Tesla owner Elon Musk, who already shares two children with Canadian singer Grimes and another five children with his ex-wife, the Canadian author Justine Wilson, has reportedly fathered twins in November 2021 with one of his executives named Shivon Zilis. In April 2022, Musk and Zilis filed a petition to change the name of the twins to “have their father’s last name” and contain their mother’s last name as part of their middle name,” TechCrunch reported, citing court documents.
As per the reports, the twins were born a few weeks before Elon Musk and Grimes had their second child via surrogacy. Zilis reportedly first met Musk in 2016 as a director at OpenAI, where she is now the youngest member on its board of directors.
In 2020, Zilis posted a tweet defending Musk on his decision to move Tesla out of California over COVID-19 restrictions. When California State Assembly member, Lorena Gonzalez Fletcher, had tweeted ‘F**k Elon Musk’, Zilis responded by tweeting “This makes me sad. No one’s perfect but I’ve never met anyone who goes through more personal pain to fight for an inspiring future for humanity – and has done so tirelessly for decades. Everyone’s entitled to their opinion but mine is that there’s no one I respect and admire more.”
The news of the twins’ arrival brings Musk’s total count of children to nine. Soon after the news went viral, netizens were amused. A user wrote, “The richest man on Earth can’t afford a condom. #ElonMusk.” Another said, “#ElonMusk seems very concerned about fertility rates on this planet when there are 7.96 billion ppl and counting rn. Guess he’s secretly doing his part? Or maybe it’s a conspiracy to secretly populate Mars with his secret children.”
Zilis, a Yale graduate, joined Neuralink in 2017, according to her LinkedIn page. She’s also a fellow at the Creative Destruction Lab, which she describes as a machine learning incubator at the University of Toronto in her bio, and serves on the board of the Vector Institute for Artificial Intelligence and Alberta Machine Intelligence Institute.
Musk had six children with Canadian author Justine Wilson, who was married to Musk from 2000 to 2008. Their first child died of Sudden Infant Death Syndrome, or SIDS, when he was 10 weeks old, Wilson wrote in a Marie Claire article. The couple then had twins followed by triplets.
Earlier this year, one of the twins petitioned to legally change their name and gender to Vivian Jenna Wilson, a request that was granted, with Vivian stating in court papers that she “no longer live[s] with or wish to be related to my biological father in any way, shape or form.”
Musk also has two children with musician Grimes. The first, a boy named X Æ A-12, was born in March 2020, while their second was born in December, just weeks after his twins with Zilis were born.