How Elon Musk changed the world

He's created two of the world's most disruptive tech companies and is tearing up Twitter. James O'Malley talks to the people who have worked with Elon Musk to find out what makes him tick

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On 26 October 2022, if you'd been inside the Twitter HQ on San Francisco's Market Street, you might have witnessed the world's richest man trying slightly too hard to be funny.

"Let that sink in," tweeted Elon Musk, as he posted a video of himself carrying a bathroom sink into the company's reception area. His $44bn acquisition of the social media platform was complete. Musk was now CEO and his new mission was to remake the company in his own image.

So began a tumultuous period for the company, one that's still ongoing.

Musk has earned himself a place as the platform's "main character" as he upended many of its functions and features, leading to reports of a chaotic atmosphere behind the scenes.

Yet the chaos that has been wreaked upon Twitter contrasts sharply with the undoubted success that Musk has delivered at companies such as SpaceX and Tesla, both enormous disrupters rather than disruptions.

So, who is the real Elon Musk? The pioneering genius behind industry-defining companies or the monstrous ego with a social media firm in his pocket? We've spoken to people who have worked with him to find out.

The Grand Vision

"He can't conceive a failure," said Jim Cantrell, SpaceX co-founder and author of Breaking the Rules: The Inside Story of the New Space Race. How bulletproof is Musk's confidence? Well, Cantrell once travelled with him to Moscow in an attempt to buy an intercontinental ballistic missile.

"It doesn't mean he can't see that things will go wrong, but he's so supremely confident that failure of the enterprise that he's engaged in is never something that ever keeps him awake at night," says Cantrell.