Elon Musk has created an empire as the cofounder of SpaceX and Tesla. The son of Maye Musk and Errol Musk, Elon’s startups have grown to become multi-billion-dollar titans. But the entrepreneur from South Africa has also made headlines for his love life over the years.
Keep scrolling to learn more about Musk’s former partners:
Justine Musk
Elon’s first spouse, Justine Musk, née Jennifer Justine Wilson, is a Canadian author. The pair met as students attending Queen’s University in Ontario, Canada.
In 2010, the author penned an essay in Marie Claire, recounting her experience in the seven-year marriage with her now ex-husband.
Justine recalled that the future billionaire appeared in front of her as she was heading to her dorm, but the “clean-cut, upper-class boy with a South African accent” just wasn’t her type.
Elon invited her out for ice cream. She accepted but later stood him up with a note on her dorm room door, opting to study instead. But he was persistent, showing up at the student center with “two chocolate-chip ice cream cones dripping down his hands.”
Justine would later write that the future Tesla CEO was “not a man who takes no for an answer.”
Years went by and the two remained friendly but never serious. She told her sister that if Elon ever called her again, she would go for it: “I might have missed something there,” she wrote in her Marie Claire essay. Elon called one week later.
The two married in 2000, but tragedy struck when their first son, Nevada Alexander, died in 2002 of Sudden Infant Death Syndrome (SIDS) at just 10 weeks old.
Justine and Elon continued to build their family, with twins Griffin and Vivian arriving in 2004, and triplets in 2006— Kai, Saxon, and Damian.
The marriage collapsed in spring 2008.
Talulah Riley
Actress Talulah Riley is best known for her work in movies, having appeared in films including Pride & Prejudice and Thor: The Dark World. She is also a novelist.
The actress was engaged to the engineer within six weeks of his filing for divorce from his first wife, Justine. In 2010, the Inception actress and SpaceX CEO tied the knot.
Justine revealed to Marie Clarie that she and Riley got along really well. She even sent her ex-husband’s new love an email that stated, “I would rather live out the French-movie version of things, in which the two women become friends and various philosophies are pondered.”
While the marriage eventually dissolved two years after it began, it took a couple of attempts to end it finally. Musk filed for divorce … the first time.
They later reconciled and remarried in 2013.
However, on March 21, 2016, Riley filed for divorce. She cited irreconcilable differences as the reason and sought spousal support. Before the filing, she and The Boring Company founder had been living apart for six months.
The breakup was reportedly amicable.
Amber Heard
Amber Heard’s name was splashed across countless trending headlines in the spring of 2022 thanks to her highly publicized defamation case opposite ex-husband Johnny Depp.
And in all that coverage, the Tesla CEO was brought up a fair amount as he and Heard became an item when she was fresh off her divorce from the Pirates of the Caribbean star.
Their friendship began on the set of the 2013 film Machete Kills. While Musk didn’t have a scene with her, he was smitten with the actress and reportedly began sending emails to the film’s director, Robert Rodriguez, among others, asking them to set up a meeting between him and the actress, according to The Hollywood Reporter.
The filmmaker and others worked to set up a dinner, but the actress was a no-show, still dating Depp at the time. Eventually, the two became friendly.
In August 2017, they announced their split. The reason? Intense and incompatible schedules.
In February 2018, they decided to give it another go. But another month later, they confirmed it was over for good.
In August of that year, they told Us Weekly that they wanted to speak for themselves, explaining that distance negatively affected their relationship.
The Aquaman actress described her relationship with the mogul as “beautiful” and said they subsequently had a “beautiful friendship” that was based on their “core values” of intellectual curiosity, ideas, and conversation, along with a shared love for science.
Fast-forward to the Rum Diary actress’ intense defamation trial with Depp. Her former agent, Christian Carino, testified Heard confided to him that she was just “just filling space” by dating the business magnate.
Grimes
Grimes, a Canadian musician (born Claire Boucher), began dating Musk in April 2018. They made their public debut at the Met Gala.
Less than two years later, in January 2020, she announced her pregnancy through an Instagram post. Baby boy X Æ A-12 was born in May 2020.
The “Shinigami Eyes” singer explained the origins of the name through social media, defining “X” as “the unknown variable.”
Not long after his birth, the musician and her entrepreneur partner changed their son’s name to something just as unique: X Æ A-XII. This was done to abide by a California law that doesn’t allow numerals in names.
Three years after the romance began, Musk announced he and Grimes were “semi-separated” but still loved each other and were on “great terms.”
In March 2022, rumors were flying that Musk was dating Australian actress Natasha Bassett, but Grimes had told Vanity Fair she considered the PayPal cofounder her boyfriend. She clarified they were “very fluid” and living in separate houses.
She added that she didn’t expect “other people to understand it.”
In December 2021, the Indie-Pop singer and billionaire quietly welcomed a second child via surrogate. A baby girl named Exa Dark Sideræl Musk.
But after the story was published, Grimes announced she and Elon had “broken up again.”