets and eventually reach Mars. SpaceX's first three Falcon 1 launches all failed, and Musk has said a fourth failure in 2008 would have bankrupted the company. - Musk completed his roughly $44 billion takeover of which social network in October 2022?
Twitter After months of legal wrangling over his attempt to walk away from the deal, Musk closed the Twitter purchase on 27 October 2022 at the original price of $54.20 a share, about $44 billion in total. He arrived at Twitter headquarters carrying a kitchen sink and posted the video with the caption let that sink in. - Which online bank did Musk co-found in 1999, which merged with Confinity to become PayPal?
X.com X.com merged with Peter Thiel's Confinity in March 2000, was renamed PayPal in 2001 and was sold to eBay for $1.5 billion in 2002, netting Musk roughly $175 million as the largest shareholder. Musk bought the X.com domain back from PayPal in 2017, and it now serves as the address of the social network formerly known as Twitter. - Musk's first company, an online city guide sold to Compaq in 1999 for about $307 million, had which name?
Zip2 Zip2, founded in 1995 with his brother Kimbal, provided maps and business directories to newspapers such as the New York Times and Chicago Tribune before Compaq bought it in February 1999. Musk received about $22 million from the sale and reportedly spent $1 million of it on a McLaren F1 supercar. - In which year was Twitter rebranded as X?
2023 The bird logo was replaced by a white X in July 2023, months after Musk merged Twitter Inc. into a new company called X Corp, reviving a brand name he had first used for his 1999 online bank. The twitter.com web address kept redirecting to the service until the full switch to x.com in May 2024. - The maiden Falcon Heavy flight in February 2018 sent what into orbit around the Sun?
A Tesla Roadster Musk's own 2010 Tesla Roadster served as the dummy payload, with a spacesuit-clad mannequin named Starman at the wheel and David Bowie's Space Oddity looping on the stereo. Falcon Heavy's two side boosters landed back at Cape Canaveral side by side, one of the most replayed images of the launch. - Which Musk company, founded in 2016, develops brain implants that let people control computers with their thoughts?
Neuralink Neuralink builds brain-computer interfaces, and in January 2024 it placed its first implant in a human patient, Noland Arbaugh, who later demonstrated playing chess and video games by thought alone. The implant is fitted by a surgical robot that threads electrodes thinner than a human hair into the brain. - The Boring Company's first public tunnel system, the Loop, opened in 2021 beneath the convention centre of which city?
Las Vegas The Las Vegas Convention Center Loop opened in 2021, with Tesla cars driven by company employees shuttling convention attendees between halls through twin tunnels under the site. The company began as a Musk joke about Los Angeles traffic, and it raised early money by selling 20,000 flamethrowers at $500 each. - In May 2020 SpaceX became the first private company to send astronauts to the International Space Station, using which spacecraft?
Crew Dragon NASA astronauts Bob Behnken and Doug Hurley flew to the ISS on Crew Dragon in the Demo-2 mission on 30 May 2020, the first crewed orbital launch from US soil since the Space Shuttle retired in 2011. SpaceX had first landed a Falcon 9 booster upright in December 2015, the breakthrough that made its launches far cheaper than those of rivals. - In December 2021 Tesla moved its corporate headquarters from Palo Alto, California, to which Texas city?
Austin Tesla relocated its headquarters to Gigafactory Texas, the giant plant it built just outside Austin, where the Model Y and the Cybertruck are assembled, a move Musk announced at the company's annual shareholder meeting in October 2021. Tesla also moved its legal incorporation from Delaware to Texas in June 2024, a change approved by shareholders at its annual meeting. - At the 2019 unveiling of which Tesla vehicle did its supposedly unbreakable windows crack when a metal ball was thrown at them?
Cybertruck Designer Franz von Holzhausen threw a steel ball at the Cybertruck's Armor Glass on 21 November 2019 and cracked two windows live on stage, a moment that went viral worldwide. Deliveries of the stainless steel pickup finally began in November 2023, four years after the reveal. - Grok, the chatbot launched in November 2023, is made by which Musk company?
xAI xAI was founded by Musk in July 2023 and released Grok that November, initially to X Premium subscribers, pitching it as a chatbot with a rebellious streak and live access to posts on X. Grok's name comes from Robert A. Heinlein's 1961 novel Stranger in a Strange Land, where it means to understand something completely. - In 2016 Tesla paid about $2.6 billion in stock for which solar company, founded by Musk's cousins?
SolarCity SolarCity was started in 2006 by Lyndon and Peter Rive, Musk's cousins, with Musk as chairman, and the Tesla deal closed in November 2016 despite shareholder lawsuits over the conflict of interest. The merged business became Tesla Energy, which also sells the Powerwall home battery and the Megapack grid-scale storage units. - Musk published his white paper proposing the Hyperloop, a high-speed pod travelling through a low-pressure tube, in which year?
2013 The Hyperloop Alpha paper of August 2013 proposed pods travelling at up to 760 mph (1,220 km/h) between Los Angeles and San Francisco, and Musk open-sourced the idea for others to build. The most prominent attempt, Virgin Hyperloop, carried its first and only human passengers in a 2020 test and shut down in December 2023.
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