In what’s sure to be a controversial move Time Magazine has announced Elon Musk is 2021’s Person of the Year. It has been a banner year for the CEO of Tesla and SpaceX, whose exploding fortune also saw him attain the title of the world’s richest man.
The entrepreneur, who also leads brain-chip startup Neuralink and infrastructure firm The Boring Company, recently sold all his mansions and most of his possessions to fund a colony on Mars.
The billionaire has been living in a modest $50 thousand house in south Texas for the past two years after finally selling his last mansion for $30 million earlier this year.
"Person of the Year is a marker of influence, and few individuals have had more influence than Musk on life on Earth, and potentially life off Earth too," Time editor-in-chief Edward Felsenthal wrote. "In 2021, Musk emerged not just as the world's richest person but also as perhaps the richest example of a massive shift in our society."
Time cited the massive reach of Musk’s endeavors, from his founding of SpaceX in 2002 to his work at Tesla, the most valuable car company in the world.
The popularity and success of Tesla has pushed many young consumers to switch to electric cars. The influence of the automaker has resulted in legacy automakers shifting focus to EV vehicles.
His other SpaceX has had a banner, launching a crew of only tourists into Earth’s orbit for the first time.
"For creating solutions to an existential crisis, for embodying the possibilities and the perils of the age of tech titans, for driving society's most daring and disruptive transformations, Elon Musk is TIME's 2021 Person of the Year," the magazine's editor-in-chief, Edward Felsenthal, said.
Musk has dominated the headlines this year and remains a controversial figure. The visionary usually sends out a barrage of tweets to his 66 million followers, from offensive jokes to moving crypto markets, to selling billions in Tesla stock after conducting a poll on the platform.
Musk also used the platform to thank Time for their choice.
Time also published an interview with the visionary featuring a comprehensive overview of the good and not-so-good deeds Musk has done this year.
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