'I'm an alien': Musk says in response to question from Cred founder Kunal Shah

Tesla CEO Elon Musk said he is an ''alien'' in response to fintech startup Cred Kunal Shah's question regarding how he is running more than four $500-billion companies simultaneously at a relatively young age.

"What I want to really understand how does he do it? How does he manage context switching? How does he design his Org," Shah asked.

In response, the silicon valley billionaire tweeted: "I'm an alien."

The banter between Musk and Shah triggered a slew of memes, with many laughing about the world’s “Worst kept secret.”

With social media prognostications about Bitcoin or GameStop, Elon Musk has ventured further away from his own businesses and become more like a Wall Street heavyweight who can move markets with just a few words.

Musk, who last month became the richest man in the world on paper thanks to a Tesla stock market boom, has nearly 45 million followers on Twitter.

Swept on by the success of his companies Tesla and SpaceX, as well as by interest in the electric cars and rockets they manufacture, he is considered by many fans to be a visionary, his slightest word enough to sway some investors. 

When he changed his Twitter profile to read simply "#bitcoin" on Friday, the cryptocurrency's price temporarily skyrocketed by around 20 per cent.

And the mere mention of the Polish publisher of video game CD Projekt, or the e-commerce platform Shopify or the craft market Etsy -- which apparently delighted Musk with a hand-knitted hat for his dog, caused their stocks to soar.

The business giant, who has expressed his contempt for investors betting on a decline in a company's shares, waded in on the GameStop affair by tweeting a link to the Reddit group WallStreetBets, which helped stock of the video game specialist take off.