Elon Musk on Rolling Stone
Elon Musk graces the cover of the new issue of Rolling Stone magazine. (Mark Seliger Photo for Rolling Stone)

Elon Musk may know how to get to Mars with SpaceX, and how to revolutionize the transportation industry with Tesla and the Hyperloop, but he’s still trying to figure out how to find true love.

“It’s so hard for me to even meet people,” the 46-year-old billionaire tells the Rolling Stone’s Neil Strauss during a surprisingly candid interview. “I’m looking for a long-term relationship. I’m not looking for a one-night stand. I’m looking for a serious companion or soulmate, that kind of thing.”

During another interview with Strauss, Musk teared up as he discussed his troubled childhood relationship with his father. “I can’t remember the last time I cried,” he says.

Musk has been profiled dozens of times before, but his softer side is on full display in the profile published online today.

Sure, there’s the hard-ass side as well. For example, he excoriates the Wall Street traders who seek to short his stock. “They’re jerks who want us to die,” Musk says. “They’re constantly trying to make up false rumors and amplify any negative rumors.”

When Musk discusses his concerns about AI, he manages to slip in an indirect dig at Amazon and other online giants for collecting gobs of data about their users.

“Between Facebook, Google and Amazon – and arguably Apple, but they seem to care about privacy – they have more information about you than you can remember,” Musk says. “There’s a lot of risk in concentration of power.”

And there’s a bit of veil-lifting. Strauss was given an advance look at Tesla’s Semi, the all-electric truck that Musk is due to unveil on Thursday. But before the reporter got a peek, his smartphone and recorder were taken away and he was given only pen and paper — plus a warning that he’d face imprisonment if he said too much about the truck.

The closest that Strauss comes to spilling the beans is to refer to “a driver-comfort feature that cannot be specified here, due to said threatened jail time.”

In the course of the profile, we learn that in the wake of his breakup with actress Amber Heard, Musk has found a modicum of comfort in the person of Talulah Riley, the English actress whom Musk has married, divorced, remarried and re-divorced.

Musk must have been pleased with the way the Rolling Stone interview turned out: He retweeted the magazine’s link to the story today.

Read the full Rolling Stone interview

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