Billionaire jack-of-all-trades Elon Musk announced last week that residential solar panel company SolarCity would be acquiring high-quality solar panel manufacturer Silevo in a move that involves the creation of one of the largest solar panel factories in the world.

"Our intent is to combine what we believe is fundamentally the best photovoltaic technology with massive economies of scale to achieve a breakthrough in the cost of solar power," reads a SolarCity blog post penned by Musk and SolarCity co-founders Peter Rive and Lyndon Rive.

"Although no other acquisitions are currently being contemplated, SolarCity may acquire additional photovoltaics companies as needed to ensure clear technology leadership and we plan to grow internal engineering significantly."

SolarCity will be expanding an existing Silevo manufacturing plant in Buffalo, New York, giving the company a better foothold on the eastern seaboard. New York Governor Andrew Cuomo called the deal a "landmark investment and economic game-changer taking place in the new western New York."

The acquisition highlights Musk's growing aggressiveness and "empire state of mind," as New York Magazine writer Kevin Roose puts it. In a day and age when software and digitizing services has made being the middleman lucrative, Musk is putting the cogs in place for a factory mindset -- one where it's thought of, built in, and sold from the same room.

"Musk used to be known primarily as an inventor. But these days, he's in his empire-building phase, taking on the less flashy work of building the infrastructure required to support all his crazy inventions at scale," reads Roose's article.

It's not just SolarCity Musk is attempting this new form of tycoonism with. In fact, his dreams do not end on planet Earth. Musk is aiming for for the stars and beyond.

"I'm hopeful that the first people could be taken to Mars in 10 to 12 years, I think it's certainly possible for that to occur," he said to CNBC. "But the thing that matters long term is to have a self-sustaining city on Mars, to make life multiplanetary."

Musk has been funding his space enthusiasm with a company known as SpaceX, which became the first private contractor to deliver supplies to the International Space Station (ISS). Musk hopes to expand on its billion-dollar success by launching the Dragon V2 spacecraft in 2016 to carry astronauts to the ISS.

And then there's Tesla. What has arguably been the most disruptive electric car of all time -- thanks in no small part to the headline-grabbing news the car has made -- is Musk's entry into everyday consumer life. Not everybody is into solar panels or interplanetary space travel, but cars are dinner table conversation. Musk has opened up his patents to competitors in hopes that other manufacturers will implement the green energy-saving measures dreamt up in Tesla's labs and the entrepreneur is planning on building a "gigafactory" to mass produce the necessary batteries. Whether it catches on or not is a different story, but Musk's actions are clear: he won't wait around for somebody else to build his parts.

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