Elon Musk: How many children does the Tesla CEO have?
Elon Musk is now a father of 12 after quietly welcoming his third child with Neuralink executive Shivon Zilis
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In addition to his ever-growing business portfolio, Elon Musk has continued to grow his family.
The Tesla founder, 52, confirmed the arrival of baby number 12 in a statement to Page Six on June 23. According to the outlet, he and 38-year-old Neuralink executive, Shivon Zilis, welcomed their third child together earlier this year. However, Musk quipped that the new addition was far from “secret”.
“As for ‘secretly fathered,’ that is also false,” he told Page Six. “All our friends and family know. Failure to issue a press release, which would be bizarre, does not mean ‘secret.’”
The name and sex of the new baby have not been publicly revealed.
This marks the entrepreneur’s third child with Zilis, who works as Musk’s director of operations and special projects at the neurotechnology firm. In July 2022, it was reported that the pair – who are not in a romantic relationship – secretly welcomed twins in November 2021 via in vitro fertilization (IVF). The children were born weeks before the billionaire welcomed his second child with his on-again off-again partner, Grimes.
Musk’s biographer, author Walter Isaacson, later revealed that the pair named their now two-year-old twins Strider and Azure. Not only did Isaacson reveal the twins’ names in his biography Elon Musk, published in September 2023, but he also confirmed that the SpaceX founder welcomed a third child with Canadian musician Grimes.
His son, named Techno Mechanius, reportedly goes by Tau. At the time, the baby marked Musk’s tenth child with three women. Musk and Grimes – real name Claire Boucher – welcomed their first child, a boy named X Æ A-Xii or X, in 2020. In March 2022, the “Oblivion” singer accidentally revealed the birth of their second child – a girl named Exa Dark Sideræl Musk, nicknamed Y – in an interview with Vanity Fair. The outlet confirmed their daughter was born in December 2021.
Grimes and Musk dated on-and-off from 2018 to 2022. in September 2021, Musk told Page Six that they were “semi-separated”. Meanwhile, she described her relationship with the businessman to Vanity Fair as “very fluid”. However, when the article was published, Grimes tweeted that she and Musk had “broken up again” since the interview, but that the tech mogul continues to be “my best friend and the love of my life”.
Musk has been married twice before. He met his first wife, Canadian author Justine Wilson, while the pair were studying at Queen’s University in Ontario, Canada. Musk and Wilson tied the knot in 2000 and welcomed their first child, Nevada Alexander Musk, two years later. Tragically, their first-born died of Sudden Infant Death Syndrome (SIDS) when he was 10 weeks old.
Wilson and Musk went on to have a set of twins in 2004, and triplets in 2006. They separated in 2008 after eight years of marriage. In a 2012 op-ed for Marie Claire, Wilson said she felt like “a starter wife” during her marriage to Musk. She wrote Musk “was constantly remarking on the ways he found me lacking”.
In April 2022, one of Musk’s now 20-year-old twins came out as transgender when she filed a request to change her name and gender identity, as she no longer wished “to be related to my biological father in any way, shape or form”. According to a TMZ report, Musk’s daughter has changed her name to Vivian Jenna Wilson, taking on her mother’s maiden name.
At the time, Wilson said she was “proud” of her daughter Vivian for making the decision to cut ties with Musk.
In 2010, Musk married Talulah Riley – the British actor and author who appeared in 2005’s Pride and Prejudice. Riley played the role of the Bennet family’s middle child, Mary.
Riley, who recently tied the knot with Love Actually star Thomas Brodie-Sangster, was married to Musk twice – first from 2010 to 2012 and a second time from 2013 to 2016. In an interview with The Independent, Riley said of the pair’s decision to remarry: “Obviously I understand it looks strange. But that logic made sense at the time.”
The former couple have no children together.
As for whether he plans on adding more to his brood, Musk has never shied away from making comments about procreation and population decline. In August 2022, the X owner tweeted that “population collapse due to low birth rates is a much bigger risk to civilization than global warming.”
In July 2022, Musk echoed a similar sentiment about declining birth rates after news broke that he secretly fathered twins with Zilis.
“Doing my best to help the underpopulation crisis. A collapsing birth rate is the biggest danger civilization faces by far,” he tweeted, making light of the reports. “I hope you have big families and congrats to those who already do!”
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