THE THOMAS EDISON OF THE TECH ERA

ELON MUSK — FOUNDER, TESLA, SPACEX

There are at least two faces of Musk. One is the headline-grabbing rebel-without-cause whose tasteless joke-tweets have drawn the ire of financial regulators, goaded Senator Bernie Sanders about tax policy (“I keep forgetting you’re still alive”) and compared outgoing Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey to a victim of a Stalinist purge.

All that noise obscures the other side of Musk—the one who is arguably the most prolific and disruptive technologist of the 21st century. At 50, Musk has racked up an impressive string of firsts or near-firsts. He’s had a hand in building a pioneering digital payment system (Paypal), a reusable rocket (Spacex) that carries astronauts and supplies for NASA and tourists, and a car company (Tesla) that has played an outsized role in bringing electric vehicles and battery technology for renewable energy into the mainstream. Even bolder ventures are in progress: artificial-intelligence enhancements to the human brain (Neuralink) and high-speed mass-transit tunnels for large cities (The Boring Company and Hyperloop). And he wants to send people to Mars.

Musk draws comparisons to Thomas Edison, who had a similarly broad impact and difficult personality. Whereas Edison was by nature an inventor, Musk is more of an impresario, assembling the technical, business and investing talent he needs in service of a grand engineer’s vision.