Elon Musk has been named Time‘s 2021 Person of the Year.
Musk, the richest person on Earth, is the CEO of the aerospace company SpaceX and electronic car company Tesla.
“I admire anyone who is making a positive contribution to humanity, whether that is in entertainment or technology,” Musk told Time. “I think anyone who is doing things that are really useful for the rest of humanity, I admire them greatly.”
Time editor-in-chief Edward Felsenthal described Musk as “a person with extraordinary influence on life on Earth, and potentially life off earth too.”
Time gives the title to the person it sees as having the most influence during the past year. It has described the title as going to “the person or persons who most affected the news and our lives, for good or ill, and embodied what was important about the year, for better or for worse.”
Last year, Time gave the title to President Biden and Vice President Harris, several weeks after their electoral victory. Other recent winners include climate activist Greta Thunberg, and Jamal Khashoggi and a group of journalists collectively called “the guardians.”
