Wu was born in Ann Arbor, Michigan. His parents were born in Taipei, Taiwan and moved to the United States in their 20s. He is based in Los Angeles. He started to play music at an early age and taught himself to play guitar and was trained to play classical piano. He majored in economics at Harvard University. In 2011, he graduated and wanted to involve himself in the music industry as an acoustic singer-songwriter before he moved on to electronic dance music. Wu began using "Elephante" as a stage name because it was a reference to the phrase "elephant in the room" which he described as his unhappiness of working at a corporate job since he wanted to be a musician.
Wu started his career by remixing music for artists before began releasing original songs. His first single was self-released, titled "Temporary Love" which features the vocals of Brooke Forman. He released his first single through Armada Records titled "I Want You" featuring Rumors. He opened for headliners Deorro and MAKJ at the 2015 Echostage in June.
In 2016, he released his debut extended play titled "I Am the Elephante". The EP consists of nine songs of progressive house, synthpop and trap. He released a single titled "Age of Innocence" featuring Trouze and Damon Sharpe which was noted by an article writer to be very similar to Zedd's song "Clarity" listing key, tempo, and other common edm themes widely used". The song peaked on Billboard's Dance/Club chart at 18th and received over a million plays on Spotify. His single "Closer" featuring Bishop had peaked on the Spotify 'Viral 50' chart at 27th. Spotify 'Velocity' has "Closer" and another single titled "Plans" featuring Brandyn Burnette charted at 22nd and 28th respectively. The third single "Hold" from the EP was released, it features American singer Jessica Jarrell.
2018 - present: ''Glass Mansion''
On 15 June 2018, Wu released his second EP, titled Glass Mansion. The nine-track extended play includes the previously released singles "Troubled", "Come Back for You", "The In Between" and "Have It All". The EP reached number one on iTunes in the US Dance album category. Compared to his previous release, Wu takes a stripped-back approach on this extended play, with songs featuring more light guitar melodies than electronic instrumentals. Describing the EP on Twitter, Elephante said it is about "realizing that no matter how beautiful and strong what we build is, it's ultimately fragile and one stone could bring it all down. It's about coming to peace with the fact that it all might never be finished, and that's okay. It's about realizing that our Glass Mansion isn't the answer to all our problems, and it's about the journey of finding grace and happiness in a half-built home." On October 2019, he announced a live tour titled the "Diamond Days Tour", which is based on his single of the same name and dubbed the "natural evolution" of his evolving live shows.
