Elon Musk named Time's 2021 Person of the Year

Elon Musk has been named Time magazine's "Person of the Year" title for 2021, adding the billionaire's name to the tradition which began in 1927.

According to Time, "The Person of the Year" signifies somebody "who affected the news or our lives the most, for better, or worse."

2021 saw Musk's electric car company Tesla become the most valuable carmaker in the world, and his rocket company SpaceX soar to the edge of space with an all-civilian crew.

"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.

"Even Elon Musk's spacefaring adventures are a direct line from the very first Person of the Year, Charles Lindbergh, whom the editors selected in 1927 to commemorate his historic first solo transatlantic airplane flight over the Atlantic."

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Dominating headlines

Tesla Chief Executive Officer Musk is also the founder and CEO of SpaceX, and leads brain-chip startup Neuralink and infrastructure firm The Boring Company.

Tesla's market value soared to more than $1 trillion this year, making it more valuable than Ford Motor and General Motors combined.

Tesla produces hundreds of thousand of cars every year and has managed to avert supply chain issues better than most rivals, while pushing many young consumers to switch to electric cars and legacy automakers.

From hosting Saturday Night Live to dropping tweets on cryptocurrencies and meme stocks that have triggered massive movements in their value, Musk has dominated the headlines.

The billionaire, who has amassed over 66 million followers on Twitter, has also attracted regulatory scrutiny in the past with some of his tweets.

Last year, US President-elect Joe Biden and Vice President-elect Kamala Harris were jointly given the "Person of the Year" title.

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg and Amazon founder Jeff Bezos have also received the title in the past.

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