Tesla founder Elon Musk , is a firm believer that population collapse is a bigger threat to the planet than global warming and he is actively working to address the crisis.
Throughout his life, the 52-year-old South African billionire has become the father of eleven children from three different mothers. He had six children with his first wife, Justine Wilson, whom he divorced in 2008. He shares three children with his on-again/off-again girlfriend, Canadian musician Grimes, and twins with his employee, Shivon Zilis.
A recent biography unveils that Musk and Grimes welcomed a son in secret, marking his eleventh child. They named him Techno Mechanicus, affectionately calling him Tao.
Tau’s age was not disclosed. The revelation came soon after Grimes pleaded with Musk, writing ‘let me see my son’ in now-deleted social media post but it’s unclear now whether she was referring to Tau, or their older son X.
Musk’s family dramas have long been played out in public. In 2022, his daughter, Vivian changed her name from Xavier and stated that she wanted nothing to do with her father. Musk for his part, blamed that on her liberal college. For the most part, his other children seem to a big part of his life.
While studying at Queen’s University in Ontario, Elon Musk met his first wife, Justine Wilson. The couple tied the knot in 2000. According to Wilson’s account in Ashlee Vance’s biography of Musk, he expressed an early desire to marry and start a family.
Their first child, Nevada, was born in 2002. Tragically, at just ten weeks old, Nevada Alexander Musk passed away due to sudden infant death syndrome.
In 2004, Wilson gave birth to twins, Xavier and Griffin, followed by triplets, Kai, Saxon, and Damian, in 2006.
Following their divorce in 2008, Musk and Wilson agreed to share custody of their children. In a 2010 essay for Marie Claire, Wilson revealed feeling more like an “employee” than a partner in her relationship with Musk.
The loss of their son, Nevada Alexander, in 2002 was a profound tragedy for Elon Musk and his first wife, Justine.
Following the end of his relationship with Wilson, Elon Musk married British actress Talulah Riley. In a 2009 interview with the New Yorker, Musk disclosed their plans to have children, citing a desire to prevent a future devoid of literacy, plagued by theocratic ideologies and lacking enlightenment.
Musk also advocated for his female employees to have an average of 2.1 children per woman, as reported in the feature. In a 2012 Esquire feature, Wilson referred to all of their children as autistic.
In 2018, it came to light that Musk’s children were being educated at Ad Astra, an experimental school located at his SpaceX headquarters in Hawthorne, California. Founded in 2014, Ad Astra caters to a highly selective group of students, including Musk’s children and the offspring of several SpaceX employees.
In 2022, Xavier legally changed her name to Vivian and transitioned genders, expressing a desire to sever ties with her biological father completely.
In 2020, Grimes, also known as Claire Boucher and aged 35 at the time, gave birth to her and Elon Musk’s first child together, named X Æ A-12.
Musk explained the unique name, attributing the X to representing the ‘unknown variable,’ the Æ to his interpretation of the ‘Elven spelling of Ai,’ and the A-12 as a nod to an aircraft.
During a memorable appearance on The Joe Rogan Experience, Musk clarified that the Æ is pronounced as ‘Ash,’ and he affectionately refers to his child as X. He noted that Grimes was primarily responsible for selecting the name, with his contribution being the A-12.
However, California law required the child’s birth to be officially registered as X Æ A-Xii.
In 2021, another addition to the family arrived, a daughter named Exa Dark Sideræl Musk. Her existence became known during a Vanity Fair interview with Grimes when she began crying. Born via surrogate, she is known as Y and her name is pronounced as ‘sigh-deer-ee-el.’
In September 2023, it was disclosed that the couple had welcomed another child named Tao, who was born sometime in 2022.
After news of Tao’s existence surfaced, Grimes tweeted, “I wish I could show u how cute little Techno is, but my priority rn is keeping my babies out of the public eye. Plz respect that at this time.”
In a 2022 interview with Vanity Fair, Grimes revealed that she and Musk aimed to have ‘three or four’ children, despite acknowledging that they were no longer in a romantic relationship. She described their dynamic as fluid, referring to Musk as her boyfriend but emphasizing that they lived separately. Grimes explained, “We’re best friends. We see each other all the time… We just have our own thing going on, and I don’t expect other people to understand it.”
Recently, in a tweet, Grimes expressed her frustration, stating, “I have never been allowed to see a photo of these children until this moment, despite the situation utterly ripping my family apart.”
The couple initially began their relationship in 2018.
Shortly before the birth of his child, Exa, Musk had twins, Strider and Azure, with one of his Neuralink employees Shivon Zilis.
‘Musk didn’t tell Grimes that he had just had twins with one of his employees,’ according to the new biography. Grimes was left ‘outraged’ by the news, the book says.
Zillis is the director operations and special projects for Neuralink and was considered one of those that Musk may have nominated to run Twitter.
A Texas judge allowed the parents to change the twins’ names so that they could ‘have their father’s last name and contain their mother’s last name as part of their middle name.’
Zilis, who was born in Ontario, Canada, met Musk through OpenAI, the artificial-intelligence research-and-deployment nonprofit Musk cofounded in 2015, Insider reported.
She studied economics and philosophy at Yale where she also played goalie on the women’s ice-hockey team.
The new book goes on to describe Zilis as Musk’s ‘intellectual companion on artificial intelligence since the founding of OpenAI eight years earlier.’
Zilis is quoted in the new book as saying that Musk ‘really wants smart people to have kids’ adding that he sought to be her sperm donor so that the ‘kids would be genetically his.’
The new book, simply titled Elon Musk, hits shelves on September 12th. Alongside delving into the billionaire’s family life, it also sheds light on his involvement in the Russia-Ukraine conflict.
Having shadowed Musk for two years, Isaacson immersed himself in Musk’s world, attending meetings, touring factories, and conducting extensive interviews with him, his family, friends, colleagues, and opponents.
It remains uncertain whether Musk’s views on the population crisis are addressed in the book. In a 2022 tweet, Musk asserted, “Population collapse due to low birth rates is a much bigger risk to civilization than global warming. Mark these words,” and has encouraged others to follow suit and expand their families.
A review of the book by The New York Times suggests that Musk’s personal life takes a backseat in the narrative, with a focus primarily on his business endeavors.